Category: In the News

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Worthington Daily Globe | That Old Flag

There is not a school child in southwest Minnesota who can draw the Minnesota flag, freehand.

We had better amend that.  There are notably gifted children living in southwest Minnesota.  But there are few children in Minnesota, few adults in Minnesota, few people anywhere who could make a drawing of the state flag.

It’s a complex thing.  The Minnesota flag incorporates the state seal, which includes a depiction of a waterfall, a farmer plowing, an Indian riding on a horse, a musket, and a sunset.  The state seal is inside a floral wreath which incorporates the dates 1819 (the year Fort Snelling was established), 1858 (the year Minnesota was admitted to the Union), and 1893 (the year the flag was adopted).  In addition to this “Minnesota” is neatly lettered into the design.  There are four stars near the top, with a larger star signifying the North Star.  Then there are four stars over here, four stars over there, eight stars in two clusters near the bottom.

On and on.

Minnesota’s flag seems to be everything a flag should not be.  It is something so detailed almost no one can remember all its symbols and symbolism.  (It is similar to several other state flags in this regard.)  Reproductions are necessarily expensive.  And the flag is something few children could describe, much less draw.  It is not and it never was a truly satisfactory flag.

This becomes preface, needless to say, for an endorsement of the proposal […] to dump the old state flag and to adopt a new design […] with a band of green at the bottom representing Minnesota’s farms and forests, a band of white above this to represent snow, and then a band of blue: Minnesota, land of sky-blue water or sky-tinted water.  There also is a single gold star, the symbol of the Star of the North […]

Rep. Gil Gutknecht of Rochester notes not much thought went into Minnesota’s original flag, which was hastily designed for an exhibition at Chicago.  The first flag was a two-sided flag, with a white background on one side and the blue background on the other.  The flag was redesigned in 1957, making both sides blue, but the seal is backward when viewed from the back.

There really is not much to commend the present flag.  Let’s all talk about this matter and come up with something new and improved.

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Star Tribune | Minnesota Should Have a Flag Worth Waving

From a distance of 100 yards how many Minnesotans can distinguish their state flag from, say, Nebraska’s?  From 100 feet?  Anyone want to try for 10 feet?

It’s not that Minnesota has the most prosaic flag of all 50 states.  It’s that it shares the distinction with more than a dozen others, each content mainly to sew a copy of its state seal in the middle of a blue sheet and then run the thing up a flagpole to see if anyone salutes, or even notices.

Blue Seals on a Bed-sheet
Can you tell which is Minnesota’s?

That’s a shame.  The official Minnesota flag needn’t compete in splendor with Old Glory.  But when displayed with those of other states — as at the recent Inaugural Day Parade or with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in the rotunda of Washington’s National Archives building, it ought to stand out enough to catch the eye, and carry enough symbolism to clutch at a loyal Minnesotan’s heart.

Instead, the visitor is more likely to see and admire the dazzling hues of Maryland’s quartered arms, California’s bear flag, Georgia’s Confederate battle flag, Texas’ proud lone star or Iowa’s eagle-emblazoned tricolor.  Only the determined eye will pick out Minnesota’s flag from among all the other drab, dark-blue look-alikes.

Minnesota used to be somewhat more imaginative.  Until 1957, the flag was blue on one side, white on the other.  But flags of such design were expensive.  So for the last 32 years, the Minnesota flag has been anonymously blue on both sides.

It’s time for a change.  With the approach of the original state flag’s 1993 centennial, a legislative committee has agreed to seek a new design — something more distinctive and recognizable.  One committee member dismissed the proposal as a waste of time.  But that’s the kind of Philistine thinking that gave Minnesota its present banner.  The redesign of the state flag is a good idea that should be treated seriously by legislators, citizens, and flag designers.  Minnesotans deserve a state flag they can wave with pride.

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Minnesota History Magazine | Minnesota Almanac

By Jeffrey A. Hess
Minnesota History Magazine

When Minnesota became a territory in 1849, its lawmakers picked a committee to design a territorial seal.  The committee chose a design that showed an Indian family offering a peace pipe to a white settler.  But the territorial legislature did not approve this design.  Many of the lawmakers believed that there would never be peace in Minnesota until all the Indians had moved westward out of the territory.  Since the legislators could not agree on a design, they left the decision to Governor Alexander Ramsey and Henry H. Sibley, Minnesota’s delegate to Congress.  Sibley suggested using a picture drawn by Captain Seth Eastman, an artist and commanding officer at Fort Snelling.  This design was accepted by the legislature and became the seal of the Minnesota Territory.  Eastman’s picture shows a white settler plowing a field beside the Mississippi River near the Falls of St. Anthony.  His axe and gun rest on a tree stump in the foreground.  In the background an Indian on horseback, spear in hand, gallops away into the sunset […]  Then during the 1960’s, some people began to question whether it was a good state symbol.  Citizens are supposed to be proud of their state’s symbols.  But how could Minnesota Indians be proud of a seal that seemed to say they were not wanted in their own state.  In 1968 the Minnesota Human Rights Commission asked the state government to design a new seal that all Minnesotans could be proud of.

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Pioneer Press | Changing State Seal Expensive

By Robert Whereatt, Staff Writer

It would be rather expensive to Minnesotans to cover a dark part of the state’s history by changing the Great Seal of the state.  The Minnesota Human Rights Board has recommended a new seal be designed because, the board said, the current seal “illustrates a dark part of our history.”  The seal shows a white man plowing in the foreground, and an Indian in the background riding toward a setting sun.  The white man has a musket and powder horn nearby.  The Indian carries a spear. The rendition of the state’s past apparently offends the state board which has suggested a new seal “which will demonstrate and promote Minnesota’s current attributes and its potential for future development.”

