The village headman or village chief is a central government post. The village headman is the person appointed to administer an area that is often a single village.
The headman has several official duties in the village. More importantly perhaps the headman is seen as a mediator in disputes and a general “fixer” of village or individuals problems.
Examples of headmanship have been observed among the Zuni, !Kung, and Mehinacu, among others. Nearby tribal leaders recognized or appointed by the Chinese were known as tusi (Chinese: 土司, tǔsī), although they could command larger areas than a single village.
Famous quotes containing the words village and/or head:
“A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are all plowing the ocean together, as a common field. In North Truro the women and girls may sit at their doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the country the farmers’ wives sometimes see their husbands working in a distant hillside field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher’s ear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When we stand the truth on its head we generally fail to notice that our head is not standing where it should be standing either.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)