2024-P Zitkala-Ša American Women Quarter : A Collector’s Guide

By Charles Morgan and Hubert Walker for CoinWeek Notes ….
 

The Zitkála-Šá American Women Quarter was released on October 21, 2024, the 15th coin in the series and the fifth coin in the 20-coin American Women Quarters program’s third year. Authorized by Public Law 116-330 (PDF link), the series began in 2022 and continues one more year through 2025, five new reverse designs released each year to commemorate the achievements and legacies of historically and culturally significant women. It follows the successful 50 State Quarters and America the Beautiful National Park Quarters programs and the Washington Crossing the Delaware one-year reverse type of 2021.

At the time of this writing, the Zitkála-Šá Quarter has only begun to reach banks for distribution to local businesses or for collectors to buy unopened rolls. Sales for rolls and bags directly from the Mint will open on October 28. The table below shows the available circulation-strike product options and their initial retail prices.

The 100-coin bags each have a product limit of 8,250 and a household order limit of 10 per on the first day of sales. The two-roll set of Zitkala-Ša Quarter coins from the Philadelphia and Denver mints (80 coins total) has a product limit of 6,000 and the three-roll set of business-strike coins from Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco (120 coins total) has a product limit of 16,625 – most of which has already been accounted for via the Mint’s subscription program. Both roll sets have a limit of three per household on the first day.

The Life and Legacy of Zitkála-Šá

Zitkála-Šá, whose name means “Red Bird” in Lakota, was also known by the English name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. As a writer, she helped introduce the stories of her people to the English-speaking public. As a musician and composer, she wrote the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera, in 1913. As a civil rights advocate, Zitkála-Šá fought for the suffrage and United States citizenship of all Native Americans.

Zitkála-Šá was born on the South Dakota Yankton reservation on February 22, 1876, and grew up there until she left for White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker boarding school. While she enjoyed learning and playing the violin, she nonetheless keenly felt the oppression of her culture during the three years she attended the religious school. After a few years back at home, where she now began to feel alienated, Zitkála-Šá purposefully returned to White’s to complete her education, learning enough music to serve as a replacement music teacher before she graduated in 1895.

She then went to Earlham College, also in Indiana, on a scholarship but was unable to graduate. Nevertheless, she was able to further her musical studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and taught music to Native children at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1901, Zitkála-Šá returned to the Yankton reservation to find potential students for the Carlisle School and was shocked to see the toll that the 1887 Dawes Act had taken on her people. Refusing to accept the assimilationist policies of her school, she was fired from her position and found her way to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, where she worked as a clerk.

Soon after, she would return to her home reservation and collect the stories that would be published as Old Indian Legends (1901). Zitkála-Šá also married Raymond Talephause Bonnin in 1902, whence she received her Anglicized name. Her writing career began in earnest during the first decade of the 20th century, with regular articles in Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly. One of her most famous statements against the forced assimilation of the time was the piece “Why I Am a Pagan”, published in Atlantic Monthly in 1902.

After Raymond’s service in World War I, the two moved to Washington, D.C., where she served as the national secretary for the Society of American Indians (SAI). While she had always advocated for the protection of Native culture and rights, her writing took an even more political turn in the nation’s capital. Zitkála-Šá is known for co-writing Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery in 1923, which investigated the fraud and murder of Native Americans that followed the discovery of oil on their lands in Oklahoma in the first quarter of the 20th century. The 2023 film Killers of the Flower Moon dramatized similar events.

In 1910, Zitkála-Šá and Utah music professor William Hanson began composing The Sun Dance Opera. She wrote the songs and libretto and Hanson created the music based on traditional music she performed. It should be noted that the Sun Dance as a Native practice was prohibited by the Federal Government at this time.

Continuing to work for Native American and women’s rights for the rest of her life, Zitkála-Šá died on January 26, 1938.

2024-P Zitkala-Ša Quarter Design

Obverse:

The American Women Quarters feature the effigy of George Washington designed by sculptor Laura Gardin Fraser in 1931. Washington’s head faces to the right. LIBERTY wraps around the top of the design, with the bottom of the letters BER slightly obstructed by the top of the head. The motto IN GOD WE TRUST appears in thin tall letters to the left of Washington’s head. The date and mintmark appear on the lower right side of the design, tucked under Washington’s chin. Gardin Fraser’s initials LGF are found in the truncation of Washington’s neck.

Reverse:

Zitkála-Šá stands on the right, dressed in a traditional Yankton Sioux manner. She holds an open book in her left hand. Behind her is the rising sun with extended rays; while this motif is somewhat stylized, it is not radically different from similar depictions on classic U.S. coins. A cardinal, symbolic of Zitkála-Šá name (“Red Bird”), flies in front of the sun, and a row of diamond shapes on their sides marks the horizon. The legend UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the motto E PLURIBUS UNUM run clockwise along the rim at the top. In the field to the left of Zitkala-Ša and beneath the sunrise is the inscription AUTHOR ACTIVIST COMPOSER in three lines. The denomination 25 CENTS is below that, and the name ZITKALA-ŠA runs counterclockwise along the rim at the bottom of the quarter. Designer Don Everhart’s cursive initials DE are between the denomination and her name, at the corner of the truncation of her portrait. Medallic Artist Renata Gordon engraved Everhart’s design; her initials RE are between ZITKALA-ŠA and E PLURIBUS UNUM on the bottom right of the rim.

Below is a video from the United States Mint discussing the 2024-P American Women Zitkala-Ša Quarter:

Edge:

The edge of the 2024-P Zitkala-Ša Quarter is reeded with 119 reeds.

Designers

Laura Gardin Fraser was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1889. After receiving an education at the Columbia University and later at the Art Students League of New York, where she studied under her future husband James Earle Fraser. Laura Gardin Fraser died in 1966. In 2022, the portrait of George Washington that she submitted for the Washington Quarter replaced John Flanagan’s long-running portrait (submitted in the same competition) for the duration of the American Women Quarters Program.

Don Everhart joined the United States Mint in 2004 after a long and successful career as a sculptor and designer of medals. He retired in 2017 and now participates in the Mint’s Artistic Infusion Program (AIP) (View Designer’s Profile).

A graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Mint Medallic Artist Renata Gordon created several designs for the First Spouse and America the Beautiful Quarters programs (View Designer’s Profile).

2024-P Zitkála-Šá American Women Quarter Coin Specifications

* * *