Indian Presentation Flags

Several vexillologists have speculated that Lewis and Clark might have carried some “Indian presentation flags” with seventeen stripes, plus the Great Seal in the canton with seventeen stars either surrounding the eagle or inside the Glory.^[1]Heinz Tschachler, “Sacred Emblems of Attachment: The Lewis & Clark Expedition, American Nationalism, and the Colonization of the West,” Raven: A Journal of Vexillology (Trenton, New … Continue reading If the explorers did carry any flags featuring the Great Seal, they could have used them as illustrations from which to spin a rich story of the origins and ideals of the United States of America. The image of an eagle would certainly have held an immediate appeal for Plains Indians. However, before the expedition got very far up the Missouri the captains might have been embarrassed to discover that the natives were not impressed, since the bald eagle, which was the only species known to inhabitants of the Eastern Seaboard, was not the bird that Indians west of the Mississippi regarded most highly. Their totem was the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos, “eagle of gold”). The depiction of the bald eagle might have conveyed the wrong message, and word would have gotten around. But the known records of the expedition contain no mention of any such reactions from the Indians, either in the journalists’ words or in the transcripts of Indian remarks to the captains. Nor is there to be found any hint of a flag containing the bald eagle, nor any references to the pictographic stories inherent in the Great Seal.

In their speeches to Indian leaders Lewis and Clark repeatedly referred to the “Seventeen great Nations of America” that were symbolized by the flags they presented. Indians certainly could count, and there is no evidence that any of the recipients complained of a discrepancy between the number of “nations” and the number of stars. Therefore, we may reasonably surmise that Lewis and Clark carried 17-star/17-stripe flags, but that the principal elements of the Great Seal were not to be seen on any of them.

No one knows how many flags the Corps of Discovery carried, or what their dimensions were. It is clear, however, that they had at least one large company banner—judging from their thirteen references to “our flag” or “the large flag”—which they hoisted in lieu of a garrison flag over their major camps and council sites. At each of the Indian councils the captains typically used sails from one or more of their boats to erect a bower or awning, and a wind-screen, and flew their large flag nearby.

When a journalist informs us that the large flag was “hoisted on a pole” or “on a high flag Staff,” we may wonder how high the pole was, for that might roughly suggest the dimensions of the flag: The higher pole the larger the flag, or vice versa. One of the setting poles they carried to assist in propelling the barge, the pirogues and the canoes, would have made the handiest flagpole. According to Lewis, those poles were seldom more than 25 feet long, which would have allowed a flag with hoist and fly dimensions totaling about 20 feet—say, 8 by 12 feet, maximum.^[3]By act of Congress on 7 July 1976, Chapter 10 of the United States Code, Section 176 (b), reads: “The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or … Continue reading Two ties at the hoist would have made a halyard unnecessary.

At the captains’ council with five Yankton Sioux headmen in late August 1804, one of the five chiefs of the Yankton Sioux headmen from the scorching late-August sun. But one of the chiefs, Arcawecharchi, or Half Man, assumed that this was the flag the white men were giving his people. With the assistance of one of the interpreters, Clark transcribed the chief’s expression of thanks: “I am glad my Grand father^[4]Half Man’s reference to the “Grand father” may have been his actual words or the interpreter’s choice, or Clark’s. In any case, the Dakotas proved they knew what the … Continue reading . . . has given us a flag large and handsom the Shade of which we can Sit under.” If Half Man was speaking literally, he leaves us wondering how many men his “we” included. Finally, on 16 March 1806, a week before leaving Fort Clatsop, Lewis described their plight regarding trade goods: A few of handfuls of small items, six blue robes and one red one, a few “old cloaths” trimmed with ribbon, and “five robes made of our large flag.”^[5]In those days it was perfectly acceptable to cut up a flag. The first law to specify guidelines for more respectful treatment of the American flag was passed in 1917, but without any penalties for … Continue reading If each of those robes was 6 by 5, or 30 square feet, their large flag would have to have been 10 by 15 feet, or 150 square feet, in order to produce five scarves or shawls somewhat shy of the proportions of a robe. Could their large flag have been the seventeen-stripe banner of “6 yards hoist by 12 yards fly” (18 by 36 feet) that the Philadelphia seamstress Ann Hoskins spec’d in an undated memo believed to belong to the 1802-1812 period? Perhaps so, but it would have required a flagstaff reaching at least 54 feet into the air, and securing the pole in the ground to withstand the force of gusty prairie winds on such a large flag would have been a challenging, time-consuming task.^[6]Letters Received, Coxe-Irvine (circa 1797-1842), Record Group 92, Box 47, National Archives. Cited in Grace Rogers Cooper, Thirteen-Star Flags; Keys to Identification (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian … Continue reading

The Corps also carried an unknown number of smaller flags of at least three different sizes, including the “19 small flaggs” that Lewis sent from St. Louis to Clark at Camp Dubois early in May 1804. They may have been manufactured from the $33-worth of “flagg stuf” that Lewis secured from governor of Indiana Territory, William Harrison, at Vincennes on the Wabash River.^[7]Jackson, Letters, 1:177. Those nineteen flags may have comprised the $33-worth of “flagg stuf” referred to in the memorandum dated 25 February 1804. Moulton, Journals, 2:182. According to … Continue reading The captains distributed them to recognized Indian leaders and to chiefs whom they chose or “made,” as tokens of peace and personal friendship, and to represent a bond of union with neighboring tribes and the United States of America. By the time the expedition left Fort Mandan, their inventory of Indian gifts and other supplies on hand at Fort Mandan showed only three of the “2d Sise,” and three of the “3d Sise.” If the order of sizes used in descriptions of their peace medals applies here as well, the “3d Sise” flags would have been the smallest, but they must have had more than three in reserve. Journal entries indicate that they gave out at least twenty-seven American flags, not including the small ones the captains carried during their respective explorations of the Yellowstone and the upper Marias Rivers in July 1806, in case they encountered the Crows and the Blackfeet.^[8]See also Flag Presentations for a summary of flags presented to Indians.

They also spent a few small flags on food and other necessities on their homeward journey. For example, by the time he got back among the Nez Perce in May 1806, he decided he needed a better mount than he had been riding, so he persuaded Chief Wearkoomt (Flint Necklace; or, “the bighorn Cheif”) to trade horses with him, and paid a premium of a small flag, with which the Indian was “much gratifyed.”