Kjellgren, Stone Money of Yap Rai: The “Stone Money” of Yap By Eric Kjellgren Among the most famous and iconic of all Micronesian art forms are rai, the massive “stone money” disks from Yap in the western Caroline Islands in what is today the Federated States of Micronesia. With their smoothly curving lines and spare, unadorned surfaces, rai embody the stark, minimalist aesthetic that is a hallmark of Micronesian art. Ranging from massive examples nearly 12 feet (3.5 meters) in diameter down to “small” disks as little as 6 inches (15 cm) across, rai were, and remain, the largest form of currency on earth. An elderly man and young woman posing with a large rai, Yap, 1932. The size of the disk is typical of the larger examples brought to Yap in the late 1800s. (unidentified Japanese photographer, source: Wikimedia Commons) Rai derive their value from the fact that the stone from which they are made does not occur naturally on Yap. To obtain it, Yapese navigators and stonecutters had to voyage to the islands of Belau (formerly called Palau) some 250 miles (400 km) away. Until the 1870s (see below), the creation of rai was commissioned almost exclusively by high-ranking chiefs, who had the authority and resources to send quarrying parties on the dangerous expeditions to and from Belau. On arrival, after negotiating with local Belauan chiefs for access to the quarries, Yapese stonecutters laboriously cut and shaped the disks from deposits of calcite or aragonite, which, like stalactites and stalagmites, occur as flowstones in caves and other limestone formations and range in color from a creamy off-white to a rich light brown. Once completed, the rai were floated out to traditional voyaging canoes on bamboo rafts. Smaller disks could be loaded aboard the canoes. However, the rafts carrying the biggest rai, which are the largest known objects ever transported across the open sea by any Pacific Island culture, had to be towed behind the canoes with ropes, making the long return voyage even more hazardous. When an expedition returned, the chief who had commissioned it distributed many of the smaller rai while keeping the largest for himself. According to one Yapese oral tradition, the first rai were made and brought to Yap by Anagumang, an ancestral figure said to have discovered the quarries in Belau. Anagumang initially asked his stonecutters to make rai in the shape of a fish, and then a crescent moon, before deciding that, like the full moon, they should be round. A group of rai with bamboo poles inserted through their central holes ready to be transported, Yap, 1908–1910. (photo: Elisabeth Krämer-Bannow, Hamburger Südsee-Expedition 1908–1910, source: Wikimedia Commons). Ranging from circular to oval in form, almost all rai have a single central hole. In most examples, which are typically between about 18 inches (45 cm) and around 3 feet (1 m) in diameter, the hole enables a bamboo or wooden pole to be inserted through the heavy disk so it can be more easily carried from place to place (fig. 2). For the smallest rai, the hole allows them to be strung on lengths of fiber cordage like some other types of Yapese currency. Although the largest rai, which can be anywhere from 6 feet (1.8 meter) up to almost 12 feet (3.5 meters) in diameter (see fig. 1), have a similar hole, they are far too heavy to be carried manually. Small rai were used to pay for food or labor, such as assistance in housebuilding. One early German observer reported that a rai the size of a small plate could purchase a month’s supply of fish, yams, and taro. Larger examples were used to pay for more costly goods and services such as canoe-building, pigs, or fishing equipment, while the biggest only changed hands for major expenses such as the inauguration of a new community house, the funerals of prominent chiefs, or, formerly, to secure the alliance of a neutral village in war. A large community meeting house with a group of rai displayed leaning against its stone supporting platform, Yap, 1932. (unidentified Japanese photographer, source: Wikimedia Commons). Small and medium sized rai once circulated widely as individuals, families, and communities incurred and paid their expenses. However, the largest examples were, and are, typically erected semipermanently in front of the dwellings of chiefs, men’s houses (failu), and community meeting houses (fig. 3) or alongside the paved stone paths of wealthy villages where they serve as ostentatious and highly public visual symbols of the wealth of individuals and communities. In the case of the very largest rai, which weigh several tons, they are so heavy that they are seldom, if ever, moved. Instead, in the rare instances when they are exchanged, their new ownership is acknowledged by the community and the disk is left in place. As a general rule, larger rai are worth more than smaller ones. However, their value depends not only on their size but also on their history. Those for which individuals had died during traditional quarrying expeditions, or those which were individually named (often after the individual(s) who commissioned or made the individual rai or after the canoe or raft that transported it), or those that had prestigious former owners, were more highly valued than comparably sized examples with no historic associations. Two men posing with a group of rai displayed in front of a stone platform, Yap, circa 1900. Although their date is unknown, the rai seen here are of approximately the maximum size that could be transported to Yap using traditional rafts. Photo from The living races of mankind : a popular illustrated account of the customs, habits, pursuits, feasts & ceremonies of the races of mankind throughout the world Volume 1 by Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, Henry Neville Hutchinson, Richard Lydekker and Dr. A. H. Keane published London: Hutchinson & Co. 1902 Exactly when the