Mint engraver James B. Longacre designed the Indian Head cent to replace the Flying Eagle cent, which had struck up poorly. After a run of patterns dated 1858, the new design went into production in 1859. Longacre kept the obverse and reverse high points from lining up, and the coin struck far better.
The head is Liberty, not a portrait of a Native American. Longacre added a feathered headdress to a classical profile, and in his own letters he traced it to the Venus Accroupie, a Crouching Venus statue then on show in Philadelphia. The well-known story that his young daughter Sarah posed for it is doubtful, because the same adult head appears in his sketchbooks from years earlier.
The reverse changed after one year. The 1859 cent has a laurel wreath with no shield. From 1860 to the end of the series in 1909, the reverse shows an oak wreath with a small shield at the top.
The Civil War brought the biggest change. People hoarded the copper-nickel cents, and private copper tokens worth far less than a cent filled the gap. Congress took the hint, and the Act of April 22, 1864 replaced copper-nickel with a lighter bronze cent like those tokens. More than 13 million copper-nickel cents dated 1864 were struck before the switch, and nearly 40 million bronze ones after it. Late that year Longacre's initial, L, was added to the ribbon, and it stayed there through 1909 (search).
A glut of cents and an 1871 law letting the Treasury redeem excess cents kept mintages low from 1869 into the 1870s. Mid-1886 the obverse hub was revised, giving two types for that date. A 1906 law let the branch mints strike minor coins, and San Francisco made its first cents in November 1908. Its 1909 run stopped early in the year, and the Lincoln cent replaced the design that summer.
