It's an eye opener to read how people conducted business in the early 19th century. Money was not readily available since there was nothing like the banking system we have today that issues credits that are ubiquitous and widely accepted, so people struck barter-based deals all the time on all scales. The land company that bought the Western Reserve from Connecticut "bought" the land at about $0.30 an acre in a deal that was financed by bonds, which were really backed by the future land sales rather than any collateral put up by the company, for example. Similarly, within the settled territories, none of the people had money so they struck deals in barter terms. The credit they extended to each other was in terms of labor or goods and food.
A person who lived within such a system had to be fairly realistic and understanding of the limitations of the value of things like bushels of peas or bags of corn and the "volatility" of those things. There really wouldn't be any concept of "price" like we have now, which is mostly set by gamblers in futures market-casino games rather than between producers and consumers.
Another interesting aspect of the financial dealings of the 19th century people is the Indian population, at least within the context of the sources I've read, didn't participate in this type of credit system. Dealings between settlers and indians were either one-off purchases or were like deals conducted with a foreign nation done through treaties and deals with "chiefs" and governments.
The American's credit system tied them to the East Coast and its institutions, even though those institutions were totally feeble and remote from the settlers in the newly opened interior of the country. It's really not hard to imagine the Indians issuing credit in the same way the land companies or states did, but they actually just became peons and clients to these agreements the same way individual settlers did.
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