NOVEMBER 26
2021•2022 Native American Dollar Honoring Ely Parker Unveiled
2008•Van Buren Liberty First Spouse Gold Release Reported
The U.S. Mint Unveils the 2022 Native American Dollar Honoring Ely S. Parker
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On November 26, 2021, the United States Mint officially announced the reverse design for the 2022 Native American $1 Coin, honoring Ely Samuel Parker of the Tonawanda Seneca. Parker was an engineer, tribal diplomat, U.S. Army officer, military secretary to General Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War, and later the first Native American to serve as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
The coin's reverse depicts Parker in Army uniform beside a quill pen and book, with a likeness of his signature. The imagery was chosen to emphasize an extraordinary part of his life: Parker was a gifted writer, translator, and communicator, and at Appomattox Court House in April 1865 he helped prepare the formal surrender documents associated with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender to Grant.
The announcement also carried a remarkable historical echo. When Congress created the Native American $1 Coin Program in 2007, the law itself specifically listed Ely S. Parker among the Native Americans who could someday be depicted. Fourteen years later, the Mint announced that Parker would indeed appear on the 2022 coin.
A Coin Announced Before It Was Released
The date of November 26 requires an important distinction.
The 2022 Ely Parker dollar was not released to collectors on November 26, 2021. The Mint announced its design that day.
Products containing the finished coin went on sale later, beginning February 9, 2022.
That makes November 26 a design-history milestone rather than a sales or circulation date.
For a coin-history calendar, such distinctions matter. A design can be authorized, selected, unveiled, first struck, placed on sale, or released into circulation on entirely different dates.
The Native American $1 Coin Program grew out of the Sacagawea dollar introduced in 2000.
The original Sacagawea dollar featured Glenna Goodacre's portrait of Sacagawea carrying her infant son, Jean Baptiste, on the obverse and an eagle reverse.
Congress later transformed the concept into a continuing series honoring Native American contributions to the development and history of the United States.
The Native American $1 Coin Act became Public Law 110-82 in 2007.
Beginning in 2009, the familiar Sacagawea obverse was retained while a new reverse theme appeared each year.
Congress Built History Into the Program
The law directed the annual reverses to celebrate important contributions made by Native American tribes and individual Native Americans.
It was intentionally broad.
Subjects could involve agriculture, government, diplomacy, exploration, military service, language, science, civil rights, and other areas of national development.
The result was not simply a portrait series.
Some reverses honor individuals. Others depict events, ideas, technologies, treaties, or collective contributions.
One of the most interesting details in the 2022 coin's history is that Parker's appearance was foreshadowed from the program's creation.
The Native American $1 Coin Act listed examples of individuals and events that might be depicted.
Among them were the creation of the Cherokee written language, the Iroquois Confederacy, Wampanoag leader Massasoit, the Pueblo Revolt, athlete Jim Thorpe, Native American code talkers—and Ely S. Parker.
Congress described Parker in connection with his service on Grant's staff and his later leadership of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The law did not require the Mint to use him in a particular year, but it established him as an appropriate subject from the beginning.
Ely Samuel Parker was born Ha-sa-no-an-da into the Tonawanda Seneca in western New York.
His life unfolded across Native diplomacy, engineering, military service, federal administration, and the turbulent politics of nineteenth-century America.
As a young man he became highly proficient in English and served as a translator and scribe for Seneca leaders.
Those skills placed him at the intersection of two political and legal worlds.
He could communicate Native concerns through the language and documentary systems used by federal and state authorities.
The 2022 coin explicitly includes Parker's birth name, “HA-SA-NO-AN-DA.”
That inscription is important because the design does not present him solely through his English name or federal career.
It identifies him as a Native man whose public life was rooted in the Tonawanda Seneca community.
The reverse also includes “TONAWANDA SENECA,” making tribal identity an integral part of the coin rather than background information left to accompanying literature.
A Translator and Scribe
Parker's command of English became one of his defining skills.
He assisted tribal leaders in communications and negotiations at a time when written treaties, legal documents, and government correspondence could determine the fate of Native lands.
The ability to understand and produce precise English documents was therefore far more than clerical talent.
It was political power.
The quill and book on the coin symbolize this lifelong connection to communication.
Parker's early public work was tied to the Tonawanda Seneca struggle to retain their reservation in New York.
