‘Indian chiefs’ such as Geronimo or Sitting Bull were, in fact, tribal headmen, whose role was nothing like big men in Papua New Guinea. Most of those labelled ‘chiefs’ in the neo-evolutionist model, as we’ve already noted, look suspiciously like what we normally think of as ‘kings’ and may well live in fortified castles, wear ermine robes, support court jesters, have hundreds of wives and harem eunuchs. However, they rarely engage in the mass redistribution of resources, at least not in any systematic way.
