Section 5 Claim or Demand
Stephen Powers (b) states that the Nishinam of California have the following mode of collecting debts:
When an Indian owes another, it is held to be in bad taste, if not positively insulting, for the creditor to dun the debtor, as the brutal Saxon does, so he devises a more subtle method. He prepares a certain number of little sticks, according to the amount of the debt, and paints a ring around the end of each. These he carries and tosses into the delinquent’s wigwam without a word and goes his way; whereupon the other generally takes the hint, pays the debt, and destroys the sticks.
The San Francisco (California) Western Lancet, xi, 1882, p. 443, thus reports:
When a patient has neglected to remunerate the shaman [of the Wikehumni tribe of the Mariposan linguistic stock] for his services, the latter prepares short sticks of wood, with bands of colored porcupine quills wrapped around them at one end only, and every time he passes the delinquent’s lodge a certain number of them are thrown in as a reminder of the indebtedness.
G. W. Bloxam (c) describes Fig. 480 thus:
Among the Jehu of West Africa two cowries facing one another signify two blood relations; two cowries, however, back to back may be sent as a message of reproof for nonpayment of debt, meaning: “You have given me the back altogether; after we have come to an arrangement about the debt you have owed me, I will also turn my back against you.”
The same authority, p. 299, describes Fig. 481:
It consists of two cowries face to face, followed by one above facing upwards, and is a message from a creditor to a bad debtor, meaning: “After you have owed me a debt you kicked against me; I also will throw you off, because I did not know that you could have treated me thus.”
Prof. Anton Schrifner (a) describing Fig. 482, says:
On this plank the cuts marked b signify the number of reindeer required. Opposite these cuts are placed the hand marks, a, of various Samoyeds of whom the reindeer are demanded. At the bottom is found the official mark, c, of the Samoyed chief who forwarded this board to the various Samoyed settlements in place of a written communication.