American Bank Note Company vignettes

The 25c note had a National Bank Note Company ("NBNC") vignette, entitled “Trade” on the face, with a vignette of a shepherdess and her flock (ABNC #92) on the reverse.

The 50c note had portrait of a girl (C-44) on the left and a portrait of Athena (ABNC #4330 on the right, with a vignette of , classified as Cont. #31 (230) on the reverse

The $1 note had an NBNC vignette entitled “La Hija de las Incas”on the left.  Peter Dunham has made the following observations on the imagery of this vignette. The $1 is a low value note so the audience for its ‘message’ will have been the lower classes, rather than the upper classes who used the higher denominations for banking and commercial transactions. The image in the primary position (on the front left, using the entire vertical field, with a partial cartouche and golden halo) has two elements, a seated native-looking woman with a feathered crown and palm frond, an idol under her right hand and fruit and sugarcane at her feet, on a carved stone throne, thus joining indigenous and archaeological themes. This image is much larger than the vignette of Commerce, whilst the bank’s headquarters are relegated to the back of the note.

The woman has an unspecified native air with no specific ethnic features but with a bare torso, long locks and bare feet. As for her status, she wears a generic native looking crown, but again nothing specifically Aztec. However, the details of the throne mark it as Aztec. It has a transverse anthropological figure in low profile, with a feathered headdress, studded ear, nose piercing, carrying a shield or standard with a central concavity, and holding what looks like a sceptre or orb but is in fact a spear thrower (atlatl).

Peter has tracked down the origin of this imageof a throne. It is a tepetlacelli, an Aztec sacred carved stone box (8” high, 12’’ wide and 9” deep, so far smaller than a throne), currently housed in the Museé de Quai Branly in Paris, though in the nineteenth century it was in the Louvre and was described in the Latour Allard collection c. 1830. Though his attributes such as the nose-peg and atlatl the figure has been identified as the powerful Atzec god, Mixcoatl, though this would not have been recognised at the time.

This is not the first time that the image had appeared on notes. It was used for a Banco Mercantil Mexicano 500 pesos note of 1881 that never circulated. There the image is again on the left but the tepetlecalli is obscured by the value. It was also used on foreign notes, a Dominican Republic note of 1886, a Colombia note of 1880 and a Peru note of 1873, but in each case the tepetlecalli was either cropped or covered by other features. So the vignette (with the tepetlecalli) dates back to the National Bank Note Company in 1873, before it was taken over by the American Bank Note Company, and was recorded as 'La hija de los Incas ( the daughter of the Incas), V 49229'. It is not based on a photographic reproduction but likely modelled on previously published illustrations as in Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities of Mexico (1831), Menzel (1857) and Lützow und Lübke (1858).

Peter suggests that the vignette was chosen to personify Mexico and signal her rebirth with the restoration of Mexican government after the French intervention. The orb is the renovated Mexican sun, the palm victory and the fruit prosperity.

The $1 also had another NBNC vignette entitled “Weighting & Watching”, representing Commerce, on the right, with a vignette of the bank’s first head offices (with the addition of a non-existent statue of Liberty atop the building) (C-320) on the reverse.

The $5 had three female allegories, NBNC “Justice” on the left, a female portrait in the centre and an allegory of (ABNC #922) on the right, with NBNC “Weighting & Watching” and a mining scene on the reverse.

The $10 had the NBNC portrait of Athena, entitled “Pallas”, on the right, and the view of the bank’s first building ( C-320) in the centre, with a vignette of a herd of cows and sheep being driven entitled “Cattle on the Road” (ABNC #759) on the reverse.

The $20 had (ABNC #620) on the left, and rustics at a fountain (C-325) in the centre, with a train (C-308) on the reverse

The $50 the bank’s building (C-320( in the centre and Urania, the goddess of astronomy (C-126) on the right, with NBNC Indian, entitled “Great West” on the reverse.

The $100 had two cherubs (part of C-5) on the left. The central vignette is of a seller transporting her goods to the market through the canal of La Viga, Mexico City (c-300), based on a nineteenth century photograph by the Cruces y Campa studio.

Finally there is an NBNC vignette of a cow and calf, entitled “Repose” on the right, with an NBNC vignette, “Young Students” on the reverse.

The $1,000 had an allegory (C-807) on the face and a portrait (C-776) on the reverse.