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Show Miscellany Astecs Operate First Mine in U. S. When the Spaniards landed in what is now the republic of Mexico they found themselves in an Indian state having many of the institutions of civilization. civi-lization. One -of these was a mint operated op-erated by the Aztecs, coining flat copper cop-per pieces of an odd shape. These were called sie.eapili, and two pieces of lesser denomination were known as the zontie and olotl. Cacao beans served the purpose pur-pose of small change, twenty beans equaling the value of one oloti, twenty olotl making one zontie aud twenty zontie ono siccapili. Following the conquest of the country coun-try iu 1521 by Cortes, the Spaniards set out to establish a stable system of government gov-ernment and finance for the new colony. colo-ny. So they took over the Aztecs' mint and remodeled it to suit" their own purposes. pur-poses. They also sought out every possible pos-sible source of gold and other valuable metals. It had been the habit of the Aztecs, the Mayas and Peruvians to bury money mon-ey with their dead, and often gold vessels, ves-sels, beads and so on were interred with the bodies of head men. This the Spaniards deemed a waste and proceeded proceed-ed to open all of the graves they could find, thereby retrieving quantities of Aztec- coins and a considerable amount of gold and silver. But it was an uncertain un-certain business, and they got copper siccapili more often than they did gold. It was decided to put the risk npou the other fellow find insure the crown against the chance of labor without reward. re-ward. Henceforth all graves were auctioned auc-tioned off to the highest bidder before being opened, and the buyer took the chance, a plan that worked very well. Before and after the establishment uf a Spanish mint in Mexico, counterfeit counter-feit coins appeared with a persistent regularity that was extremelv annoying to the king's officers. Although the penalty was death, and even suspicion I of 1 oiuiug enough to bring down the penalty upon a suspected offender, counterfeit pieces were in general circulation. cir-culation. The charge for minting gold was high, anil iu 1550 we find the colonial co-lonial government prohibiting all dealings deal-ings in bullion and gold dust, indicat ing to v hat extent that system of trade had come into use. The financial troubles of Philip III brought a decree in 1603 doubling the value of coins. Business almost came to a standstill, and payments in coin practically ceased. As a result all of the gold and silver that could be smuggled smug-gled out of Spanish America by individuals indi-viduals was diverted to North America, and eventually coined in England, thus robbing his most Catholic majesty of a good share in the spoils of the uew world. To offset that trend, the Spanish Span-ish government established free coinage coin-age for the first time in history, an example ex-ample that was later followed W many 'other countries. New York World. |