Museum is biggest currency collector

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Museum is biggest currency collector

Source: Inquirer Author: Maurice Malanes Date: 2000-02-15

BENGUET'S provincial museum is the

most unique in the country, not only

because it houses, among other

things, a human mummy returned by a

thief but also because it is probably the country's biggest

collector of currencies worldwide.



The museum at a building beside the provincial capitol in La

Trinidad town has collected currencies from at least 100

countries, says Amando Furunda, the museum's assistant

officer in charge.



The collection includes old and new coins and paper bills from

the Philippines and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region,

South America, North America, Europe and Africa.



How the collection began was no accident. It was started by

residents who have a strong historical and anthropological

sense, Furunda said.



One of the first items in the collection is a legal tender printed in

the jungles of Apayao during World War II.



Then provincial administrator Francisco Tiotioen donated the

bill and two Mt. Province emergency notes, which were as good

as cash during the war, said Loly Moises, provincial librarian.



The notes were among the first items to be displayed when the

museum was inaugurated in June 1979.



Moises, who initially supervised the museum, said she did not

expect that the notes would encourage other people to expand

the currency collection.



The book, ''Japanese Occupation of the Philippines,'' by

historian A.V. H. Hartendorp reveals how the emergency notes

evolved.



Hartendorp wrote that the notes, totalling P1,000, were printed

by US Army Maj. Ralph Frager in his Apayao jungle retreat

during the war.



Frager, a West Pointer with the 26th Cavalry, was authorized by

the American government to print the notes to be used in areas

unoccupied by the Japanese.



The major was assigned to do reconnaissance and intelligence

work in far north Luzon. There, American soldiers installed a

clandestine radio communication network directly linked to San

Francisco in the US mainland.



The Apayao notes (from five centavos to P10) were produced

by a makeshift printery from plates cut from battery boxes made

of hard rubber. All notes bore serial numbers. The plates were

destroyed immediately after printing.



The Mt. Province emergency notes, on the other hand, were

printed after the government ordered the payment of salaries of

local officials and employees from December 1941 to 1946 when

the war ended.



After Tiotioen's donated notes were exhibited, local and foreign

tourists started contributing coins and paper bills. Thus, most

of the additions are not relics but modern currencies.



But some residents continue to give old coins and paper bills.

Among the latest addition to the collection is a 1.69-gram

irregularly shaped silver coin believed to be used during the

Spanish galleon trade in the 1700s. The coin has a cross on one

side and the Spanish royal seal on the other.



The coin is similar to the macuquinas or cobs

(Spanish-American dollars) used in Irish and British colonies in

the earlier centuries.



The only incentive of coin or paper bill donors is that their

names are duly acknowledged and displayed with their

donations. But some would prefer to be anonymous.



Cultural repository



Another interesting attraction of the Benguet museum is a

human mummy returned by a thief after he reportedly suffered

from mysterious ailments.



The thief probably got sick because he stole the mummy, said

Furunda. Rats have also eaten parts of the preserved corpse so

the thief's negligence might have angered the mummy's spirit, he

added.



Unlike the most celebrated Apo Anno, a mummy which was

returned in May 1999 to Buguias town, the mummy at the

museum is still unknown. Once identified and once the place

where it was stolen is traced, the mummy will be finally returned.

This will entail elaborate rituals to appease the mummy's spirit.



Other items on display are cultural artifacts, such as old

porcelain Chinese jars, wooden plates and bowls, rain gear made

of grass, gold panning equipment made of stones, gongs and

drums, bark cloth, tapis or wrap-around skirt and g-strings and

old furniture.



The old Chinese jars reveal that Benguet and other parts of the

country had a flourishing trade with China and other Asian

neighbors even before the Spanish colonizers came.



From the bark cloth--a wide bark from a certain tree made soft

through pounding and beating--to the tapis and g-string, the

museum can give the visitor an idea about how the Igorots of

old protected their bodies from the elements.



Like history, which continues to be written, the museum can

continue to be enriched by adding more previously hidden

artifacts.