The Stone Money of Yap - Smithsonian Institution

The Maze of Scientific Accounts
Descriptions of the Stones
Scientists who came or wrote about Yap used the
local name for the stone money disks, but many
different phonetic forms occurred. The Germans
seemed to prefer fa. The Englishman Frederick W.
Christian and the American William H. Furness, a
Philadelphian who lived on Yap for a year, spelled
the word fe and fei, respectively. Muller explained
that the term "rai,^ which he had heard in connection
with the stone money, was the word used for the stone
material, aragonite. 72 The current explanation is that
there were two designations for the stones. The people
in the southern and south central parts of Yap once
used the word fei, while those of the northeastern and
northern regions called stone money "rai." 73 The
term, fei is no longer used by the Yapese, as fei may
also mean "faces" in the outer islands of the Yap
administrative district. 74 Thus, "rai" is now the accepted
term in Yap proper and in contact with the
outside world.
In reading descriptions of rai one often finds the
comparison with a millstone. As previously mentioned,
Cheyne equated the piece brought from Palau as
being similar to a "small upper millstone." Tetens
and Kubary 30 years later observed that the size
varied from that "of a Swiss cheese up to that of a
millstone." 7o Russell Robertson, speaking from notes
taken abroad the British schooner Rupak, which left
Singapore in 1875, said that the money of the "Uap
group consisted of larger worked pieces in the shape
of a millstone." 76
In trying to discover what these expressions of size
might have meant to the nineteenth-century Europeans
mentioned above, the writer consulted Mr.
George Terry Sharrer of the Department of Industries,
Smithsonian Institution. He informed me that in
the Smithsonian collection the smallest hand-operated
millstone measures 25 centimeters (10 in) in diameter
and that an average stone would be about 91 centimeters
(3 ft). I then talked to Mr. Carlos Estrada
of the internationally known gourmet Wine and
Cheese Shop of Georgetown, Washington, D. C,
who told me that appenzeller Swiss cheese made in
Appenzeller, St. Gall, and Zurich, Switzerland,
measures about 53 or 56 centimeters (21 or 22 in) in
diameter. This variety probably would have been
better known to a German than would the other
significant variety, emmenthal Swiss cheese, the
average of which would measure 1 meter (39 in).
Foreigners reported that rai was measured by the
Yapese in terms of fathoms (the outstretched arms)
or spans (length of the outstretched fingers). The
smallest units were sometimes determined by the
width of the finger. 77 Kubary spoke of a three-span
piece, which represented a considerable worth. 78
Muller in writing of the Yapese caste system found
that among the many restrictions imposed upon
the low caste or tribute payers was that they could
not own stone money of more than four spans. 79
Senfft said that this caste at that time represented
about twenty per cent of the population. 80 The rai
brought from Palau to Yap in the Yapese canoes
and/or rafts could not have exceeded eight spans
at the most. 81 It is currently said on Yap that the
largest pieces were not brought on rafts. 82 The large
rai seen today on Yap and in many museums outside
Yap are ones that were transported by foreign-built
ships. Tetens, speaking of the Yapese who returned
from Palau aboard his Vesta, said that the 10 natives
had spent a long time on Palau in order to hew out
the stone money and that they had 20 large pieces.
He mentioned that the "taler sized pieces of the
same kind of stone . serve as lesser money." 83
It is after the time of O'Keefe that the many accounts
of the extremely large rai appear. One must remember,
however, that the coming of O'Keefe also coincided
with the arrival of a number of Europeans. LeHunte
noted in his report:
Equally remarkable . . is the native money of Yap, which
is all procured from the neighborhood of Koror (Abba Thule
for political reasons retaining a monopoly of the supply).
These pieces of money are disks of aragonite, a stone in appearance,
like large crystals of quartz. I am not exaggerating the
truth or trespassing on the bounds of humour proper to an
official report when I say that an average sized grindstone is
smaller than an average sized piece of Yap money (called a