📸 The Faces Behind the Coin: Iron Tail & Black Diamond 🪙🦬🇲🇽
This powerful historical image captures an extraordinary pairing—Iron Tail, a revered Lakota Sioux chief, and Black Diamond, a mighty bison once kept at the Bronx Zoo. Together, these two figures—man and beast—became the living symbols immortalized on one of the most iconic coins in American history: the Indian Head Nickel, minted from 1913 to 1938.
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Iron Tail, known for his dignified presence and role as a performer with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, was not only a warrior but a cultural ambassador. His noble profile, full of strength and solemnity, was chosen by sculptor James Earle Fraser as part of the composite that inspired the Native figure on the coin's obverse (front). He represented a people whose image had been romanticized even as their lands were taken and traditions threatened.
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Black Diamond, meanwhile, was one of the last purebred plains bison in captivity at the time—a towering creature whose likeness graced the reverse (back) of the nickel. His massive form, worn yet proud, became an enduring image of the American frontier and the bison’s near-extinction, caused by decades of overhunting and westward expansion.
The Indian Head Nickel was more than currency—it was a statement of identity, loss, and myth. Though the coin celebrated Native and frontier imagery, it also came during an era of deep injustice for Indigenous peoples and the near-erasure of the bison from North America’s grasslands.
🖼️ In this photograph, we don’t just see the faces behind the coin—we witness a moment where history, symbolism, and survival intersect.