Rai: big money

It’s big; it’s heavy; it’s called a rai. The large stone disk at the Bank of Canada Museum’s entrance is a multi-functional currency with a fascinating history.

What are rai?

Rai are stone currency from the island of Yap in Micronesia. Also referred to as fei, they are all roughly the same design and come in a wide variety of sizes. Often the biggest rai were used for high-value or culturally significant purchases and ceremonies. The smaller ones, among other types of local currencies (pearl shells and necklaces, and woven mats), were traded directly for goods and services.

The Museum rai stands above the lobby at street level. The biggest one outside of Yap, it is 2 metres wide, 2.25 metres tall and weighs 1,800 kilograms. The material is aragonite, a component of limestone.
Source: rai, Yap State, Micronesia, 1870–1900 | 1975.79.1

The making of rai

Before the Yapese people had any contact with Europeans, only a tribal chief could order new rai—although there is evidence that rai first arrived on Yap as gifts from the island of Palau. The Yapese chief would send sailors and carvers more than 400 kilometres to the archipelago of Palau—where all the stones were quarried and carved. This was no easy task because it meant days of sailing outrigger canoes across open seas, followed by months of back-breaking labour.

Once at Palau, the Yapese negotiated with the local chiefs for permission to access the quarries. They brought gifts and food or traded their own labour. Then began the slow and incredibly laborious task of carving discs out of solid limestone using tools made from shells and stone and, later, iron.

By inserting a post through its hole, several men would carry a finished rai from the quarry to the sea, where it was placed on a bamboo raft. Consequently, traditional rai were rarely more than a metre in diameter.
Source: Wilhelm Muller, the Hamburg-South Seas Expedition, 1908–10

There could have been as many as 100 people working the quarries at the same time. Once the rai stones were returned to Yap, the biggest ones—and roughly a third of the smaller—would go to the chief. The rest, plus quantities of food, went to the sailors and carvers. The newly minted rai would then be displayed before their owners’ homes or in large areas in village centres that were essentially rai banks.

Spending the big money

Rai were not only physical wealth but also symbols of wealth—like diamonds or gold. As well, they had many practical roles, such as paying taxes, marriage dowries, land purchases or war settlements or buying political loyalty. Rai were also given as gifts from one village to another during festivals.

These transactions were all recorded in Yapese oral history—like today’s bank account statement or the publicly available ledger of a cryptocurrency. However, the Yap oral ledger also records cultural value—the significant history of a rai. Since all the information pertaining to a given rai was kept in the collective memory of the people, the stone itself never needed to move after a transaction. It just got reassigned by public assent. Only the smaller stones were moved.

There is a story—or possibly a legend—about a large stone that fell off a raft during a storm. After it sank, there was no need for the stone itself to be on hand; everybody knew it existed and to whom it belonged. It was still a functioning rai even at the bottom of the sea—like gold tucked away in an underground vault.

A rai’s visible value

The rai at the Museum

There are roughly 7,000 rai in the world. An estimated 13,000 originally existed. Rai have not been made since the early 20^th century, and since the mid-1960s, none have been allowed to leave Yap. The rai in our collection was one of the last to do so. It’s thought to have been quarried around 1875 at Babledaob, an island of the Palau archipelago. Although we can’t be certain it’s an O’Keefe stone, its sheer size and level of workmanship seem to indicate it is. Its first owner of record was Puguw of Talingith, followed in the 1920s by Fathgol of Fugol u Tonil. Its final Yapese owner was Andrew Roboman, president of the Yap Island Council in the mid-1960s.

How the rai came to the Bank of Canada dates back to the mid-1970s, when a museum at the Bank was in the early planning stages. The National Currency Collection curator at that time, Sheldon Carroll, suggested purchasing a rai for the collection—he knew about one available in Florida. The Bank’s Governing Council approved, and Carroll negotiated its purchase in 1975. Today, the big stone disc acts as a sort of gatekeeper for the Museum. And its significant value as an artifact lies not only in its wow factor, but also in the ways it can be used to interpret the psychology that makes money work, its primary functions and its true value.

Rai still carry significant symbolic value for the people of Yap. The great stones still serve as reminders of a unique economic system that had real human value at its core; value that was communally determined and rooted in history and social trust. Currently, rai quarry sites on Palau and rai location sites on Yap are on the list of proposed UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Big, subtly colourful, smoothly finished and with an almost perfectly round hole, the Museum rai shows many valuable physical details. However, because it was allowed to leave Yap, it may not have been culturally valuable.
Source: rai, Yap State, Micronesia, 1870-1900 | 1975.79.1

In 1965, Andrew Roboman sold this rai to Grover Criswell. For several years, Criswell displayed it at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum in St. Augustine, Florida. Grover Criswell (left) is shown here with Ripley’s museum manager Robert Barclay (right).
Source: clipping, St. Augustine Record, Florida, United States, around 1966

The extent to which Yap citizens identify with rai can be seen on every vehicle’s license plate on the island. The stones have become internationally recognized icons of Yap.
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Photo: Jerry Wood, 1988