Background

About Your Tribe

You are all members of the same tribe.  Your tribe is
uncommonly lucky in these parts because there is a huge
cynabar mine within your territory, and also because your
lands are very fertile.  This makes your tribe well off
in two ways: many tribes send groups to work the mines, and they
bring presents.  Also, you trade cynabar to other tribes
and traveling traders, which also raises the standard of living.

Your tribe is larger than most, and less migratory.  While
other tribes might stay in 6 or 10 places per year, and
not always the same places, your tribe moves only three
times a year, and these camps are almost exactly the same from year to year.

Your tribe has an unusual and complex power structure.  There is a coucil of elders, who make decisions, a chief who negociates and leads war parties, and a merchent/craft group, who are the most affluent.

The chief is the greatest living warrior, who can still
fight.  He is choosen by aclimation of the whole tribe,
while the old chief dies or can no longer wage war, as
determined by the elders.  The elders are basically a
group of all tribe members who are over 60, of sound mind
who want to remain active with the tribe, and aren't
social outcasts or strange.

There is some social tention between the more traditional
hunting and gathering parts of the tribe, and the less
traditional mining, crafting, and merchanting parts of the
tribe.  The former are more numerous but less affluent than
the later.

In theory the elders should be a cross sample of the tribe,
but they aren't because miners and craftspeople tend not to
live to old age, and there are not that many merchants.
Therefore, the elders is always skewed twords the more
tranditional hunter/gatherer parts of the tribe.

In general, the elders are not in favor of your expitition,
while the chief is against it.  However, the merchents,
artisens and craftsmen are in favor of it enough to do it
on their own, so the others send a token representitive to
make sure their interests are protected.  And that is how
you end up on your way.

Some Details

Your tribe is rarely attacked and not warlike itself, so
the question of "can the chief lead us into battle" is
usually a theorectical one, not a real one.  The last two
fights (one a decade for the last two decades) were both
single battles with groups from far away tribes who attempted
to mine without presenting presents.