Foreign Currency

I stumbled across the following "Economics Puzzle" a while ago HERE.

An American tourist goes to a remote island for a vacation. The natives live by a barter system -- they have no money. When the tourist tries to pay for his lodging with a check, the owner laughs at first, but then decides that the design on the check is quite attractive and agrees to accept the check in return for lodging. This happens again when the tourist pays for food and some native artwork. The checks are never cashed. They begin to circulate on the island as money, replacing the barter system that had existed before.
If the checks are never cashed, who pays for the vacation of the tourist? Or is it free?

Although there was a stated assumption that "the checks are never cashed", commentors did their best to insert other assumptions -- including "put a stop payment order on the checks... just in case the art falls into the wrong hands" -- in formulating their answers. And most were thoughtful answers.
But given the provided scenario -- a tourist (thus transient), checks never cashed -- my conclusion is that, primarily, it's any resident(s) on the island who accepts one of the checks as payment for whatever but can't successfully pass it on as currency. I say "primarily" because the tourist likely has some practically-insignificant printing cost associated with the checks. Makes for an interesting discussion, eh?