WILLIAMSBURG, Va. – Costumed interpreter Jeffrey Villines presented a replica of a rare 1780 Indian Peace Medal to John Standing Deer Jr., cultural ambassador of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, who accepted the medal May 12 on behalf the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. At far left, is Erik Goldstein, Colonial Williamsburg’s curator of mechanical arts and numismatics. At far right, is Buck Woodard, manager of Colonial Williamsburg’s American Indian Initiative.
Early this year, the foundation acquired the original medal produced by order of Gov. Thomas Jefferson in 1780. The medal is currently exhibited in the introductory gallery of the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. Commemorating an unidentified Revolutionary-era alliance between Native tribes and the Commonwealth, the “Happy While United” peace medal was cast in bronze by Robert Scot – later chief engraver at the U.S. Mint – in Williamsburg or Richmond.
Established in 1926, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is the nonprofit educational institution that preserves and operates the restored 18th-century Revolutionary capital of Virginia as a town-sized living history museum, telling the stories of the nation’s founding men and women. Within the restored and reconstructed buildings, historic interpreters, attired as colonial men and women from slaves to shopkeepers to soldiers, relate stories of colonial Virginia society and culture.
Williamsburg is located in Virginia’s Tidewater region, 20 minutes from Newport News, within an hour’s drive of Richmond and Norfolk, and 150 miles south of Washington, D.C., off Interstate 64. For more information about Colonial Williamsburg, call (800) HISTORY or visit Colonial Williamsburg’s Web site.