Jefferson Peace Medal

Over the course of their two-year exploration of western North America, Lewis and Clark handed out several dozen medals to Indian leaders both as tokens of peace and as symbols of the expanding territorial claims of the American nation. These medals came in three sizes—55mm, 75mm, and 105mm—and were handed out according to the perceived prestige of an Indian leader, larger medals going to more important chiefs and smaller medals going to secondary chiefs. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the practice of handing out medals to prospective allies was “an ancient custom from time immemorial.” The medals were “marks of friendship to those who come to see us, or who do us good offices, conciliatory of their good will towards us, and not designed to produce a contrary disposition towards others.”

In 1899, the newly formed Oregon Historical Society acquired one of the small medals Lewis and Clark had handed out nearly a century before. Although in poor shape, the Jefferson peace medal was one of the few surviving material reminders that the Corps of Discovery had passed through the Pacific Northwest. Soon after receiving the rare artifact, the Society adopted the design on the back of the medal as its seal, which is still in use today.

The provenance of the medal in the Society’s collection is unclear. It was given to the Society by Winslow B. Ayer, a prominent Portland businessman who had received it from Major Edwin MacNeill. MacNeill had worked in Oregon as a railroad executive in the 1890s. The limited written evidence suggests that a railroad survey crew found the medal sometime in the 1880s, perhaps on an island near Wallula, Washington, though a conflicting account reports that the medal was found on Idaho’s Nez Perce Reservation. In his archival research published in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Richard Engeman provides evidence that the medal was likely found by grave robbers, perhaps in the grave of Chief Yelépt (Walla Walla). Yelépt was presented with a least one medal when Lewis and Clark met with him and others in October 1805 near present-day Wallula. OHS returned the peace medal to the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation in December 2009, under NAGPRA.

The Indians to whom Lewis and Clark gave the medals had mixed reactions to the gifts. In February 1806, for example, Clark wrote that when they gave a small medal to Tâh-cum, a Chinookan headman at the mouth of the Columbia, he “Seamed much pleased.” A couple months later, the captains gave another medal to an unnamed Chinookan headman further upriver, but he was apparently unimpressed with the gift, which he “soon transfered to his wife.” The Hidatsa of the northern Plains had an even more negative reaction to the medals. Resentful of the strangers’ arrogant behavior, the Hidatsa gave the medals they had received to their enemies hoping that they would bring them bad luck.

Written by Cain Allen, © Oregon Historical Society, 2004.

Further Reading

Engeman, Richard. "The Jefferson Peace Medal: Provenance and the Collections of the Oregon Historical Society." Oregon Historical Quarterly 107.2 (Summer 2006): 290-98.