'Elota was a celebrated big-man, a leader who built standing through feast-giving and the management of shell valuables and pigs, in the east Kwaio country, whose life history was recorded by Roger Keesing. Renowned for the great mortuary and prestige feasts (maoma) he sponsored, he exemplified the secular ambition that Kwaio religion underwrites, for success in feasting rests on the support of the adalo and on the scrupulous observance of taboo. At his death he joined the ancestral adalo to whom his kin sacrifice.