The Hudson's Bay Company tokens represented the unit of currency used in the fur trade for many decades. The largest - one "Made-Beaver" - was equal in value to the skin on an adult male beaver in good condition. Smaller sizes represented one-half, one-quarter, and one-eighth of a Made-Beaver. One side of the brass token bears the Hudson's Bay Company's coat of arms and the other its value. Before these brass tokens came into use, a Made-Beaver was represented by a stick, porcupine quill, and ivory disc, a musket ball, or anything else agreed upon by trader and trapper. The trapper would be handed a number of units agreed upon - representing the value of his catch - and with these would make his purchases from the store. The tokens were designed by George Simpson Mctavish of Albany Fort in 1854.
Famous quotes containing the words hudson, bay and/or tokens:
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the mighty space of our large honors
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog and bay the moon
Than such a Roman.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is the part of men to fear and tremble
When the most mighty gods by tokens send
Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)