Yankee Doodle didn't really have a pocket, at least not the kind we know. He probably just kept a cloth or leather bag tied inside his coat. Just as we do with the paper dollars and copper-clad cents that we put in them, built-in pockets are another convenience third-millennium Americans take for granted.

It was not always so. As inevitable as America's success seems to have been, the fact remains that most of our early history was spent a false step from disaster. Though it happened very quickly by history's standards, transforming a motley collection of European outposts into a wealthy and powerful young nation was quite an ordeal.

The monies of pre-1840 America were both witnesses to this remarkable change and vital instruments of it. They tell of imperial and personal triumph . and folly. They celebrate our remarkable capacity for invention and adaptation. More importantly, they speak of the great American struggle between diversity and unanimity that was and remains a defining national principle. As we evolved from pluribus to something approaching unum, so did our money.

Early Americans were separated widely by geography, history, language and a host of other barriers, but they shared one unifying concept: The inevitable human tendency to trade. Trade occurred spontaneously in the wilderness, at street front shops, in smoky taverns and on waterfront piers. It reached down to the Caribbean, across the Atlantic and all the way to the Orient. In time, England tried to control nearly every official aspect of American trade.

Even a king, however, cannot watch everyone, especially when his colonies are remote and immersed in a complex socio-political landscape. When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts, for example, the Spanish already had occupied Florida for over half a century and the nearby West Indies for even longer. French Huguenots had attempted settlement in what are now the Carolinas. Coureurs de bois (.runners of the forest.) were roaming France's wilderness empire and the Dutch would soon have a foothold in what is now New York, incorporating in 1655 a 1638 settlement of Swedes and Finns.

It would not be long until African traditions and slave trade economics found their way to America. Then there were the Native American populations. Each group coveted things that the others possessed. Only law and lack of currency stood between these groups and trade. Both constraints proved weak deterrents, however, as colonists circumvented the former and adapted or invented the latter. These were early signs of American independence.

These lead tokens were excavated by archaeologists at Ferryland, a seventeenth century fishing village. Dr. Louis Jordan described them in a presentation to the annual convention of the Colonial Coin Collectors Club (C4) in 2006

For this purpose, Kirke ran a .common tavern. in his own house. It seems likely that the lead tokens were used as small change in the tavern. Based on the sizes of the recovered pieces, units of one, two and three were used, though just what the unit was is in question. The .DK tokens. differ from most Elizabethan lead tokens in that they are struck rather than cast. Based on research done by Ray Williams and presented at the 2006 C4 convention, it appears that the weights of the tokens correspond to musket balls of known calibers. Since musket balls were accepted in their most useful (spherical) form as half-farthings, the reason for pounding them flat and stamping them with David Kirke's monogram is a mystery

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