When the District Commissioner arrived to take Okonkwo away, he found many of the villagers standing around Okonkwo's home. The Ibo men led the white man to a tree behind Okonkwo's house where Okonkwo's body hung. Obierika, Okonkwo's greatest friend, asked that the commissioner cut him down because it would be an offense against the earth for any of the clansmen to cut him down. Okonkwo had committed a sin against the Earth by taking his own life, and to touch him would bring abomination on the others.
They could not bury him, but when strangers had buried him, they would perform sacrifices to cleanse the land that he had desecrated. Obierika blamed the District Commissioner for the death of Okonkwo, one of Umuofia's greatest men. The Commissioner ordered that Okonkwo be cut down and then he made his way back to his court. As he walked he thought about the peculiar beliefs of the natives and how such stories would fill the book he was planning to write. He thought of Okonkwo's story and thought that it would be a nice paragraph to include in his book entitled The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
