Primitive Currency

Systems

Curious Native Coinage

By John Bacchus

THE natives of Torres Strait and the Pacific Islands, in order to possess a common means of exchange, have de vised many types of coinage or currency, mostly consisting of shells and the like.

But there are other forms which are more curious and unusual.

The most noteworthy of these is vauvau, the feather money of the Santa Cruz Islands, which, among its other ad vantages, is much more attractive to the hand and eye than the often-dirty paper stuff most civilised peoples use to-day.

The tiny feathers are bright red, and are taken from the breast of a rare honey eater, which possesses only a few of them.

They are carefully woven into a fibrous cloth, made from the inner bark of the hibiscus, and this again is backed by a strip of paper bark. As it is made, the strip is rolled up, being added to bit by bit as opportunity serves. Similarly, lengths are cut off as purchases are made.

The making of the feather coinage, like that of the feather cloaks of Hawaii, was the jealously-guarded privilege of a few people. In Hawaii, not only have the makers of the feather cloaks vanished for ever, but also the two varieties of birds which supplied the feathers for dusky arti sans to work into beautifully-coloured articles of apparel. Only two of the cloaks are known to be in existence to-day. Of the Santa Cruz money-makers, there is only one remaining. When he dies his mystery will go with him, and the vauvau will become a thing of the past.

ANOTHER remarkable coinage is fei, the stone coins of Yap, an island in the Caroline Group, now under Jap anese mandate. These numismatic oddi ties are made from limestone, are circu lar in shape, with a hole in the middle, and may a'ttain a diameter of twelve feet and a weight of several hundred pounds.

Smaller one, one to two feet in diameter, are very common, but the larger one are rare.

The coins, actually, were not “minted” on Yap, but were made and shaped on the island of Bebelthuap, in the Palau

Group, which is situated several hundred miles south of Yap, canoes or rafts hav ing been employed to carry them from the island of their origin. Naturally the greater the • size of the stone the higher its value as a medium of exchange or barter. Again, however, to secure the highest value, the limestone must be fine and white and of close grain.

The hole in the centre was made to allow' the insertion of a pole for carrying.

Possession of this coinage marked the importance of a native in the eyes of his fellow-villagers, and one who possessed a great number of. fei had considerable in fluence in the administrative affairs of his tribe.

An extraordinary and interesting fea ture of the fei currency of Yap, and also one which stands as a monument to the honesty of the natives, is that the owner need not actually take possession of the “coin”. When a transaction involves the changing hands of a fei too large to be conveniently moved, the new owner is quite satisfied to accept the mere ac knowledgment of his proprietorship, and the coin will be allowed to remain out side the door of the previous owner’s hut.

During the German control of Yap it was found that the roads and pathways of the island were in a neglected state.

As the natives were very unwilling to work, the Government was at a loss what to do, for a time. Finally, the officials decided on a plan to induce the natives to work. Government representatives painted large black crosses on the largest and most valuable of the fei to indicate that they were now the property of the Government. Reduced to a state of poverty, the natives set to work to repair the roads, and when the work was satis factorily completed, the crosses were re moved from the fei. the coins becoming once more the property of the natives.

Thirty years and more ago traders visited the island of Bebelthuap, in the Palaus, and quarried limestone coins, which they took to Yap and traded for copra and beche-de-mer, being careful, however, not to inflate the currency too much, and thus upset the natives’ cur rency standard.

The natives of Yap also use carefully trimmed, flat pearl shells as a medium of exchange where transactions involve small values only, and in this respect their coinage is similar to that of the in habitants of most other Pacific Islands.

ON Rossel Island, at the eastern end of Papua, there is a currency in use amongst a primitive people whose social organisation is based bn the fundamental principles of Communism. From time im memorial, these Rossel Island natives have used as a medium of exchange tokens which are minted from some sea shell. The generic name for these tokens is darb. but whence they came, how the issue is controlled, and how varying values are distinguished, are things which are not yet known.

A native with twenty dalb is considered a “big” man on Rossel. This explains, perhaps, why some Rossel men possess two, three and even four and five wives, whilst others have none at all. If a native possesses a couple of darb, it ap pears, he can equip himself with a wife— “off the big”, so to speak. But should he possess ten darb he can have the pick of the bunch. A Rossel woman may, however, buy herself out of an unsatisfactory alliance—provided she possesses the neces sary amount of darb. Failing which, she

has the alternative of hoping for widow hood in the near future.

FEW Europeans who have seen a Papuan tola or arm-shell realise the part it plays in native trading, or how far from its place of origin it travels in the pro cess. A few small ones are made on vari ous parts of the coast, but they are in ferior in material and design, and are little sought after. The best specimens are elaborately carved and coloured. The best quality tolas, and the most beauti ful and valuable, come from the D’Entre casteaux Group.

The D’Entrecasteaux natives trade them to the Dahumians for pottery, and this tribe sells them to the Mailukoluans for sago and other such commodities. The

Mailukoluans, in turn, pay with them the Aromans for pigs (which, in many parts or Papua, are used as currency and form the basis of trading values) dogs, canoes and other merchandise. Thence the tolas go to the Hood Bay natives as reimburse ment for birds and plumes. The Hood Bay tribe with them buy sago (“retail ’) from the Motuans and Motu-motuans, and these carry them to the far west and trade them to the Elemaites for sago in bulk.

Thence the tolas begin the return journey as payment for the goods specialised in by the various tribes en route.

It is not so long ago that Papua went on the “fish-hook standard”. The defec tion was due, not to a dearth of fish hooks, but to over-supply. Not so many years ago, the heart of the most intract able Papuan, male or female, could be won by a fish-hook, while a present of half a dozen made a life friend of the recipient, who became an object of re spect and envy in his village. Fish-hooks were valued even above tomahawks. That was in the coastal districts.

In the inland parts, where hooks only occasionally nercolated through in the course of trading, murder has been done for them, and they even displaced the once-supreme tola as a basis for cur

rency for a time. At the zenith of its cur rency career, a fish-hook was worth eleven tolas.

The invasion of prospectors and others, a few y ear s ago, all with huge packages of fish-hooks, caused a financial debacle and the return to the tola standard.