Many of the medals which are now included in the U.S. Mint's presidential series were made originally for presen. tation to American Indian chiefs and warriors. The Spanish, the French, and the British had presented medals to the Indians, and the British especially had produced large and magnificent silver medals, each bearing the likeness of the reigning monarch on one side and his coat of arms on the other. The British medals were solid silver, impressed in clear relief, and were given to the Indian chiefs as marks of friendship and special recognition. They were highly prized by the Indians, who not only delighted in the decorative aspects of the medals but who also esteemed the honor that was signified by possession of a medal bearing the likeness of the Great White Father.

When the United States replaced the British in dealing with the Indians, the new government found that it was necessary to continue the practice of presenting medals if it hoped to have peaceful relations with the tribes and influence with the chiefs. The Federal Government, then, began the production of Indian peace medals, which be came a settled and extremely important part of American Indian policy.

As early as 1787, Henry Knox, the Secretary of War under the Articles of Confederation, urged Congress to comply with the request of the Indians for "medals, gorgets, wrist and arm bands with the arms of the United States impressed or engraved thereon." Congress was pressed for funds, but Knox noted that the Indians would turn in their British medals, which could be melted down to produce new ones. Thomas Jefferson, as Secretary of State, outlined the policy behind the distribution of medals to the Indians; he spoke of it as "an ancient custom from time immemorial." The medals, he said, "are considered as complimentary things, as marks of friendship to those who come to see us, or who do us good offices, conciliatory of their good will toward us, and not designed to produce a contrary disposition towards others. They confer no power, and seem to have taken their origin in the Furopean practice, of giving medals or other marks of friendship to the negotiators of treaties and other diplo matic characters, or visitors of distinction."

Whatever the origin, the practice took firm hold in the United States. Medals were given to Indian chiefs on im portant occasions, such as the signing of a treaty, a visit of important Indians to the national capital, or a tour of the Indian country by some Federal official. Lewis and Clark on their famous exploratory expedition to the Pacific coast in 1804 06 carried along a large supply of medals, which they handed out with impressive ceremonies

to important chiefs along the way. Indian agents on the frontier distributed the medals to their charges, in recog nition of friendship and peace with the United States. These Indian agents or treaty negotiators used their own discretion in making the presentations, but they were guided by fixed norms. In 1829, in fact, Lewis Cass, Governor of Michigan Territory, and William Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis, drew up a series of regulations for the governing of the Indian Department, including rules for the presentation of medals. What these two experienced Indian agents set down in their proposed regulations represented the practice that they had observed on the frontier:

"In the distribution of medals and flags, the following rules will be observed:

"1. They will be given to influential persons only.

"2. The largest medals will be given to the principal village chiefs, those of the second size will be given to the principal war chiefs, and those of the third size to the less distinguished chiefs and warriors.

"3. They will be presented with proper formalities, and with an appropriate speech, so as to produce a proper impression upon the Indians.

"4. It is not intended that chiefs should be appointed by an officer of the department, but that they should confer these badges of authority upon such as are selected or recognized by the tribe, and as are worthy of them, in the manner heretofore practised.

“5. Whenever a foreign medal is worn, it will be replaced by an American medal, if the Agent should consider the person entitled to a medal."

The Indians expected to receive medals, and it was impossible to conduct Indian affairs without the use of them. Thomas L. McKenney, head of the Office of Indian Affairs, in 1829 wrote to the Secretary of War about the policy of distributing medals. "So important is its continuance esteemed to be," he said, "that without medals, any plan of operations among the Indians, be it what it may, is essentially enfeebled. This comes of the high value which the Indians set upon these tokens of Friendship. They are, besides this indication of the Government Friendship, badges of power to them, and trophies of renown. They will not consent to part from this ancient right, as they esteem it; and according to the value they set upon medals is the importance to the Government in having them to bestow."

The U.S. Government took great pains to produce medals for the Indians of real artistic merit. This cultural concern is surprising in a young nation trying to establish

early American coinage from 1793 up to 1795, such as the copper cent and less obviously the silver dollar, at the United States Mint under the direction of David Rittenhouse. J. R. Snowden, in his biographies of the early directors of the Mint

contained in his Memorials of Washington in the Mint, p. 177, recounts an amusing anecdote in this connection:

The head of Liberty on the dollar of 1795 was designed by Gilbert Stuart at the request of the Director, Henry William de Saussure, Stuart facetiously remarking that “Liberty on the other coins had run mad"-referring to the dishevelled hair on previous coins-"we will bind it up and thus render her a steady matron."

Could this also be a reflection of the reaction against the excesses of the French Revolution?

To return to chronological unfoldment of the Dupré medal. It was completed in April, 1783. Franklin conceived it as a handsome and ingratiating instrument of propaganda, and used it cleverly as such, as may be seen in his letter to Robert Livingston from Passy, April 15, 1783:

I have caused to be struck here the medal which I formerly mentioned to you, the design of which you seemed to approve. I enclose one in silver for the President of Congress and one in copper for yourself. The impression on copper is thought to appear best; and you will soon receive a number for the members.

