MONEY+OF+COLONIAL+AMERICA

In early 1600s lots of British and many other people came to North America to practice religious freedom or to escape from the war. They had a very hard time to adjust in North America. Especially with money they suffered many difficulties for the shortage of official coins. For their daily activities they faced a lot of problems. Then they tried a lot of forms of money. In 1775 North America alone had as many as seventeen different forms of money. First they used native currencies like furs and wampum. Wampum is a amount of small cylindrical beads made by Native Americans from shells, strung together and worn as a decorative belt used as money.But in 1637 Massachusetts declared white wampum legal tender for sum up to shilling. Then they had "country pay” or “country money” such as tobacco, rice, indigo, wheat, maize, etc. tobacco have used as a good commodity for 200 years. Colonial American also used unofficial coinage, mostly foreign, and Spanish and Portuguese coinages. These played an important role in long distance and as well as local tread. John hall set up a “pine-tree” shilling and other coins in 1652. They used it until it forced to close the “pine-tree” shilling in1684. Rare but they also used British coinage as well. Finally, they start paper currency but still not in one step. With various types they made the actual one in the later years.

BY RINA ,ELSA AND SHABREENA.