 One contemporary Russian account from a battle with the Tlingits in 1792 states "bullets were useless against the Tlingit armour", however this would've more likely be attributed to the inaccuracy of contemporary Russian smoothbore muskets than the body armour and the Chinese cash coins sewn into the Tlingit armour.Other than for military purposes the Tlingit used Chinese cash coins on ceremonial robes.The square hole in the middle of cash coins served to allow for them to be strung together in strings of 1000 cash coins and valued at 1 tael of silver (but variants of regional standards as low as 500 cash coins per string also existed), 1000 coins strung together were referred to as a "chuàn" (串) or "diào" (吊) and were accepted by traders and merchants per string because counting the individual coins would cost too much time.