Made By A Blacksmith

Tacoma once had a mint that coined all the money in circulation where the City of Destiny now stands, and it did not require the fiat of Uncle Sam, the silver of Idaho or the gold of California to make the pieces from Tacoma's mint pass current among the Indians and the few hardy pioneers that were blazing the path of civilization through the iorest on the shores.of Commencement Bay. Back in the early '70's, so says the Tacoma Leader, the Tacoma Mail Co., not being able to handily secure gold and silver for use in trading with and paying off the Indian laborers and early settlers, hit upon iue novel plan of issuing their own currency, and to this end set their blacksmith to work to fashion for them out of scraps of iron and brass pieces of money, or rather tokens, which could be used as a circulating medium. The pieces conBisted of forty and forty-five cent iron tokens and brass one dollar pieces. The forty-cent pieces were about an inch in diameter, and the forty-five cent pieces were about the size of the present silvcr half dollar. The one dollar pieces were oval in shape, about an inch and a quarter long, an inch wide" and a sixteenth of an inch in thickness. These pieces were stamped with the figures showing their value, and lly passed current all over the country tributary to the mlll. Nearly all of this oíd "mili" coin has passed away, but a few days ago William Hanson, of the Tacoma Mili Co., presented a set of these queer coins to the Ferry Museum. In his letter he said: "The honesty of the people and the absence of any blacksmith shop save that of the company made the use of this money possible." Oregon has long boasted that the "Beacon" coin minted at Oregon City in the early '50's was the only money minted in the northwest in the days of the pioneer.