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One-Dollar Coin's New Look Will Feature Indian Farming

Corn, beans and squash — the “three sisters” of Native American agricultural tradition — will appear on the nation’s one-dollar coins next year, in a design to be announced Friday by the United States Mint.

By the dictates of an act that Congress passed last year, the reverse side of the gold-colored Sacagawea dollars will bear a new design each year starting in 2009, as part of a thematic series showing Native American contributions to the history and development of the United States.

The first coin shows a young Indian woman planting seeds in a field of cornstalks, bean vines and squash. Adopting Indian farming methods proved crucial to European settlers’ surviving their early years in America. The coin will enter circulation in January alongside the continuing series of presidential one-dollar coins, which began in 2007 (the ninth coin in that series, with a portrait of William Henry Harrison, will be released in February).
Read entire article at NYT