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135

Lr. 1191 — Indian Peace Medal - Treaty No. 6. 1876. Silver.

Currency:CAD Category:Coins & Paper Money Start Price:10,500.00 CAD Estimated At:35,000.00 - 40,000.00 CAD
Lr. 1191 — Indian Peace Medal - Treaty No. 6. 1876. Silver.
SOLD
58,000.00CAD+ buyer's premium (11,600.00)
This item SOLD at 2022 Apr 28 @ 19:44UTC-4 : AST/EDT

Buyer’s Premiums will be added on all items as per the Terms & Conditions of the sale. Invoices will be emailed out after all sessions of the Toronto Coin Expo Spring Sale have concluded.

McLachlan-477, Breton-29, Jamieson-38. 76.4mm. 253.3g. Plain edge. Signed J.S. & A.B. WYON. Original clasp and hanger at 12 o’clock. Treaty medals were originally presented to Chiefs as tokens of appreciation following the signing of federal agreements. In theory, the participating First Nations traded vast tracts of land to the Crown in exchange for financial compensation, goods, and protection from outside settlers.
The Numbered Treaty medals were designed by J.S. and A.B. Wyon and show, on one side, a colonist and Indigenous Chief shaking hands with at the sun rising in the background. A high-relief portrait of Queen Victoria appears on the other side. One hundred and fifty medals were ordered in 1875, and we suspect they were first issued about mid-1875, with signatories to the earlier numbered treaties receiving their medals well after those treaties had been signed.
Treaty 6 was signed between the federal government and the Cree, Assiniboine and Ojibwa First Nations on 23 August 1876 at Fort Carlton, Saskatchewan, and on 9 September 1876 at Fort Pitt, Saskatchewan. The treaty boundaries extended across the central portions of what are now Alberta and Saskatchewan, covering 121,000 square miles (313,388.5 square kilometres). Among the so-called signing gifts were “twelve dollars for each man, woman, and child … in extinguishment” of all prior claims to the land, a “suitable flag and medal” for each Chief “in recognition of the closing of the treaty” and “also as soon as convenient, one horse, harness and wagon.”
All awarded Numbered Treaty medals are extremely rare. Treaty 6 medals are no different. The most recent auction appearance of an example (ex: Max Brail Collection) realized $41,125 in lesser condition than this piece. Other auction appearances include lot 949 in the W.W.C. Wilson Collection, Part I (Wayte Raymond, 11/1925); Thomas Elder’s April 1935 sale, lot 1900; Sotheby’s sale of the Robert W. Reford Collection in October 1968, lot 122; Sotheby’s October 1969 sale, lot 151 and its May 1970 sale, lot 221; Jeffrey Hoare Auction’s Torex Sale #6 in February 1988, lot 32 (to Max Brail), and Stack’s May 2007 sale of the John J. Ford, Jr. Collection, Part XVIII, lot 23. Those listings include an unknown number of duplications. Two examples formerly held in institutional collections have been returned to their communities. The Glenbow Museum in Calgary repatriated its Treaty 6 medal (purchased from the Sotheby’s May 1970 sale) to the Mistawasis community in 2014, and the Manitoba Museum repatriated its Treaty 6 medal, which was first presented to Chief Red Pheasant (Pihew Ka-mihkosit) on August 28,1876 at Fort Carlton, to the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in June 2019.
This remarkable survivor features flashy fields beneath splashes of mottled toning that includes shades of blue, green, gold, and violet. The rims are clean and the devices exhibit little more than a trace of friction.
Ex: Purchased from Harlan Berk.
From the Michael Joffre Collection of Canadian Historical Medals.
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