Ceremony on Devolution of Chieftainship
When chieftainship devolves on the death of a chief to his successor, there is no ceremony connected with the devolution.[6]
When a chief resigns in his lifetime, however, there is a ceremony. There does not appear to be a special dance and feast connected with this, it being always tacked on to some other ceremony or group of ceremonies. This particular ceremony does not, in fact, begin until after the pig-killing. The retiring chief will have provided one or more pigs for the purpose of his ceremony, and these will have been killed with the others. He addresses the people and tells them that he is giving up his office and transferring it to his successor; but in doing so he says nothing about that successor’s title to succeed, that being always known and recognised. He then sits on his pig, and hands to his successor a bamboo knife, such as is used for the cutting up of pigs. The successor, having received the knife, takes the place of the retiring chief on the pig, and tells the people that he accepts the office of chief; after which he goes round to all the pigs which are there in connection with all the various ceremonies to be gone through, one after another, and in each case makes with the knife just given to him a small slit at the end of the mouth of each pig.[7] This act is regarded as a performance by the new chief of a chiefs office; and, as under present customs the killing of the pig is commonly done by the pig-killer, and the cutting of it up is done by anybody, one is tempted to wonder whether the ceremony points to some chief’s duty of the past, which has ceased to exist, or to some unknown origin of the status of the pig-killer.