Sacagawea was the young Shoshone Indian woman who acted as a navigator, diplomat and translator for Lewis and Clark on their historic expedition of the western United States. Only a teenager when she assumed this herculean task, she successfully guided the adventurers from the Northern Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean and back. Without a doubt, the famous Lewis and Clark expedition would have perished without her skilled assistance. In 2000, Sacagawea coins began being minted in the United States, in accordance with the “$1 Coin Act” of 1997. The General Accounting Office (GAO) was eager for the successful implementation of the dollar coin, after finding that, “the $1 dollar coin’s advantage would be $522.2 million per year.”

However, the GAO urgently stressed the fact that certain specific conditions were crucial to the successful implementation of the $1 coin:

“In order for the dollar coin to be successful, the $1 note would have to be gradually eliminated; a reasonable transition period would be needed; the $1 coin would have to be well designed and readily distinguished from other coins; an adequate public awareness campaign would be needed; and sustained administrative and congressional support would be necessary to withstand an initial negative public reaction to eliminating the $1 note.”

Pressured by the energetic lobbying efforts of the as-silly-as-it sounds “Save the Greenback” organization, Congress ignored the sage advice of the GAO and added the following provision to the Act,

“Nothing in this Act or the amendments made by this Act shall be construed to evidence any intention to eliminate or to limit the printing or circulation of United States currency in the $1 denomination.”

This little provision set the stage for the Sacagawea coin’s eventual failure; the continued presence of the $1 bill frustrated all efforts by policy-makers to fully implement the coin into widespread circulation. After a general circulation of only two years (2000-2001), production of the coins for general use was halted due to low demand and the fact that inventories of the coins were crowding Government vaults. Interestingly, the Sacagawea dollar has found a second life in Ecuador, which fortuitously dollarized to the U.S. currency in 2000. Both the dollar note and coin are commonly used there, to the understandable delight and puzzlement of U.S. tourists visiting the country.

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