Native Life: Peace Medals

As we saw in yesterday's post, Black Partridge attached great significance to the peace medal given him by General Anthony Wayne during the negotiations for the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.  He refused to join Tecumseh, an unpopular move with many in his tribe, because he wore the medal.  Later, when forced to lead his warriors against Captain Nathan Heald's garrison at Dearborn, he returned the medal to Heald with an ominous warning of what was about to happen.

Exchanging medallions or peace medals, as they were informally known, was nothing new by 1812.  European traders and representatives of England, France and other colonial powers had presented tribal leaders with medals signifying initial meetings, treaties or other important occasions.  They were given

as commemorative coins, with no hole at the top.  Natives took the coins, perforated them to accommodate a leather string, ribbon, or other decorative means to wear the medals around the neck.  They thus became status symbols for chiefs and elite warriors, much like gorgets. 

Called Indian War medallions by the U.S. Government, the first designs were of an oval shape, made of two thin sheets of silver etched with a design and held together by a silver band.  They came in three sizes, small, medium and large.  As a portrait of Red Jacket shows, the large size could be of several inches.  Washington's medal initially had a bust profile of him on the front, with a picture of himself and an Indian clasping hands on the reverse side.  Later, the reverse showed a crossed tomahawk and pipe above two clasped hands.  The Washington peace medal given to Black Partridge was likely of the later round shape and of the medium or smaller variety, with the clasped hands design.  By the time of Thomas Jefferson, the medals were struck like coins instead of etched.  Lewis and Clark carried a plentiful supply of these medals, which they presented to various chiefs and leaders along their route.  Medals made by James Madison's Administration, which encompassed the War of 1812, are also well-known to collectors because of the quantity still in existence.

Government medals were made at the United States Mint in Philadelphia.  Trading companies also got into the act, creating medals showing the President of the Company on one side with various symbols of peace decorating the reverse side.  These coins soon flooded the Native trade market and debased the value of the coins the government was issuing.  At the conclusion of Benjamin Harrison's Administration in 1893, the government stopped making peace medals.  They are collector's items today and the Mint often creates bronze commemorative replicas.