Peace Medals

The Manifest Destiny gallery shows medal designs showing farming, churches, and other scenes meant to promote assimilation into white American culture.

Peace Medals were powerful symbols of diplomacy and cultural exchange between the United States and Native Nations. First introduced by European powers such as France, Britain, and Spain, these medals were adopted by the U.S. government in the late 18th century as tokens of allegiance, friendship, and negotiated peace. Presidents from George Washington onward issued their own series of Peace Medals, each featuring the president’s likeness on the front and symbolic imagery on the back. The designs were intended to promote harmony and cooperation, but later medals also reveal the shifting policies and increasingly tense relationships between Native peoples and the federal government.

Thomas Jefferson’s Peace Medals, displayed in the Jefferson's Vision gallery, were carried by Lewis and Clark on their famous Corps of Discovery journey. They played a vital role in establishing trust with Native communities. The medals were struck in three sizes and distributed according to tribal leadership status. To many Native leaders, a medal was a treasured possession. It could be an emblem of identity, pride, and sovereignty that was often buried with its owner or passed down for generations.

The Manifest Destiny gallery highlights how Peace Medal imagery shifted in the mid-19th century to reflect U.S. policies of assimilation. The Millard Fillmore medal was the first to replace the clasped hands of friendship that were traditional to previous medals. Instead, the Fillmore medal features imagery of a Native American and a white settler before a backdrop of farmland, with a plow and ax at their feet and the words “LABOR, VIRTUE, HONOR.” James Buchanan’s design went even further, pairing two contrasting scenes: an interior “civilized” image of a Native American plowing before a house and church, and an outer “savage” image of one Native American scalping another. Ironically, while Native communities objected to the violent outer scene, Buchanan himself objected to the inner scene: the farming figure wore a feathered headdress which seemed improper for a Native American who has adopted the "white man's" ways of agriculture. Abraham Lincoln would later reuse this controversial design.

Later designs in the New Frontiers gallery continued this assimilationist theme. Medals issued under Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison emphasized agriculture, schooling, and the adoption of “civilized” lifeways over traditional practices. These designs mirrored the broader U.S. policies of the era, which pushed Tribal Nations from sovereignty and self-determination toward displacement and life on reservations.

Today, Peace Medals remain objects of profound cultural meaning. Some are preserved in museums like ours, while others (like the famous medal once belonging to Seneca leader Red Jacket) have been repatriated to Native Nations. For many Indigenous peoples, the medals symbolize not only past promises and betrayals but also resilience, identity, and the possibility of healing. Interpreting these objects helps us reflect on the complex history of U.S./Native relations and encourages dialogue, education, and reconciliation.