Yap Island's stone-cold cash National Museum of Natural History

The first Yapese rai to be collected by the Smithsonian, 1897. This one is 25 inches in diameter and 3.5 inches thick. Collection of the National Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Collections.

Saul Riesenberg didn’t have enough pigs to properly buy the last piece of his exhibit. Actually, he didn’t have any pigs at all, because that’s not the sort of thing Smithsonian curators pack for expeditions. But Reisenberg was in Yap, one of the many Caroline Islands in the Pacific (presently a part of the Federate States of Micronesia). He had traveled all this way to find a rai disk – the famous currency of the Yapese.

For centuries, explorers had come to Yap to see if they were lucky enough to take one of the meticulously-guarded treasures home. David O’Keefe marveled over them during his voyage in the 1870’s. But O’Keefe had cut corners, employing indigenous Yapese to make reproductions when they wouldn’t let him buy any. In doing so, he single-handedly introduced inflation to the economy. Reisenberg sought a less conspicuous method.

But another problem was that rai could be big and heavy. As in, they’re-made-out-of-stone heavy. The Smithsonian already had one that was about 25 inches wide. But Reisenberg wanted a bigger one, one that would show visitors to his museum how magnificent they were. The one he wanted was six feet tall, and weighed 4,000 pounds. If you’re doing the math, that’s the weight of about 320,000 quarters.

Chief Magistrate Anghel Gargog (right) and Young Girl, near two large rai, 1962. The rai in the center is the Smithsonian rai. Photograph by Roy H. Goss. Collection of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

This photo, taken in 1893 by Isaac Millner, is labeled “Two Men Wearing Breechcloths Near Three Coral Money Discs Outside Pole Thatch Village Council House on Ceremonial Stone Platform.” Collection of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Which is probably why the Yapese didn’t really bother to move them when they were exchanged within the island. People just remembered who owned what, and the rai stayed put, scattered throughout villages like miniature monuments. When they did move, it was to different islands, and they were transferred on canoes to and from Palau or even New Guinea.

While this canoe model was created in 1999, it represents the kind of vessels that have long been used within the Caroline Islands, and that continues to be used today. Collection of the National Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Collections.

The story of each rai’s exchange determined its value, which would then be measured based on how many pigs it was worth trading for. And Reisenberg could understand the rise and fall of the stock market, and the auctioning of historical artifacts, and why a soda wouldn’t cost five cents forever, but a valuation based on swine and history was just complicated – especially for an increasingly cost-conscious government institution like the Smithsonian. So let’s save the details of what that purchase order must have looked like for another time.

This political cartoon by Oliver Herford, entitled “Bless you my child,” was created in 1922 when the United States signed a treaty with Japan that included a provision to prohibit the import and sale of alcohol to Yapese natives. Collection of the Library of Congress.

Reisenberg wasn’t the first westerner to try to take a rai off the hands of the Yapese. Yap was colonized by Spain – that was when it was considered part of the Philippines. And then Germany took over. And then Japan. And then the Treaty of Versailles mandated it a territory of the League of Nations. In 1922, the United States maneuvered a treaty with Japan that allowed unrestricted commercial access to Yap – and because America was particularly into the Prohibition at the time, it made a special arrangement to ensure that nobody in the world could sell alcohol to the natives.

Francis Defngin, an anthropologist from Guam who helped Saul Reisenberg acquire the Smithsonian rai. Source: Pacific Digital Library.

So the people of Yap knew a thing or two about how the West did business. And Reisenberg was fortunate enough to find the help of Francis Defngin, a Yapese American anthropologist who located the rai for Reisenberg and began negotiating a dollar value. What would become known as the “Smithsonian rai,” which now sits in a lobby of the National Museum of Natural History near a tyrannosaurus skull, is a limestone behemoth that was quarried in Palau and taken to Yap in 1904. It was so large that the U.S. Navy was needed to transport it to Washington, D.C., routing it through Honolulu and San Diego.

The rai was purchased in 1962 for $200 USD, a grand total that probably would be less complicated to determine these days, since Yap now uses U.S. dollars as their standard currency. But considering that Reisenberg didn’t have to go through the trouble of shipping a few pigs across the Pacific, maybe we can all agree that he made off with quite a deal.

The Smithsonian rai on display at the National Museum of Natural History. Acquired by Saul Reisenberg, it is six feet in diameter and seven inches thick, and weighs 4,000 pounds. In 1977, Fernando R. Faleuaath, a chief in Balabat, Rul, inspected the display and informed the Smithsonian that it was positioned upside down and back to front.

The Smithsonian rai is on permanent display at the National Museum of Natural History near the entrance from Independence Avenue. It originally debut at the opening of the “Cultures of the Pacific” in 1962.

Special thanks to Carrie Beauchamp, Adrienne Kaeppler, Laurie Burgess and Hilary-Morgan Watt of the National Museum of Natural History for research collaboration. To learn more about the Smithsonian’s work with rai, check out The Stone Money of Yap: A Numismatic Survey by Cora Lee C. Gillilland (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975).