I know the Aztecs and maybe the other native empires had their own coins, but what about the North American tribes? Did they ever mint coins? And if so, do they still?
I have seen commemoratives issued by modern Tribes for sale. I don't believe the Tribes themselves actually minted them, but rather commisioned an outside sourse. As far as early Native North Americans minting coins goes, I've never heard of that. I was under the impression that they hadn't advanced much further than the Stone Age. Never heard of them refining metal. Of course, they've come a long way since then.
It's all in your perspective. They did just fine with wampum, pipes, tobacco, beaver pelts, etc. etc. Their methods of commerce were jst as efficient as ours, no doubt. They just didn't make little round pieces of metal with funny faces on them. In one sense, they were AHEAD of us. Most of theor "money" had real value - that is, you could take it anywhere in the world and get vakue for it. While the US dollar is arguably like that, most nation's currencies are not nearly so liquid.
yes, they have really nice money--cocoa beans. u can eat them, u can grow them, and u cant acumulate too much of them. by the way forgers at that time was drilling them and taking the powder out and filling it with sand
While the Native Americans did not refine metal for use as coinage or to make weapons - they did use it for jewelry. They had no problem at all making jewelry out silver and gold. But most of the gold & silver mines first found in the American west had been worked for centuries by the Indians. First the Spanish took over the mines - and when they left the white man did. Some of these mines are still being worked today after nearly 600 yrs. And lord knows for how long prior to that. The Aztecs on the other hand used gold for many purposes. Their skill as goldsmiths was quite advanced. One of the things they did to try and persuade Cortez to leave them in peace was to fill an entire room - a good sized room - floor to ceiling with gold. They managed to do this in one day. Rather obviously this had an undesirable effect on the Spaniards. But the Aztecs didn't understand - to them quetzal feathers were valuable. Gold was just pretty to look at and easy to work to make art pieces ceremonial pieces. Even the older cultures like the Olmecs and Toltecs used silver and gold but to a lesser degree than the Aztecs.
No Native Americans minted coins. Period. Coinage was created certainly in Lydia in what is now central Turkey about 600-550 BC. Coinage might have parallel independent origins in India and China. American tribes had no coins. The Aztecs did make some use of gold as a metal. That does present some problems. These were STONE AGE people. They did not have metal weapons, for instance. They did value gold and silver. Why, we are not sure. I have read of feather quills filled with gold dust being used as "money" by the Aztecs. They seem to have made greater use of cacao (chocolate) beans as money. In any case, they were not a "monetized" society as we would apply that word to old world cultures. A similar problem is the temporary trade in and utilization of COPPER by natives of the Great Lakes area before the arrival of Europeans. Copper was important and then abandoned. Why, we do not know. The Navajo adopted silversmithing only after the arrival of the Spaniards. It took about 150 years for effective military campaigns to subdue the Navajo and they went from raiding to smithing and weaving. The silver came from Mexico... and eventually the tourquoise came from China... Michael