Nineteenth-century federal and state policies repeatedly placed Native lands under pressure.
Treaties and land transactions could have enormous consequences for communities whose political systems did not operate according to the same assumptions as American governments and speculators.
Parker's literacy and diplomatic ability made him valuable in the effort to defend Seneca interests.
Parker also pursued engineering.
That career placed him in another field undergoing rapid expansion as the United States built canals, public works, and transportation infrastructure.
His technical work eventually helped bring him into contact with Ulysses S. Grant before the Civil War.
That relationship would later become one of the most consequential of Parker's life.
When the Civil War began, Parker sought military service.
His path into the Union Army was not immediate, but he eventually received a commission in 1863.
His engineering skills and relationship with Grant helped place him in important staff roles.
Parker ultimately served as Grant's military secretary.
That position brought him to the headquarters of the Union general whose armies were closing in on the Confederacy.
A military secretary dealt with the written machinery of command.
Orders, reports, correspondence, records, and official documents had to be prepared accurately and efficiently.
Parker's background made him exceptionally well suited to such work.
The skills he had used as a translator and scribe for Seneca leaders now operated at the highest level of the Union war effort.
This connection between writing and history is central to the Mint's 2022 design.
Appomattox Court House
On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
The surrender did not instantly end every Confederate military operation, but it became the defining symbolic conclusion of the Civil War.
Parker was present.
As Grant's military secretary, he participated in preparing the formal documentation of the surrender.
The U.S. Mint emphasizes that Parker rendered the formal surrender documents in his own hand.
The 2022 reverse does not depict a battle.
It depicts Parker in uniform with writing instruments and his signature.
That choice makes the design unusually thoughtful.
Parker's military contribution is represented through communication rather than combat.
The quill becomes the central historical symbol.
It connects his work for the Seneca, his Civil War service, and his reputation for graceful penmanship.
A frequently repeated account of the Appomattox meeting describes Lee initially mistaking Parker for a Black officer and then remarking that he was glad to see “one real American” present when he learned Parker was Seneca.
Parker reportedly responded that all present were Americans.
The exchange has become one of the best-known anecdotes associated with him.
Whatever its later symbolic weight, Parker's presence at Appomattox itself is firmly established and historically significant.
Grant's relationship with Parker continued after the war.
When Grant became president, he appointed Parker Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
Parker served from 1869 to 1871.
He was the first Native American to hold the office.
The appointment placed a Native leader inside the federal bureaucracy responsible for administering U.S. Indian policy—an institution whose history was deeply entangled with dispossession, treaty disputes, reservations, and federal control.
Parker's tenure cannot be reduced to a simple triumphal story.
Federal Indian policy in the nineteenth century was often destructive to Native sovereignty and communities.
Serving as Commissioner meant operating within that system.
Parker attempted reforms and brought a unique perspective to the office, but he also faced political opposition and controversy.
His career therefore reflects the complexity of Native participation in federal institutions during a period of aggressive American expansion.
Designing the 2022 Reverse
The reverse announced on November 26, 2021 was designed by Paul C. Balan of the United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program.
It was sculpted by U.S. Mint Chief Engraver Joseph Menna.
Parker appears in Army uniform.
A quill pen and book accompany him.
The design also incorporates a likeness of Parker's signature.
These elements emphasize communication as the thread connecting his many roles.
The reverse carries the inscriptions “TONAWANDA SENECA,” “HA-SA-NO-AN-DA,” “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” and “$1.”
The inscriptions perform several jobs simultaneously.
They identify Parker's people and birth name, establish the issuing nation, and state the denomination.
Because the program honors Native contributions within United States history, placing “TONAWANDA SENECA” prominently on federal money has particular significance.
The obverse continued Glenna Goodacre's Sacagawea design.
Sacagawea is shown carrying her infant son, Jean Baptiste.
“LIBERTY” and “IN GOD WE TRUST” appear on the obverse.
The date, mintmark, and “E PLURIBUS UNUM” are incused on the edge.
This arrangement allows the reverse to change annually without displacing the visual identity that began with the Sacagawea dollar in 2000.
Moving some inscriptions to the edge gives the two faces more room for artwork.
Edge lettering had returned to modern U.S. dollar coinage with the Presidential $1 Coin Program.
On Native American dollars, the year, mintmark, and “E PLURIBUS UNUM” appear on the edge.