first rai were made is unknown but the tradition appears to extend at least as far back as the 1500s and, possibly, much earlier. Up until the 1870s (see below), all rai were produced using traditional tools and transport. These early rai appear to have been both quite rare and (comparatively) small, the largest no more than about 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter, the maximum size and weight that could be transported by raft (fig. 4). Carved with stone or shell tools and smoothed with pumice (a porous volcanic rock), earlier rai tend to be smaller and less perfectly round with rougher, less polished, surfaces than later examples. Beginning in the 1870s, the maximum size of rai increased dramatically while the number of rai on Yap increased exponentially as the islanders began to work with Western traders. In exchange for Yapese labor in producing copra (dried coconut) and other commodities, American and European traders began to transport large numbers of Yapese stonecutters to Belau in their trading vessels and later bring them back with their completed rai. As a result, between the early 1870s and 1914, literally thousands of rai of all sizes were made and brought to the island. With their size no longer limited to what could be towed behind traditional canoes, the number of very large rai produced increased greatly and the maximum diameter of the largest more than doubled (see fig. 1). The introduction of Western tools also enabled Yapese stonecarvers to create rai that were almost perfectly round and to polish their surfaces to a smooth, delicate sheen. Though neither the first nor the only Westerner to transport stonecutters and rai, by far the most prolific and successful of these traders was the Irish-American entrepreneur David O’Keefe, who transformed this uniquely Yapese transportation service into a large scale commercial enterprise. Such was O’Keefe’s success and dominance in the trade and so numerous were the rai he brought to Yap that collectors often informally refer to late-nineteenth century rai as being “post-O’Keefe” or “O’Keefe pieces.” As with all currencies, the influx of a great number of very large rai and vast quantities of rai of all sizes that flooded into Yap in the late 1800s inevitably resulted in a certain degree of local deflation in their value. Once restricted primarily to high-ranking chiefs or groups, ownership of rai became possible for any commoner who could afford to pay, or work, for passage to the Belauan quarries. As a result, older rai that had been created using traditional methods, called rai no buraeg, became more highly valued than later ones for which no one had risked their lives and were often worth more than far larger disks transported in the holds of Western ships. Today, the US dollar has replaced rai and other Yapese currencies for nearly all financial transactions. However, rai and other traditional valuables are still exchanged for important ceremonial occasions, such as births, marriages, or the payment of customary debts between individuals or groups. Owing, undoubtedly, to the cultural importance of money in Western societies and the global economy, Yapese rai, as the world’s largest form of currency, have long attracted the attention of economists, cultural and financial museums, and collectors of Pacific art and “unusual” forms of money. It is, perhaps, because rai, as money, are at once so familiar in their function and yet so unfamiliar in their form that they remain an enduring source of fascination for outsiders. For, as money, Yapese rai are not fundamentally different from any other currency. As the Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman once reminded readers in an essay on Yapese rai, all monetary systems are ultimately based on what he terms a “myth,” the unquestioned belief that, whatever form a society’s money takes, it is a “real” and “rational” thing of genuine value. Thus, in the end, the massive stone rai of Yap stand as a powerful expression of one of the most powerful ideas that has shaped the history of humankind. References: De Beauclair, Inez. 1963. The Stone Money of Yap Island. The Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Vol. 6 (1963), pp. 147–60. Fitzpatrick, Scott M. 2001. Archaeological Investigation of Omis Cave: A Yapese Stone Money Quarry in Palau. Archaeology in Oceania, Vol. 36, no. 3 (October 2001), pp. 153–162. Fitzpatrick, Scott M. 2002. A Radiocarbon Chronology of Yapese Stone Money Quarries in Palau. Micronesica, Vol. 34, no. 2 (January 2002), pp. 227–42. Friedman, Milton. 1991. The Island of Stone Money. Working Papers in Economics, No. E-91-3. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution. Furness, William H. 1910. Island of Stone Money: Uap of the Carolines. Philadelphia: J. Lippincott. Gillilland, Cora Lee C. 1975. The Stone Money of Yap: A Numismatic Survey. Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology, no. 23. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Hezel, Francis X. 1983. The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-Colonial Days, 1521–1885. Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 1, Pacific Islands Studies Program, Center for Pacific Studies, University of Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kingman, Lawrence and Gerald Green. 1950. His Majesty O’Keefe. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Kubary, Jan S. 1889. Heft 1: Über das Einheimische Geld auf der Insel Yap und auf den Pelau-Inseln. Ethnographische Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Karolinen Archipels. Leiden: P.W.M. Trap. Müller, Wilhelm. 1917–18. Yap. In: Thilenius, G. (ed.), Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition, 1908–1910. Band 2, Halband 1. Hamburg: L. Friederichsen & Co. Opitz, Charles J. 2000. An Ethnographic Study of Traditional Money. Ocala, Florida: First Impressions Printing, Inc.
