Flag of Oklahoma

How to read it

The flag law is section 91 of Title 25 of the Oklahoma Statutes, enacted in 1925 and amended in 1941 and 2006. It replaced the flag of Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 25 of the Third Legislature with “a sky blue field” bearing the circular rawhide shield of an American Indian warrior, painted with six crosses, its lower half fringed with seven pendant eagle feathers, a calumet or peace pipe across it crossed at right angles by an olive branch, and the word “Oklahoma” in white letters underneath. The 2006 amendment fixes the standard form: an Osage warrior’s shield of amber buckskin on a field of French blue; six small gold-brown crosses, matching the thongs that lace the shield’s edge; white feathers tipped with gold brown; a pipe with a ruby red bowl and tassel and a flesh-coloured stem; and an olive branch of Dartmouth green, each with a Pantone number. It gives no proportions. Statehood Day, 16 November, is also Oklahoma State Flag Day.

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The shield and its crosses

The flag’s shield is modelled on a bison-hide war shield of the 1890s that belonged to Chief Black Dog II and is now in the Oklahoma Historical Society’s collections. The Society says the six crosses painted on one side of that shield are stars, showing the night sky, and that its other side stands for the sun. Fluke studied Oklahoma history and Indian artifacts and consulted Joseph B. Thoburn, the Society’s secretary, before making the Osage shield the centre of her design. The law fixes the crosses’ shape too: the upright bar a quarter longer than the crossbar.

How the flag came about

No state flag was designed when Oklahoma joined the Union on 16 November 1907. The first one, adopted in 1911, was red with the number 46 in a white star. In 1925 the Oklahoma Daughters of the American Revolution held a statewide contest for a new design, and Fluke’s entry won; the state adopted it on 2 April 1925. The word OKLAHOMA was added beneath the shield in 1941, a resolution of 1988 (HCR 1110) defined the colours, and they went into the statute in 2006.