Oneida woman who helped save Washington
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EDGEWOOD, N.M. (AP) — The reverse of the U.S. Mint’s 2026 Sacagawea $1 coin will feature Polly Cooper, a woman from the Oneida tribe known for helping George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
The coin’s release this week coincides with celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It recognizes Cooper’s role in a 1778 relief expedition from the Oneida Territory in what is now central New York to the rebel troops’ winter camp at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where they faced a food and supply crisis.
“Polly Cooper symbolizes the courage found not only on the battlefield but also in compassion and the willingness to help others, which is just a part of Oneida culture and hospitality,” said Ray Halbritter, representative of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York.
Cooper and a delegation of 47 Oneida warriors carried bushels of white corn on the long, cold journey to feed the hungry soldiers. According to Oneida oral tradition, Cooper intervened to prevent Washington’s hungry soldiers from eating the raw white corn, which would have made them sick. She taught them how to make husked corn soup.
The coin shows Cooper offering a basket of corn to Washington, a design that Halbritter said his community worked closely with the United States Mint on. The other side depicts Sacagawea, a young Native American girl who was a crucial guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition.
It is the latest release of the Native American $1 Coin Program, established by a 2007 congressional act to commemorate Native Americans and their tribes.
Previous coins have featured Osage prima ballerina Maria Tallchief; Jim Thorpe of Sac and News Nation, who was an Olympic champion and professional multi-sport athlete; and landmark historical events such as the signing of the 1778 treaty with the Delaware, the first of more than 400 treaties negotiated between the United States and Native nations, although not all were ratified.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said the program highlights those who helped establish a country based on freedom and self-determination.
Meanwhile, some coin designs previously authorized in advance of the 250th anniversary have been scrapped by President Donald Trump’s administration, including coins that would have featured suffragettes who pushed to give women the right to vote and civil rights icon Ruby Bridges.
The U.S. Treasury Department, which oversees the U.S. Mint, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Oneida Indian Nation of New York calls itself “America’s first ally.” He broke with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy by allying with the Continental Army “at great sacrifice,” Halbritter said. The alliance made the Oneida a target for retaliation by the British and other Haudenosaunee nations. By the end of the Revolution, up to a third of the tribe’s population had died.
“In the long run, the Oneida are no better off than the tribes that allied themselves with the British,” said Colin Calloway, a professor at Dartmouth College and an expert on indigenous history during the Revolutionary era.
Calloway said the desire to separate Native people from their land was a force that “catapulted” Americans into the revolution, and that millions of acres (hectares) of Oneida territory were confiscated by New York state and private land speculators in the decades after the war. This eventually led to the displacement of many Oneida to reservations in Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada.
Like popular historical narratives about Sacagawea and the first encounters between the Wampanoag people and the Pilgrims, Calloway said Cooper’s story could be co-opted to signify a “reciprocal, benign relationship” that never really existed between American settlers and indigenous peoples.
Still, the coin commemorates what the Oneidas consider their pivotal role in the nation’s fight for independence.
“The entire country benefits from Polly Cooper’s conduct because we won the conflict and the United States was born,” Halbritter said.
via News