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Message:: [QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 16876, member: 57463"]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[/QUOTE]