Black Diamond Set

About This Set: According to designer James Earle Fraser, the animal that appears on the Indian Head Nickel's reverse is the American bison Black Diamond and the obverse is a compilation of famous Indian Chiefs. In an interview published in the New York Herald on January 27, 1913, Fraser was quoted as saying that that the animal, which he did not name, was a "typical and shaggy specimen" which he found at the Bronx Zoo. Fraser later wrote that the model "was not a plains buffalo, but none other than Black Diamond, the most contrariest animal in the Bronx Zoo." The identity of the Indians whom Fraser used as models is somewhat uncertain, as Fraser told various and not always consistent stories during the forty years he lived after designing the nickel. In December 1913, he wrote to Mint Director Roberts that "...before the nickel was made, I had done several portraits of Indians, among them Iron Tail (Custer's opponent at Little Big Horn), Chief Two Moons Meridas, and one or two others, and probably got characteristics from those men in the head on the coins, but my purpose was not to make a portrait but a type."