Home of Family Patriarch

Many of the villages in Okinawa were built on the south side of the hill "[Kusate] no Mori" on the hillside or at the foot of the mountain. In such villages, there is a head family‘s house [Muhtuyah] on top of the village, and next-ranked head families‘ house are lined up in the left and right of the lower place, and branch families are arranged in front of the bottom. In the forest behind the [Muhtuyah], there is a sacred place called "Utaki", and sometimes there is a sacred path［Kamimichi］that directly leads from the [Muhtuyah] to Utaki.
The pioneering head family who is involved in the creation of a village was called [Muramuhtu], and it enshrined ancestral spirits as the head family of a village. In ancient times, the head of the head family performed the rituals of a village as [Nichu] and his sisters as [Nigan (Nigami)] in a blood-related community.