184 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY—DAVIDSON. 
they were heaped to the top of the gun barrel ; then the Indian 
took the rifle, worth possibly $50, and the Hudson Bay Company 
took the furs, worth from $100 to $1000, the large variation 
being due to the absense of discrimination on the part of the 
Indian a yt 
“At the Hudson’s Bay Company posts, on the Mackenzie 
River, actual money is unknown; all trade being conducted by 
means of a curious imaginary currency, the unit of value of 
which is ‘one skin.’ What sort of skin? No one knows; in 
fact it is no sort of skin in particular. It is merely an imag- 
inary skin, about equivalent in value to half a dollar. The hide 
of a beaver is worth ten skins; a musk ox hide is worth thirty 
skins ; a fine silver fox hide is worth 300 skins. These are the 
big bills of this unique currency. 
“Small change is made by musk rat hides, worth one-tenth 
of askin; by mink hides worth two skins, and by lynx hides 
worth four skins. A wolverine hide is worth sixteen skins. 
There is a fluctuation in the value of this currency just as 
there is a fluctuation in the value of silver, consequent upon the 
increase or decrease in its production.”* 
But skin currency is not so unique as this writer imagines 
it to be. We have no modern instance so complete, but we 
have many traces of the same practice. In Northern Asia the 
skin of the Siberian squirrel was and is the monetary unit ; and 
etymology shows that many of the northern nations were in 
the same position. ‘‘In the Esthonian language the word ritra 
generally signifies money, but its equivalent in the kindred 
Lappish tongue has not yet altogether lost the original meaning 
of skin or fur.’-+ And the name of a Russian small coin, the 4 
kopeck, is said to mean half a hare skin, showing that the 
Muscovites had originally a skin currency—a fact which is also 
established? by the circulation of leather money in Russia as 
late as Peter the Great. Even in regions where there were 
possibilities of development, the earliest money was of this 
*Lee Merrithew : ‘‘ Cosmopolitan,” Nov., 1899. 
+Jevons : Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, p. 20. 
tRidgeway : Origin of Currency and Weight Standards, p. 13. 
