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 



" At the Hudson's Bay Company posts, on the Mackenzie 

 River, actual money is unknown ; all trade being conducted b) T 

 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 a skin ; by mink hides worth two skins, and by lynx hides 

 worth four skins. A wolverine hide is worth sixteen ski.ns. 

 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 rutra 

 generally signifies money, but its equivalent in the kindred 

 Lappish tongue has not yet altogether lost the original meaning 

 of skin or fur."-f* And the name of a Russian small coin, the J 

 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 



*Lce Merrithew : " Cosmopolitan," Nov., 1899. 



tJcvons : Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, p. 20. 



JRidgeway : Origin of Currency and Weight Standards, p. 13. 



