NOVEMBER 27
2009•Block Island Quarter
2009•2010 Native American $1 Coin Design Announced
The U.S. Mint Unveils the 2010 Native American $1 Coin
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On November 27, 2009, the United States Mint unveiled the reverse design for the 2010 Native American $1 Coin, introducing one of the most historically layered designs in the modern dollar series. Its theme was “Government—The Great Tree of Peace,” and its imagery reached centuries into the history of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy.
The reverse showed the Hiawatha Belt surrounding five arrows bound together, a symbol of the five original nations of the Confederacy. The design connected the modern United States dollar with an Indigenous political tradition built around alliance, council, diplomacy, and unity.
The coin was part of a program that had only recently transformed the familiar Sacagawea dollar. Beginning in 2009, federal law required a changing annual reverse honoring Native Americans and their contributions to the development and history of the United States while retaining Sacagawea on the obverse.
The November 27 unveiling therefore revealed much more than a new annual coin design. It showed how the Mint intended to use a circulating denomination as a continuing historical series.
From the Sacagawea Dollar to the Native American $1 Coin
The golden-colored Sacagawea dollar debuted in 2000. Its obverse, designed by Glenna Goodacre, depicts Sacagawea carrying her infant son, Jean Baptiste. Sacagawea’s role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition made her one of the most recognizable Native American figures represented on United States coinage.
For the coin’s first several years, the reverse remained the same: Thomas D. Rogers Sr.’s soaring eagle surrounded by 17 stars. Congress changed that approach with the Native American $1 Coin Act. Beginning in 2009, the Sacagawea obverse would remain, but the reverse would change annually to recognize important Native American contributions.
The result turned a single coin type into an ongoing historical program.
A New Reverse Every Year
The Native American $1 Coin Act required annual reverse designs featuring images celebrating important contributions made by Indian tribes and individual Native Americans to the development and history of the United States.
That broad mandate allowed the Mint to move far beyond portraits of famous individuals. Potential subjects could include agriculture, government, military service, exploration, technology, trade, diplomacy, writing systems, engineering, and other contributions extending across centuries.
The first changing reverse, issued in 2009, honored Native American agriculture through the “Three Sisters” of corn, beans, and squash. For 2010, the program shifted from agriculture to government.
The 2010 theme was officially titled “Government—The Great Tree of Peace.” It focused on the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, historically composed of five nations: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. The Tuscarora later joined the Confederacy.
The political tradition of the Confederacy is associated with the Great Law of Peace, which established principles for maintaining unity among distinct nations through council and agreed procedures.
Rather than attempting to compress that history into a portrait or literal scene, the coin used established symbols of unity.
The Hiawatha Belt
The most immediately distinctive element on the reverse is the Hiawatha Belt.
Wampum belts could serve important diplomatic, ceremonial, and historical functions among Indigenous peoples of the Northeast. Their patterns were not simply decorative; they could embody agreements, relationships, and collective memory.
The Hiawatha Belt symbolizes the unity of the original five nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Its pattern contains interconnected forms representing those nations and their union. By placing the belt prominently on a United States coin, the Mint made a Native political symbol central to the design rather than treating it as a small decorative reference.
The reverse also depicts five arrows bound together. Individually, an arrow can be broken more easily. Bound together, the arrows become stronger. The image therefore communicates unity through a simple visual metaphor.
The five arrows represent the five original nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. This symbolism reinforces the message of the Hiawatha Belt. Different nations retained their identities while joining in a larger political union.
The official theme invokes another important Haudenosaunee symbol: the Great Tree of Peace. In Haudenosaunee tradition, the Tree of Peace represents the establishment and continuation of peaceful union. The white pine is associated with the Confederacy and the principles of the Great Law of Peace.
The tree metaphor suggests roots, growth, shelter, continuity, and branches extending outward. Although the reverse’s principal graphic elements are the Hiawatha Belt and bound arrows, the Great Tree of Peace gives the overall theme its title and historical framework.
Thomas Cleveland Designs the Reverse
The 2010 reverse was designed by Thomas Cleveland of the United States Mint’s Artistic Infusion Program and sculpted by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Charles L. Vickers.
The finished reverse includes the required inscriptions UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and $1. Its relatively uncluttered composition allows the central symbols to dominate, an important quality on a small coin where excessive detail can make a design difficult to read at normal size.
While the reverse changed, Glenna Goodacre’s Sacagawea portrait remained on the obverse. The portrait shows Sacagawea looking back over her shoulder while carrying Jean Baptiste. The design was intentionally different from the traditional profile portraits common on American coinage.
Keeping Sacagawea on the obverse gave the Native American $1 Coin program continuity. The 2010 issue therefore combined two Native American historical narratives on a single coin: Sacagawea and the Lewis and Clark era on one side, and the Haudenosaunee political tradition on the other.
