The Creditor
Had Not Gone To Sleep; But Sat Up Thinking The Affair Over And
Remembered Many Cases, All Cited
In full, of how Kiva had failed to
meet his debts; also Kiva's brother on the mother's side and uncle
Ditto; and so has decided to foreclose forthwith on the debtor's
estate, and as the estate is represented by and consists of Kiva's
person, to take and seize upon it and eat it.
It is always highly interesting to observe the germ of any of our
own institutions existing in the culture of a lower race.
Nevertheless it is trying to be hauled out of one's sleep in the
middle of the night, and plunged into this study. Evidently this
was a trace of an early form of the Bankruptcy Court; the court
which clears a man of his debt, being here represented by the knife
and the cooking pot; the whitewashing, as I believe it is termed
with us, also shows, only it is not the debtor who is whitewashed,
but the creditors doing themselves over with white clay to celebrate
the removal of their enemy from his sphere of meretricious activity.
This inversion may arise from the fact that whitewashing a creditor
who was about to be cooked would be unwise, as the stuff would boil
off the bits and spoil the gravy. There is always some fragment of
sound sense underlying African institutions. Kiva was, when I got
out, tied up, talking nineteen to the dozen; and so was every one
else; and a lady was working up white clay in a pot.
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