I have been reading about Jamestown lately and I discovered that the Indians in Virginia had a copper economy before the Europeans arrived. There was a lot in the Great Lakes region, and it was traded all over North America. There are others who had a copper economy as well. It was not used as money so much as items to bring prestige to chiefs. The Northwest Indians are still using some of it: http://lanecc.edu/library/don/copper.htm#what I wonder if there is any kind of early "money" anyone has heard of made of copper?
This is a subject that I've taken some interest in lately. I'll give you a detailed response later tonight, when I can access my bibliography.
The most striking thing about that article is that it points to the dichotomy between the notions of monetary and social capital. The Native Americans were using copper to exchange social capital, whereas the modern world overwhelmingly looks to metal for its monetary, or commercial value. I'd like to say more on that later as well, when I've had a chance to thoroughly read the link.
Bill will have a better response, bit to "tied you over" until then, there are TONS of early uses of copper for money. Everyone on the PM boards like to say how gold and silver were the first money, that is pure baloney. Large copper ingots in the shape of a bull were used in the near east long before electrum coinage. Rome's first item for trade were cast lumps of copper. The Aztecs and Mayans were using proto-money in the shape of axes and hoes by the time the Spanish arrived. Copper is as much a monetary metal than any PM is historically.
Okay, so the first thing to understand is that native copper "economies" were not monetized. Copper, shells, feathers, and other precious objects were often used as forms of wealth storage, and even simultaneously, but it is only rarely that circulated as coins do. The prime example of this is in the western parts of Mexico from around the 13th century to contact. They were NOT in existence during the Mayan period. These are the cast copper axes, or hachuelas, that Chris referred to: MEXICO, Aztec culture. Circa AD 1200/1300-1525 Æ “Hachuela” (143mm x 150mm, 55.70 g) Mushroom-shaped bronze pseudo-axe-head with curved “blade” and flanged shank Hosler, Lechtman, & Holm, Axe-monies and their Relatives, type 2a Even these were only really wealth-storage objects until the coming of Europeans. There are also cast bronze llaamas that found in the areas controlled by the Inkan empire, but their purpose is not yet certain. Further north, the only significant copper economy that I am familiar with is in the Pacific Northwest, with the engraved plates that you illustrated earlier. As with hachuelas, I believe these were primarily wealth storage objects, except perhaps when used in trade with Europeans. Any citation to a copper "economy" among in the Great Plains or along the east coast is wrong. Copper was a precious object, but not a monetary one. In fact, it would be much more accurate to imagine an obsidian or chert economy, with the important stones being traded all across the continent, often from only a handful of specific sources. Here are some articles and books you may want to check out: D'Altroy, Terence N, Timothy K Earle,et al. 1985. “Staple Finance, Wealth Finance, and Storage in the Inka Political Economy.” Current Anthropology 26 2: 187–207. Schoonheyt, Jacques A. 2003. “Le cuivre natif utilisé comme moyen d’échange dans l’ouest canadien.” In XIII Congresso Internacionale de Numismaticá (Madrid 2003), 1503–1512. Hosler, Dorothy, Heather Lechtman, and Olaf Holm. 1990. Axe-monies and their Relatives. Washington, DC: Dumbarton & Oaks.
I know that the copper was more ceremonial, but it was an object in demand. The colonists in Jamestown found that the Native Americans wanted copper, and they used it as a trade good. Later they found that some of the English coins were rolled into beads and worn like the copper was.
It was undoubtedly a valuable and precious object for many native groups. But that is not, in my opinion, enough to make a "copper economy."
The Hopewell and Cahokia people had a lot of copper buried in mounds as well. I don't think any Native American group had the same concept of "money" as the Europeans had, but they had trade routes going from the copper area of upper Michigan to the middle of the country and beyond.