Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1875 — A Curious Coin. [ARTICLE]

A Curious Coin.

Some three or four years ago there was dug up from deep in the earth in the central part of Illinois a smaU com that has so far baffled the students to explain its figures and inscriptions. On one side it lias a grotesque figure of a man belaboring another man who is lying on his hack. Tlie characters both resemble the Indian more than any other race. Surrounding these central tracings are a series of characters that are guessed to be letters, hut of what language nobody can tell. On the other side of the coin is a large figure of an Indian head—very indistinct. No one has been able to explain the specimen, but it acquires renewed interest from a story of the early life of the Spaniards in this country, it seems that in bartering with the Indians these people offered them Spanish coins. These were to the red men only pieces of metal with inscriptions which were wholly meaningless to them, or because they represented white men were detestable. They looked upon the coins as valueless. By an ingenious thought, it is said, the Spaniards then made coins bearing Indian marks and figures and suggesting the idea of war, and they were immediately prized and passed current. —Chicago Inter-Ocean.