Sacajawea Wins
In a cultural victory for feminists, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has decided to put Sacajawea on the new $1 coin expected to enter circulation in 2000. By doing so, he rejects the pleas of Rep. Michael Castle (R., Del.), who sponsored the original legislation authorizing the coin and requiring it to include the State of Liberty's image.

"For too long, the women of this country have had to sit back and allow depictions of real men on our coinage but, except for the Susan B. Anthony dollar, never a real woman," Patricia McGuire, a member of the panel that recommended Sacajawea, told the Associated Press.

Now Sacajawea, the Indian girl who aided Lewis and Clark on their journey to the Pacific, will join the privileged ranks of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR (but not Lewis and Clark) as one of the few Americans whose accomplishments warrant placement on a coin.

Feminists objected to Castle's proposal that the Statue of Liberty go on the coin because they wanted a "flesh and blood" woman to replace Susan B. Anthony. They succeeded because Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R., N.C.), and Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D., Ill.) teamed up in the Banking Committee last fall to yank Lady Liberty off Castle's coin. In a compromise with the House, Rubin was given the authority to determine the coin's design. He commissioned a panel, comprised mainly of liberal Democrats, which in turn recommended Sacajawea.

One problem coin designers will face is that nobody knows what Sacajawea looked like. No contemporary portrait of her exists anywhere. Artists probably will base her image on how they think a teenage girl in the Shoshone tribe would have appeared at the start of the 19th century.

Rep. Castle recently introduced legislation specifically intended to put the Statue of Liberty back on the coin, but it's a long shot.

Future historians will perhaps report that the two most important accomplishments of Congress this session were renaming Washington National Airport in honor of Ronald Reagan and putting Sacajawea on the $1 coin. We would have preferred that they name the airport after Sacajawea and put Reagan on the coin.