For collectors, this creates another surface to inspect and another feature distinguishing modern dollar coins from many earlier U.S. issues.
The 2022 Native American dollar uses the familiar golden-colored manganese-brass clad composition associated with the Sacagawea and later small-dollar programs.
The Mint lists the composition as 88.5 percent copper, 6 percent zinc, 3.5 percent manganese, and 2 percent nickel.
The coin weighs 8.10 grams and measures 26.49 millimeters in diameter.
Its golden appearance distinguishes it visually from the quarter even though the two denominations are relatively close in diameter.
A Dollar Coin That Rarely Circulates
The Native American $1 series is legally circulating coinage, but dollar coins have struggled to achieve broad everyday use in the United States.
Americans have generally preferred the one-dollar note.
That has pushed many modern dollar issues toward the collector market rather than cash registers and pocket change.
The historical themes nevertheless continue to make the denomination an important platform for public art and education.
By the time Parker's design was announced, the program had already explored a wide range of Native contributions.
Earlier reverses honored Three Sisters agriculture, the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace, the Wampanoag treaty with Plymouth colonists, seventeenth-century trade routes, the Delaware Treaty of 1778, Native hospitality to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Mohawk ironworkers, Code Talkers, Sequoyah, Jim Thorpe, Native Americans in the space program, Elizabeth Peratrovich, and Native military service.
Parker fit naturally into that sequence while adding a story centered on diplomacy, writing, military administration, and federal leadership.
Many commemorative designs rely on instantly recognizable objects: a ship, a building, a weapon, a monument, or a famous portrait.
The Parker dollar asks the viewer to think about a less visible form of power.
Writing changes history.
Treaties, military orders, surrender terms, petitions, and government policy exist through documents.
Parker spent much of his life navigating precisely that world.
The pen on the reverse is therefore not decorative. It is biographical.
Including Parker's signature adds an unusually personal element.
A portrait shows how an artist interprets a person's appearance.
A signature is something the person physically produced.
Its inclusion links the modern coin to the documentary record of Parker's life.
It also reinforces the theme of penmanship and communication chosen by the designers.
The long path to the Parker dollar is especially satisfying from a legislative perspective.
Congress mentioned him as a potential subject when establishing the program in 2007.
The Mint did not rush to use him.
Instead, annual themes unfolded across more than a decade.
Then, in 2021, the government announced that Parker would become the 2022 subject.
A name embedded in the original statute had finally become a national coin design.
February 9, 2022: The Coin Goes on Sale
The design announcement was followed by the actual product release the next year.
The U.S. Mint began accepting orders for 2022 Native American $1 products on February 9, 2022.
Options included Philadelphia and Denver rolls, bags, and boxes.
The coin also appeared in annual collector sets, including proof and uncirculated products.
That later sales date should not be confused with November 26, 2021, when the design itself was officially announced.
The Mint identifies Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco in connection with 2022 Native American dollar production.
Philadelphia and Denver supplied the primary uncirculated coin products.
San Francisco produced collector versions such as proofs.
For modern collectors, mintmark and finish can therefore create multiple distinct versions of the same Parker design.
A circulating denomination cannot tell Parker's full story.
There is no room on a 26.49-millimeter coin to explain Tonawanda land disputes, Civil War staff work, Appomattox, Grant's presidency, federal Indian policy, engineering, or Parker's later life.
Instead, the coin acts as an invitation.
A name, portrait, tribal identification, quill, book, and signature provide clues.
The curious viewer must go beyond the coin to understand why those symbols matter.
November 26, 2021 marks the moment the United States Mint publicly revealed how Ely S. Parker would be represented on American money.
The choice connected the modern Native American $1 Coin Program to the Civil War, the Tonawanda Seneca, Ulysses S. Grant, Appomattox, Native diplomacy, and the history of federal Indian administration.
It also fulfilled an idea present from the program's beginning: Parker had been specifically named in the 2007 authorizing law as one of the Native Americans whose contribution might someday be honored.
The finished design did more than place his portrait on a dollar. It emphasized the skill that connected so many chapters of his life—the written word.
With Parker in uniform, a quill and book, his signature, “TONAWANDA SENECA,” and his birth name “HA-SA-NO-AN-DA,” the reverse turned a small golden dollar into a compact biography.
And on November 26, 2021, that biography officially became part of United States coinage.
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