HIAWATHA-MINNEHAHA BANKNOTE VIGNETTE

 
Figure 1 - Obverse of $2.00 bill printed by the Bank of Hartford County, 1861

Paper money vignettes often pose identification problems. While some actually have the title of the artwork engraved alongside the vignette, this is not always the case. Sometimes a vignette was chosen and the description omitted or misplaced, because it just was not important to that particular bank. The bank note above is striking, especially with the large green counter overprint. Unfortunately, it does not appear clearly in this black and white publication. The right-hand vignette depicting a bucolic scene around a waterfall is what this article is about; identification of the statuary on the left is a project for another day.

Identifying the subjects on the face of state-sanctioned or U.S. obsolete currency can seem like an endless pursuit. These paper bills, sanctioned by states but ignored by the Federal government, were at times worth less than a Continentaland have become a collecting bonanza for astute collectors with good historical knowledge. Sixty years ago there was little market for these bills. Many of their vignettes went unidentified and many counterfeit and spurious examples were left unattributed. Two pioneers in the field, Dr. John Muscalus and David C. Wismer, were able to identify some of the vignettes and published them in their writings. Even today, some vignettes elude identification. Banknote companies and engravers must have known why they were asked to engrave certain scenes or subjects, and in some cases titled the vignettes so they could be identified in the future.

However, the people and events depicted in the vignettes were mostly not identified in writing on the note(s) itself/themselves. The owners of these bills, if interested at all, would have needed a good store of knowledge to figure out what he or she was actually looking at. How could the average Joe know that he was looking at an engraving of Iranistan, the Persian-themed Mansion built in Bridgeport, Conn. by P.T. Barnum, or the engraving of a historic and brutal murder in upstate New York of Jane McCrea? It wasn't easy and these vignettes take time to research and attribute.

The banknote at the head of this article features an intricately engraved waterfall scene as one of the two main vignettes. This attractive note was issued by the Bank of Hartford County in Hartford, Connecticut. One quickly notices the two Native American figures, with the male figure standing in front of the waterfall, and the female seated on the ground next to him. This is not as common a vignette as often appears on most notes issued by this bank. As hard as I tried, I couldn't attribute the rustic vignette to an area of Hartford or even that general area of Connecticut. Identifying it became a challenge that took well over a year for me to solve.

 
Figure 2 - 2$ Bank of Minnesota note printed in 1857. Printed courtesy of Heritage Auctions

 

Figure 3 - Close up image of the Falls that appears on the bank note

Figure 4 - Close up image of the modern day falls in Regional Park

 

Figure 5 - Banknote printer's proof of the falls

Figure 6 - Statue of the two Native Amercians

Without being able to locate descriptions or titles of the vignettes, neither the statue nor the waterfall could be identified initially. However, while browsing through the R. Shawn Hewett book A History and Catalog of Minnesota Obsolete Bank Notes & Scrip (2006), which features plenty of pictures of notes from Minnesota, I found a match. This vignette had also been used on $2 notes of the Bank of Minnesota in the city of Saint Paul (please see illustration above). Looking at the images of both the Hartford and St. Paul notes, I realized that the engraver in this case, American Bank Note Co. of New York, must have held title to the vignette die and was able to offer its use to any bank that wanted it.

So, what waterfall was I looking at? Were those two Native Americans important to the engraved theme? Yes, they and the waterfall were very important in identifying the scene in the vignette! The waterfall's name became evident as the previously named Minnehaha Falls and then the identity of the two Native Americans came to light.

Portland, Maine's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an established and well-read American poet of the mid-1800s. In 1855, only a few years before these banks issued their notes, he completed an epic poem about a fictitious Ojibwa warrior named Hiawatha and his female Dakota companion and love, Minnehaha. This poem, The Song of Hiawatha, quickly became an American classic. These two banks evidently thought the vignette showing the two Native Americans and the waterfall would be a good subject to place on their notes. The name Minnehaha when translated from the Native tongue means, waterfall or dancing waters. The place shown in the vignette of the notes is the falls at the not-yet-named Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. The engraver precisely portrayed the falls and surroundings which can be seen when comparing the different images above, leaving little if any chance of ambiguity as to the identification of the visual content.

Jacob Fjelde, a Norwegian sculptor then living in Minnesota, created a plaster sculpture depicting Hiawatha and Minnehaha for the Minnesota Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. A bronze version of Fjelde's work was placed in Minnehaha Park above the falls in 1912.

I was later surprised to note that the vignette (Minnehaha Falls) used on these notes had never before been attributed or identified on paper money or in any of the paper money references as I am now doing in this issue of NENA News. There is no mention of it in either the Hewett book or its predecessor, Minnesota Obsolete Notes and Scrip by R.H.Rockholt, 1973. While I have not been able to find corroborating proof of the two Native subjects' identity in the engraved scene in the U.S. Obsolete Bank Notes book, it certainly seems reasonable to claim that these vignettes show the fictitious characters, Hiawatha and Minnehaha of Longfellow's poem posing at the base of Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis. The area around the falls and along the creek is now a preserve in the city of Minneapolis named Minnehaha Regional Park. The fact that the park, the poem, and the vignettes are intertwined makes for a beautiful American story. Longfellow never actually visited this site, but if he knew his poem was the cause of his two subjects being included in this banknote vignette I'm sure he would have been pleased.

John adds:

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