The Native American dollar also differs from most traditional United States coins because several inscriptions appear on the edge. The date, mint mark, and E PLURIBUS UNUM were placed on the edge, while IN GOD WE TRUST remained on the obverse.
This freed space on the reverse for the annually changing historical design. Edge lettering had already become familiar to collectors through the Presidential $1 Coin Program, which began in 2007.
A series about Native American contributions could easily have focused only on material culture, famous individuals, or military history. The 2010 coin took a broader approach by recognizing political organization and governance.
That choice matters because Indigenous nations possessed complex systems of law, diplomacy, leadership, and intergovernmental relations long before the establishment of the United States. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is one of the best-known examples.
By selecting “Government—The Great Tree of Peace,” the Mint presented Native American history as part of the history of political thought and institution-building in North America.
A Coin Can Open a Historical Question
One of the strengths of the Native American $1 Coin program is that its designs can prompt questions rather than merely provide portraits.
A person seeing the 2010 reverse might ask why five arrows are tied together, what the geometric belt represents, or what the Great Tree of Peace means. Those questions lead beyond the coin to Haudenosaunee history.
In that sense, the dollar functions as a miniature historical marker. Its surface cannot explain an entire political tradition, but it can introduce symbols that encourage further study.
The Native American $1 Coin program also existed within a difficult practical environment. Americans had repeatedly resisted replacing the one-dollar bill with a dollar coin.
The Susan B. Anthony dollar struggled after its 1979 introduction, and the Sacagawea dollar never achieved widespread everyday circulation despite its distinctive golden color. Presidential dollars beginning in 2007 generated strong collector interest but likewise failed to displace the paper dollar.
That meant Native American dollars often functioned more as collectibles and specialized circulating coins than as money encountered constantly in ordinary change. Nevertheless, the annual reverse program gave the denomination a continuing historical purpose even when general circulation remained limited.
The 2010 Coin Joins a Larger Historical Series
Viewed by itself, the Great Tree of Peace dollar tells one story. Viewed as part of the complete Native American $1 Coin series, it becomes one chapter in a much broader narrative.
Later designs honored subjects ranging from treaties and trade routes to Native military service, engineering, language, and individual achievement. The changing reverse format allowed the Mint to move across regions, nations, centuries, and fields of contribution.
That makes the series fundamentally different from a conventional coin design that remains unchanged for decades.
Native American coin designs require more than artistic approval. Federal law provides for consultation in developing annual themes and designs, including consultation with the National Congress of American Indians and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.
The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee and Commission of Fine Arts also participate in the federal coin-design review process.
This consultation is particularly important when coins depict culturally significant symbols. The design must work artistically at coin size while also treating its subject with historical seriousness.
The November 27, 2009 unveiling was the public introduction of the design, not the day the 2010 dollars first entered collectors’ hands. That distinction is important in a day-by-day coin-history calendar.
Design unveilings are moments when an upcoming coin becomes visually real. Before the unveiling, collectors may know the theme and legislative requirements. Afterward, they can see exactly how artists and Mint officials translated that history into metal.
For the Great Tree of Peace dollar, November 27 was the moment the Hiawatha Belt and five bound arrows became the public face of the 2010 Native American $1 Coin.
Why the Design Remains Memorable
Many modern coin programs rely on architecture, landscapes, portraits, or literal scenes. The 2010 Native American dollar is different. Its design is symbolic and requires interpretation.
The belt represents political union. The arrows represent strength through unity. The Great Tree of Peace frames the theme. Sacagawea connects the annual reverse to the continuing identity of the series.
That combination gives the coin unusual conceptual depth for a small circulating denomination. It also makes the design useful beyond numismatics as an entry point into discussions of Native governance, diplomacy, symbolism, and the persistence of Indigenous political institutions.
On November 27, 2009, the United States Mint unveiled a dollar design that asked Americans to look at Native American history through the lens of government.
The 2010 Native American $1 Coin did not simply portray a famous leader. Instead, it used the Hiawatha Belt and five bound arrows to represent the unity of the original nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy under the theme “Government—The Great Tree of Peace.”
The coin was part of a larger transformation of the Sacagawea dollar into an annual historical series honoring Native American contributions to the United States.
Its design demonstrated how much history can be compressed into a few carefully chosen symbols. A belt, five arrows, a familiar Sacagawea portrait, and a one-dollar denomination became a small metallic invitation to learn about a political tradition whose roots extend far deeper into North American history than the United States itself.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
2009 — 2010 Native American $1 Coin Design Announced — The U.S. Mint announced the 2010 Native American $1 Coin reverse design, themed Government—The Great Tree of Peace.