The U.S. Mint is releasing this week a new 2026 Sacagawea $1 coin design that honors Polly Cooper, a woman from the Oneida tribe who is remembered for helping George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The reverse side depicts Cooper offering a basket of corn to Washington, part of a Native American $1 coin program that marks individual Native Americans and tribes.
The Mint’s announcement places the coin’s debut alongside national celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In the account described around the design, Cooper’s intervention comes during a 1778 relief expedition from Oneida territory in what is now central New York to the Continental Army’s winter encampment in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, when troops faced a food and supply crisis.
Ray Halbritter, a representative of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, said Cooper “symbolizes courage that is not just found on the battlefield but in compassion and willingness to help others, which is just a part of Oneida culture and hospitality.” Halbritter also said the community worked closely with the U.S. Mint on the coin’s depiction.
The story shared in connection with the coin is that Cooper and a delegation of 47 Oneida warriors carried bushels of white corn on the long trek to feed starving soldiers. According to Oneida oral tradition, Cooper prevented Washington’s hungry troops from eating the corn raw because it would have made them sick, and she taught them how to prepare hulled corn soup.
Halbritter said the coin’s image of Cooper offering corn to Washington reflects that effort. The reverse side design is paired with a second image: the other side of the coin continues to depict Sacagawea, a young Native American woman described as a crucial guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition.
The release is the latest entry under the Native American $1 Coin Program, established by a 2007 act of Congress. Previous coins under the program have featured Osage ballerina Maria Tallchief, Jim Thorpe of the Sac and Fox Nation, and other commemorations that include historical events such as the signing of a 1778 treaty with the Delaware.
U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, said the program highlights Native people who helped establish a country “grounded in freedom and self-determination.” While the coin release proceeds, the AP story said some designs previously authorized in anticipation of the 250th anniversary have been scrapped by President Donald Trump’s administration, including designs that would have featured suffragettes who pushed for women’s right to vote and civil rights icon Ruby Bridges.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury, which oversees the U.S. Mint, did not respond to a request for comment, according to the AP report. The Oneida Indian Nation of New York also describes itself as “America’s first ally,” saying it broke with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to ally with the Continental Army “at great sacrifice,” and that the Oneida became targets for retaliation by the British and other Haudenosaunee nations.
By the end of the Revolution, the Oneida Indian Nation says as much as a third of the tribe’s population had perished. Colin Calloway, a Dartmouth College professor described as an expert on Indigenous history during the Revolutionary era, said he has warned that stories like Cooper’s can be co-opted to suggest a “benign, reciprocal relationship” between settlers and Indigenous people that, he said, never truly existed.
Still, Halbritter said the coin commemorates what Oneidas consider a pivotal role in America’s struggle for independence. “The whole country reaps the benefit of Polly Cooper’s conduct because we won the conflict and the United States was born,” Halbritter said.