Who Originated Money?
The earliest tribes of savages did not need money because no individual in the tribe owned anything personally. All the property of the tribe belonged to the tribe as a whole and not to any particular person. Later on, when different groups of savages came into contact with each other, there arose the custom of bartering or exchanging things which one tribe possessed and which the other tribe wanted. In that way arose the business of trading or of what we call doing business, and soon the need of something by which to measure the values of different things arose. Some of the old Australian tribes had a tough green stone which was valuable for making hatchets. Members of another tribe would see some of this stone and notice what good hatchets could be made from it—better hatchets than they had been able to make. Naturally they wanted it so much that it became very valuable in their eyes and so they came wanting to buy green stones. But they had nothing like what we could call money today. They had, however, a good deal of red ochre in their lands which they used to paint their bodies. They got this red ochre out of the ground on their own lands just as the other tribe got green stones out of its ground, and those who owned the green stones which were good for making hatchets, wanted some red ochre very much, and so they traded green stones for red ochre. The green stones then took on a value in themselves for making exchanges for various commodities, and before long became a kind of money inside and outside the community so that when they wanted to obtain anything, the price was put by the merchant as so many green stones and he accepted these in payment for goods given in exchange. He was willing to do this because he knew he could use them in making trades for almost anything he might want, provided he had enough of the green stones. So you see these green stones of the Australian tribe became a rudimentary kind of money, just because a desire had arisen to possess them; and the red ochre was actual money in the same sense, for when this tribe found that other tribes would value this red ochre, they began getting the things they wanted and paying for them in red ochre. But the “unit of value” had to be developed to make a currency that was elastic. It required something that could be carried about easily—in fact it had to be something small enough so a number of units of value could be carried about without too much trouble. The Indians of British Columbia solved this difficulty of making an elastic currency by adopting as a unit of value a haiqua shell which they wore in strings as ornamental borders of their dresses—and one string of these shells was worth one beaver’s skin. These shells then were real money and one of the earliest forms of it.
The skins of animals were long used by savage tribes as money. The skins were valuable in trading and a man’s fortune was reckoned by the number of skins he owned. As soon as the animals became domesticated, however, the whole animal replaced the skin as the unit of value. This change undoubtedly came because a whole animal is more valuable than only its skin. The first skins obtainable however were worn by wild animals—the kind that the people could not deliver to someone else alive and whole. But when the animals became domesticated, which meant that man tamed them and kept them where he could control them at will, the skin and the wild animal ceased to be a unit of value because it was an uncertain kind of money. Among domestic animals, oxen and sheep were the earliest forms of money—an ox was considered worth ten sheep. This idea of using cattle as money was used by many tribes in many lands. We find traces of it in the laws of Iceland. The Latin word pecunia (pecus) shows that the earliest Roman money was composed of cattle. The English word fee indicates this also. The Irish law records show the same evidence of the use of cattle as money and within recent years the cattle still form the basis of the currency of the Zulus and Kaffirs.
When slavery became prominent many lands adopted the slaves as the unit of value. A man’s wealth was reckoned by the number of slaves he owned.
Then, when the practice of agriculture became more common, people used the products of the soil as money—maize, olive oil, cocoanuts, tea and corn—the latter is said to pass current as actual money in certain parts of Norway now. They used these products of the soil for money even in our own country. Our ancestors in Maryland and Virginia before the Revolutionary War, and even after, used tobacco as money. They passed laws making tobacco money and paid the salaries of the government officials and collected all taxes in tobacco.
Other early forms of money were ornaments and these serve the purpose of money among all uncivilized tribes. In India they used cowrie shells—a small yellowish-white shell with a fine gloss. The Fiji Islanders used whales’ teeth; some of the South Sea Island tribes used red feathers; other nations used mineral products as money—such as salt in Abyssinia and Mexico.
Up to this point we have talked about the things used as money from the standpoint of primitive forms of money. Today the metals have practically driven all these other crude forms of money out.