Even as an adult I learned that the company who made these never meant for kids to get a free sucker if you turn this in.
Yet when I was a kid our local convince store did honor this. If you got the Native American with the star I could turn it in for a free one.
I never heard about the Native American bit, but as a kid in the early '90s, we always looked for the star. Rumor around school was that you could win a prize if you found a wrapper with a star, but no one knew how to redeem it.
Well for us it was the star and the native, but the star was always next to the native so some would say to find “look for the indain with the bow”