The Indian Head Cent: a goddess in a war bonnet

In 1859 the United States Mint had a problem with its smallest coin. The cent that came before this one — the Flying Eagle cent — looked handsome but struck badly. The eagle on one face and the wreath on the other sat back-to-back in the dies, fighting each other for metal, so the high points never came up sharp. The Mint needed a design with lower relief — a flatter, gentler image that would fill a die cleanly. (Relief is just how far the design rises off the coin's surface; high relief looks dramatic but is murder to strike.)

The man who solved it was James Barton Longacre (1794–1869), the Mint's Chief Engraver. He kept the wreath idea but replaced the eagle with the head of Liberty — and crowned her with a feathered war bonnet. The result, struck from 1859, would outlast the man who made it by forty years and become one of the most collected coins America ever produced.

It was also born into the worst monetary chaos the young country had seen. Two years into the Civil War, frightened citizens hoarded every coin with real metal value, and small change vanished from circulation. Into that vacuum poured privately made bronze tokens — some carrying as little as a fifth of a cent's worth of metal — and people spent them happily. That fact did not go unnoticed at the Mint, and it would reshape the cent itself.

The obverse — the heads side — shows Liberty in profile, wearing a Native American headdress with the word LIBERTY on its band. Around her run thirteen stars and the date. It is a strange and striking pairing: a classical idea of Liberty wearing the regalia of the people the nation was, at that very moment, pushing off the land.

A beloved legend says Longacre modeled her face on his young daughter Sarah, who supposedly tried on a visiting chief's headdress in the Mint. It is a lovely story, and it is almost certainly false. Sarah was a grown woman of about thirty by 1858, not a child, and the Mint Director publicly denied any such family connection at the time. Longacre himself said the face came from a Roman statue of Venus — a Crouching Venus on loan from the Vatican and displayed in Philadelphia. The features are classical, not Native American; the headdress was decoration, not portraiture.

The reverse changed early. The very first year, 1859, carries a slim laurel wreath. From 1860 onward Longacre swapped it for a fuller oak wreath tied with a ribbon and topped by a small shield — the version most people picture. In 1860 he also rounded off the sharp point of Liberty's neck (the "pointed bust" of 1859 versus the rounded bust after). Both sides — obverse and reverse — are Longacre's work.

The single most important year in the series is the 1877. Philadelphia normally struck cents by the tens of millions, but a sour economy that year held the run to just 852,500 — the lowest of any Philadelphia date in the set. For generations the 1877 has been the coin that "completes" an Indian Head collection, and the one most often faked. Examine it carefully.

The other two famous dates both wear an S mint mark — the mark that tells you a coin was struck in San Francisco, tucked on the reverse below the wreath. San Francisco struck cents in only two years of the whole series. The 1908-S (1,115,000) was the first cent ever made there; the 1909-S (309,000) was the last Indian Head cent ever made, the lowest mintage in the series, and the reason the set ends on a high note of difficulty. After 1909, Lincoln took the penny.

Then there is the 1864 "L." When the Mint switched to softer bronze partway through 1864 (more on that below), Longacre sharpened his dies and slipped his initial — a tiny L — onto the ribbon in Liberty's hair. Coins exist both with and without it. The "L" varieties run from affordable to legendary: a proof 1864-L (a proof is a specially struck presentation coin, mirror-sharp, never meant for change) is one of the great rarities of the denomination, with roughly twenty known. One brought $141,000 at auction.

For the variety hunter, the series rewards a loupe. The 1873 "Doubled LIBERTY" — where the headband legend is dramatically doubled — is nicknamed the "King of Indians" and survives in only a few dozen pieces. The 1888/7 overdate (an 1888 die punched over an earlier 1887) and the 1869 "overdate" are prized rarities in their own right.

Why are top grades so scarce? This was a working coin. It paid for streetcar rides, newspapers, and penny candy for fifty years, and most surviving pieces are worn smooth. The soft copper bruises easily, and original red color (collectors grade copper by how much of its mint-fresh shine remains) fades to brown over a century. A common date in worn condition costs a couple of dollars; the same date with full original color and a sharp strike can be worth hundreds.