Bucks as money on the American frontier

This week I'm in Pittsburgh, and yesterday I got the opportunity to do a bit of sightseeing, including the excellent Fort Pitt Museum. It was very enlightening in terms of the early history of the city as a frontier fort town, including its role as a trading post in the fur trade. This exhibit in particular caught my attention:

In ECONS101, we talk about the roles of money, as: a medium of exchange (you give it up when you buy goods or services, and you can receive it when you sell goods or services); a unit of account (you can measure the value of something using the amount of money it is worth); and a store of value (you can keep it and it will retain its value into the future). The exhibit caught my attention because of this note on the wall:

It shows the use of deer skins as a unit of account. Notice that, on the left, it shows how much skins of different animals are worth, measured in "bucks", where one buck is one deer skin. So, six raccoon skins is equal to one buck, or two otter skins is equal to one buck. On the right, it shows what you can buy, again measured in "bucks". So, one pound of gunpowder is one buck, and 12 flints is one raccoon skin (which is 1/6 of a buck).

Of course, money existed in the 18th Century. But coins and other money were in short supply on the American frontier, so deer skins were a useful alternative. Interestingly, this also shows the origin of our use of the term "bucks" to refer to money!