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

Mediation

Mediation, as used in law, is a form of alternative dispute resolution , a way of resolving disputes between two or more parties. A third party, the mediator, assists the parties to negotiate their own settlement...

 in disputes and a general “fixer” of village or individuals problems.

Examples of headmanship have been observed among the Zuni, !Kung

!Kung people

The ǃKung, also spelled ǃXun, are a Bushman people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola. They speak the ǃKung language, noted for using click consonants, generally classified as part of the Khoisan language family...

, and Mehinacu, among others. Nearby tribal leaders recognized or appointed by the Chinese were known as tusi (Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

: , p

Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

tǔsī), although they could command larger areas than a single village.