“Is Mr. Leaming to cover this purchase?” I asked.
“He tell me so. I buy—he matches me.”
“That’s my proposal,” said Mr. Leaming, repressing a strong desire to view the figures on the slip.
“But, Tommie, this certificate of deposit will not mature for thirty days. Withdrawal at this time may cost you six months’ interest, although I think I can arrange it that you will lose no interest. And another point—I am anxious to sell bonds, but this certificate bears interest at four and one-half per cent, and your bond will pay only four per cent. You may lose six months’ interest, and you will surely lose one-half of one per cent interest each year.”
“I know all that, lo-lo-mi,” he answered; “Washington has a war, and needs the money. But you see that he covers it.”
“Lo-lo-mi,” I agreed heartily; “Mr. Leaming will please write his check for one thousand dollars, while Tommie endorses this certificate of deposit.”
Two thousand in the first sale. It started them. The closest financial shark of all the Indians present hurried to his sand-bank and came back with four hundred dollars. And Leaming grinned a golden grin of relief when he produced his thousand to match the first sale. [[237]]
“Tommie had me worried,” the genial principal admitted. “I could meet him for several thousands, but Tom might have sold his herd of cattle, and I should have lost caste throughout the whole district.”
Another evidence of Hopi thrift and credit is to be found in the “reimbursable” records. About 1914 the Government instituted a plan of loaning money to Indians, through their Agents, for the purchase of livestock, implements, seed, building-materials, and so on. I was not impressed with this plan, and to-day the Washington Office would like to have some one advise how to collect its outstanding reimbursables. The worthy charity provided many Indians with money without interest, and with practically no security assuring repayment. As an instance of this, the Mohave Indians found themselves embarrassed by these gifts, and in 1922 owed more than $34,000, they having had about forty thousand crowded on to them by a former superintendent. They had been crushed by debt for years. At least eighty-five per cent of the Mohave reimbursable was outstanding and delinquent, and with the best of fortune at least twenty per cent of it a total loss.