Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Russian-American Company" in English language version.
From 1817 until Russia's sale of Alaska in 1867, the workers of the Russian American Company received their meager salaries in pieces of tanned leather branded with the company's seal that featured a Russian two-headed eagle and the signature of the company's director. Assignats were in short supply in Russian America, while coins imported from the mainland quickly disappeared from circulation. [...] Therefore, in 1816, the Russian administration in America started issuing its own private money called "marki" that in design and colors resembled paper assignats. Printed on the skin of sea animals, Alaska's most precious commodity, and delivered to the colony from St. Petersburg, leather rubles and kopecks circulated in Sitka, Kodiak, the Aleutian Islands, and the Russian possessions in California.
