Mexican Hoe Money
pruebas
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Per @SimonW this place is boring, so I am trying to find some interesting articles to liven it up.
This one is from the November 1933 issue of The Numismatist.
OCR below the images.
Toltec Hoe or Scraper Money
By A. E. PLACE, Los Angeles, Cal.
(Prepared for publication in The Numismatist after an exhibit of specimens at the June meeting of the California Coin Club.)
Among the treasure buried in the kings' graves of the Monte Alban, near the city of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, so-called “Toltec hoe money” of the pre-columbian civilizations of American Indians has been found in a number of instances.
These are flat implements of copper shaped something like a letter "T," with a more or less half-moon shaped blade issuing from a flat handle piece or bar on the inner side of the blade. The edges of the handle have been symmetrically upset to give a gripping edge for the hand without cutting it, or for fitting it to two half-round pieces of wood to make a solid round handle for the blade. The entire piece was evidently rough cast as a flat plate of the approximate form, and then carefully hammered to a uniform thickness and to shape. Finally, the edge was put on the handle by hammering the edge at right angle to the surface. In thickness the implement increases from about one-sixty-fourth of an inch (a little more than paper thickness) to about one sixteenth of an inch for the handle part. The upset edge of the handle protrudes about one-sixteenth of an inch on each side of the handle, and is gently curved and rounded to fit the grip of the hand nicely.
Writer is familiar with following three types:
[image]
Showing Different Shapes of Toltec Hoe or Scraper Money.
The average size of Type A is a little over six inches from tip to tip of the blade, while the length down the handle axis to edge of blade is about five inches. Type B is about two and a half inches across the blade and six inches down the handle. Type C is often eight inches across the blade and six inches or more along the handle. The writer had in his hands specimens of Type B as small as two inches down the handle, although these are very rare. Of Type C occasionally specimens are found measuring up to eight inches along the handle and proportionately across the blade.
While the present-day natives of Oaxaca call these implements "hachitas de cobre,” or little copper axes, they are evidently hide scrapers, or tools used to clean the hides, use to which their shape is admirably suited. They are too thin to use cutting wood and would bend out of shape at the first blow. Nor are they suitable for use as hoes, as they are too thin to withstand the thrust into the ground. Furthermore, the wear on many of the specimens has been only on the knife edge, tending to cut down the curve of the blade, and this wear has been perfectly smooth. The term “hoe money” is, therefore, also a misnomer, and “scraper money” would be most appropriate.
In the State of Oaxaca these implements are found in graves of the Toltec-Mixtec era of civilization, which covered the valley of Oaxaca and the regions to the south and west of it, towards the boundaries of the States of Guerrero and Morelos and Puebla. It flourished extensively, archaeologists tell us, from 500 to 1200 A. D., when invasions by the Zapotecs from the east, and later, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, invasions by the Aztecs from the west overcame it. Among some of the notable monuments of this civilization are the palaces and courts and pyramids of the Monte Alban, about five miles west of the City of Oaxaca. Here a lone mountain, rising a thousand feet above the valley, has been leveled off by hand and endowed with stone and earthwork structures for a length of one mile and a width of seven hundred feet. It was a temple and a burial ground for chiefs and priests. On the slope reaching down from the temple levels to the valley there are numerous graves of varying size and elaborateness.
The pieces exhibited at the last meeting of the California Coin Club by the writer came from a stone tomb, excavated by him in 1910 near the Indian town of Xoxo, on the west slope of Monte Alban. As it was against the law to excavate at that time, and all work had to be done at night with mining lamps well shielded, no photographs were taken.
The tomb was of masonry. It was covered with stone slabs, upon which rested a couple of feet of earth and debris. The stones were well joined without masonry, to make an opening, eight feet long, three feet wide and about four feet deep. At the head of the floor was a funeral urn of clay, of common type, containing a few small bones of birds and a few stone beads and two beads of jade. Surrounding the urn were four regular piles of the copper pieces, of which we counted 327. The bones of the body were in a heap, due to possible burial in sitting posture. There were stone beads for necklaces, and two small copper bells. Also stone axes and remnants of war clubs set with fragments of volcanic glass. Other material was decomposed. We were in a hurry and did not sift the floor material, so
[image]
Specimen of Toltec Hoe or Scraper Money.
that there might have been other things. We took out the urn, the beads and the copper pieces, covered up the slabs and trimmed everything as best we could. The writer took the urn and about 100 pieces of copper. The rest were divided, after paying off the Indians who helped us. These pieces were all of a kind, Type A, and all of the same size.
Additional copper pieces of this kind and of other types were brought in from the country to my office from time to time and purchased. This collection was lost in the revolution. The pieces exhibited were salvaged with other personal belongings and brought to Los Angeles in 1917, and disposed of here and there among museums and collectors, the writer being at that time engaged by Mr. George G. Heye, of the Museum of the American Indian in New York, to purchase Catalina Island and other material.
The great abundance of these copper pieces is borne out by the story told the writer by trustworthy Mexican collectors of antiquities, who tell about several wagon loads of copper pieces having been brought into the city of Oaxaca for melting into bullets at the time of the French invasion (under Maximilian, 1864).
While this “scraper money” is not coinage in the sense usually understood, it undoubtedly represented personal wealth, and, being valuable, durable and portable, it stood in lieu of money among the Mixtec-Toltec and Zapotec tribes of Indians, and was passed from hand to hand, and buried with the dead. It appears to rank in type with Chinese “razor money,” and as such undoubtedly deserves a place in all collections of ancient money.
The conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, who brought with them iron and steel tools and stamped coins issued by the Crown, of course did away with the Toltec-Mixtec scraper money. The mines from which the copper came, with remnants of little old charcoal furnaces, and some stone moulds for the casting of the pieces are located in the mountains of Silacayoapam, 100 miles west of the City of Oaxaca, far from transportation, where the writer saw them in 1911, on a mining trip.
Comments
Those are quite unique,
At the base of the Rockies around Rocky Flats are old Coal mine tunnels, These are old store cards, the only form of money back in the day early 1900's wild west. you got paid with these stamped chunks of Copper Bronze and White metal with numbers,. Only to be spent at the union funded store.
Here are a few that I dug from the top of a tunnel.
@pruebas that’s my boy!!! Thanks!
I'm BACK!!! Used to be Billet7 on the old forum.
I'm surprised nobody has commented on this. I caught this right away while reading it.
The pieces exhibited at the last meeting of the California Coin Club by the writer came from a stone tomb, excavated by him in 1910 near the Indian town of Xoxo, on the west slope of Monte Alban. As it was against the law to excavate at that time, and all work had to be done at night with mining lamps well shielded, no photographs were taken.
We were in a hurry and did not sift the floor material, so that there might have been other things. We took out the urn, the beads and the copper pieces, covered up the slabs and trimmed everything as best we could. The writer took the urn and about 100 pieces of copper. The rest were divided, after paying off the Indians who helped us.
The author is basically admitting in a public publication (and the ANA is tacitly condoning it by publishing it) to breaking Mexican law and to stealing public property.
Later he admits to selling the stolen property to museums.
I am the first to admit some of our PC culture is a bit too much. For example, war spoils rightly belong to the victor. But here there was no war. And Mr. Place knew it was illegal, yet he did it anyway.
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Yeah, I figured it was pretty common practice in the early 1900’s. I think in part it was due to a belief that some cultures and “backwater” areas wouldn’t care for the artifacts, and partly out of a treasure hunter mentality that “he who finds it, keeps it.”
I'm BACK!!! Used to be Billet7 on the old forum.