Once upon a time there was a missionary.

[gulliver]

He went to an unknown land far away. His job was to "civilize and convert" an indigenous tribe in the heart of a deep forest. The tribespeople generally lived very happily, although their dwellings were primitive by our standards. In fact, they lived in what we would call "tents."

The tent technology was sound, though, in some ways superior to that of the missionary's own tent.

The first day at the camp, the missionary was given a place to stay, and he set out to build his tent. He laid out the tent poles, criss-cross. He covered the poles with the canvas, and raised the tent, guiding the poles into the ground around the perimeter. Then he got out his tent stakes and began to pound the stakes into the ground with a nearby rock.

The natives thought this was very funny. They laughed and laughed.

The missionary was mystified. What on earth was so funny about pounding in tent stakes? So he asked the chief (who spoke some English) what the joke was.

The chief chuckled and sighed loudly. He motioned to a leathered old tribesman and pointed to the missionary's nearest tent stake.

The tribesman smiled. Then he placed the stake point-down on the ground and began to pound the tent stake into the ground with his forehead. He would stand up on his tiptoes to get his head to the maximum height, then drop to his knees, letting his forehead impact the top of the stake at full force. After some stifled cries of pain and a good deal of bleeding (which seemed to be taken in stride by the onlooking tribespeople), the old tribesman finished the first stake and turned to the chief proudly.

"Well done," said the chief.

It was then that the missionary realized why everyone in the tribe had a large ugly scar in the center of their foreheads. He had thought it was some sort of ceremonial mark of passage.

"That," said the chief, "is how a tent stake is supposed to be pounded in. Your way is just plain silly."