I have presented one to the King and another to the Queen, both in gold; and one in silver to each of the ministers, as a monumental acknowledgment, which may go down to future ages, of the obligations we are under to this nation. It is mighty well received, and

gives general pleasure. If the Congress approve of it,

as I hope they will, I may add something on the die (for those to be struck hereafter) to shew that it was done by their order, which I could not venture to do till I had the authority for it.

Franklin also lost no time to make the medal more widely known through pamphlets and engravings. There is on record a letter from the Parisian printer, Philip Denis Pierres, to Franklin on May 5, 1783, accompanying the delivery of three hundred copies of a four-page pamphlet or explanation of the medal with parallel French and English texts. A little later there appeared an engraved broadsheet by Bradel containing the entire French text and reproductions of both sides of the medal (fig. 4). Note also the representation of the earlier type of the Franklin coat of arms in the lower margin. In connection with the original French text, there is among the Franklin Papers at the American Philosophical Society (Vol. 44, No. 126) an unsigned letter, in a handwriting very similar to that of the Abbé Morellet, which seems to establish his authorship of the text or at least of the French translation. It reads as follows in English:

Fürst was engaged, also, to make the medals of Presidents John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren. These medals, like those that followed, were ordered by the head of the Indian Office (the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, after that office was created in 1832), who was the official responsible for the distribution of the medals to the chiefs. It was the custom to order 100 of each of the three sizes, although from time to time not all the medals were given out during the administration they represented. Rather than give the Indian chiefs medals of a previous administration, with the portrait of a Great White Father who was no longer in office, medals left over at the end of a President's tenure were regularly melted down to help provide the silver needed for the new medals.

As the series of medals progressed, they began to be considered as "Presidential Medals," quite apart from their original purpose as Indian peace medals. Franklin Peale, who became Chief Coiner at the mint in 1839, believed that the mint should be the depository of dies of all national medals, and he urged that medals missing from the presidential series (for example, one for John Adams) be supplied. He was supported by Robert M. Patterson, Director of the Mint, who in 1841 suggested making a medal of President William Henry Harrison, whose term had been too short to permit of making Indian medals bearing his portrait. Nothing came of the proposals at the time, however.

When it came time to prepare medals for President John Tyler, technical advances had taken some of the diffi culties out of medal making. The invention in France of a "portrait lathe," a mechanical means of cutting dies did away with the need for the special engraver. A medallion of the President could now be modelled in wax, with full possibilities for making corrections until a suitable likeness was obtained. From this, by use of an intermedi. ate plaster cast, a casting in fine iron was made of the medallion. With the use of the steam-powered lathe, reduced facsimilies were turned out in steel, and the lettering was then stamped in.

The new machine at the mint was used for making the dies of the President John Tyler Indian peace medal from a medallion modeled by Ferdinand Pettrich, the Presi dent James K. Polk medal from a model made by the artist John Gadsby Chapman, and the President Zachary Taylor medal from a medallion sculptured by Henry Kirke Brown. The portrait lathe was adjusted to make the various sizes of the dies from the same model, so that all three sizes of these medals are identical and do not show the variations that occurred in the earlier medals, when the dies were cut individually by hand,

The next medals were again made from dies cut by engravers, who signed contracts with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to engrave the dies and strike the medals

for presentation to the Indians. The two young New York artists who were engaged were Salathiel Ellis and Joseph Willson. Ellis engraved the dies for the portraits of Presidents Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln, while Willson made the reverses for the medals. The old peace and friendship design which had been used for so many years on the reverse of the medals was now laid aside, and scenes depicting the adoption of civilization were used instead. One such design. was used on the reverse of the Fillmore and Pierce medals, another on the Buchanan and Lincoln Indian peace medals. For these medals only the large and medium size were made; the small size was discontinued.

Copies of the medals designed for presentation to the Indians from Jefferson to Buchanan are issued by the mint in bronze as part of the presidential series, uniformly now in the 3-inch size, although in past times the smaller sizes as well were reproduced. With President Buchanan, however, the presidential series begins to diverge from the Indian peace medal series. The Buchanan medal uses the reverse from the Fillmore and Pierce medals, instead of the one designed for it by Willson, and the Lincoln medal in the mint presidential series is an inaugural medal, not the one designed for presentation to the Indian chiefs.

The Indian peace medal for President Andrew Johnson's administration was engraved by Anthony Paquet. He had begun to make the medal for presentation to Indians during Lincoln's second administration and changed the obverse to show the bust of Johnson after Lincoln's assassination. The reverse was a completely new design, one suggested by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to show the change from Indian culture to white civilization. This medal became part of the presidential

series.

Although the presidential series for presidents following Andrew Johnson are not those made for the Indians, special peace medals continued to be produced for each administration up to and including that of President Benjamin Harrison. That for President Ulysses S. Grant was made by Paquet and was struck in only one size, 2 inches in diameter. Those for Presidents Rutherford B. Haves, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Grover Cleveland were oval medals measuring 3 by 214 inches and on the reverse showed an Indian and a white man in a rural scene. They were designed by the engravers in the mint, Charles E. Barber and George T. Morgan. For Benjamin Harrison, both an oval and a round Indian peace medal were made. Only small numbers of these later medals were struck in silver, for the Indian tribes were no longer treated as sovereign nations, and the importance of the chiefs in dealings with the U.S. Government had declined. Bronze copies of all these Indian medals are available in the mint's miscellaneous series.