A tribute to the Native Americans

First struck in 1854 the $3 gold was designed by James B. Longacre, chief engraver for the U.S Mint. The previous design of Liberty wearing a coronet has been replaced with Liberty now sporting a plumed headdress as a tribute to the first Native Americans. Longacre faced criticism from those opposed to the departure from the traditional Greek/Roman beauty and felt so strongly about the design that he decided to set his thoughts down on paper in a letter to the U.S Mint Director, James Ross Snowden in August 1858. He wrote "feathered tiara is a characteristic of the primitiveness of our hemisphere, as the turban is of the Asiatic. "Nor is there anything in its decorative character, repulsive to the association of Liberty, with the intelligent American: to us it is more appropriate than the Phrygian cap; the emblem rather of the emancipated slave, than of the independent freeman, of those who are able to say, 'we are never in bondage to any man.' I regard then this emblem of America, as a proper and well defined portion of our memorial of Liberty, our liberty, American Liberty: why not use it?”

Longacre’s defense of his design in 1858 was apparently sufficient enough to secure to designs future for a further 31 years until the denomination was abolished in 1889.