But changing the seal would require more than a simple redesigning of the seal now guarded zealously by its custodian, Secretary of State Joseph Donovan.  About 35,000 notaries public in the state certify documents with notarial seals which have the state Great Seal design in their centers, according to Donovan.  The current cost of replacing these seals is about $8.50 each.  So it would cost almost $300,000 for the notaries to get new seals.

In addition, the Great Seal is in the center of the state flag.  The major manufacturer and distributor of state flags, a Minneapolis firm, estimates conservatively that current value of large state flags sold over the past 11 years is not less than 100,000.The Great Seal is more ubiquitous than just flags and notarial seals.  County and state officers have the seal at the center of their official seals.  Official state stationery has the seal on it and the paper used in bills enacted by the legislature has the seal imprinted in it.  The seal is imprinted in paper used for bonds issued by the state and in blank certificates of various kinds.

Gov. Harold LeVander was asked about the great Seal controversy Wednesday.  “It’s not a matter to be overly concerned about,” he said.  He implied the Human Rights Board could better spend its time in other areas.  “It’s been in existence a long time,” LeVander said.  “It’s difficult to change history or rewrite it.”

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Minneapolis Star | Is Bad Art Good History?

By Austin C. Wehrwein of the Editorial/Opinion Staff

The Minnesota Board of Human Rights is on the warpath against the Great Seal of the State of Minnesota, re-opening thereby a 119-year-old legal dispute.

1858 Minnesota State Seal
1858 Minnesota State Seal (courtesy Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State)

What worries the board about the seal, which is a little like a state trademark, is that it “depicts warfare” between the early white settlers and the red men, and “places the Indian in a derogatory light.”  Human Rights Commissioner Frank Kent, a black man, will ask the legislature to think about authorizing a new seal.

As civil rights issues go, this is rather esoteric.  The seal we have is, without doubt, a horrible example of 19th century government art, but the board had no need to defer to the seal’s “historic significance.”  In 1849 its almost identical predecessor was ridiculed as depicting “a scared white man and an astonished Indian” and “a man plowing one way and looking another.”

Gov. Sibley selected the seal’s motto, “L’etoile du Nord” (North Star).  William Watts Folwell’s “History of Minnesota” says one newspaper “poured out vials of sarcasm upon ‘Mister’ Sibley for selecting a motto from Canadian French patois, the only French known to him, and one conveying no appropriate sentiment.”

In 1860, the Minnesota attorney general said the seal had been sanctioned by usage but implied that Sibley had adopted the design without authority.  In 1861, the legislature, to cure any illegality, passed a law that said, for sure, the great seal was the great seal.

The seal, of which the secretary of state is the “custodian,” is supposed to appear on all “official” documents, including the governor’s stationery.  This is a relic of the time when seals were used to authenticate documents, a practice akin to certifying checks.  In the old common law, a seal had to be a blob of wax on the document on which an impression of a design was made.

The battle of the Minnesota seal began with territorial Gov. Ramsey who cooked up his own, a sunburst with the motto, “Liberty, Law, Religion, and Education.”  Then he asked in 1849 for a law to authorize an official seal, apparently suggesting a design that showed an Indian family welcoming a white man with a peace pipe to symbolize inter-racial friendship, precisely the sentiment the Rights Board would prefer.

However, the legislature rejected the particular design, while authorizing a seal to be selected by Sibley, then a delegate to Congress, and Gov. Ramsey.  The design we have today took its first form from sketches by Col. John James Abert that were redrawn by Capt. Seth Eastman.

That seal depicted a farmer, hand on plow, his musket leaning on a stump.  He is watching an Indian, armed with a lance, riding bareback into the sunset, with St. Anthony Falls in the background.  Sibley is credited with providing the motto, Latin for “I Wish to See What Lies Beyond.”   Whatever it was supposed to mean, one Latin word was misspelled by the engraver.

Their version we have today is virtually the same, except that […] the motto is “The North Star.”  It was adopted by the new State of Minnesota in 1858.  Or rather by Sibley, who was by then governor […]

In the absence of artistic directions from the legislature, Gov. Sibley played with the territorial Seal.  The newspaper that objected to his North Star motto also said nastily that he should have designed a new seal […]

But objection to the design died until the 1968 Human Rights Board revived it.

The present Custodian of the Great Seal, Secretary of State Joseph Donovan, said he wanted to “analyze and digest” the new seal proposal.  Said he of the frightened farmer and fleeing red man, “I don’t know if you can eradicate and erase history to bring it up to date to conform to issues of the time.”

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Minnesota History Magazine | The Great Seal of the State of Minnesota

By Robert M. Brown
From the Minnesota Historical Society’s Treasure Chest

1858 Minnesota State Seal
1858 Minnesota State Seal (courtesy Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State)

The original great seal of the state of Minnesota — one of the treasures owned by the Minnesota Historical Society —has a colorful history. The design which came into use in 1858 was not the one agreed upon by the legislature; the engraved seal was in official use for three years before it received legislative approval; and it was lost in the disastrous fire which destroyed the Capitol in 1881, only to be dramatically recovered in England twenty years later.

Exactly two weeks after Minnesota was admitted to the Union on May 11, 1858, the lack of a great seal precipitated a crisis. On May 25 the first secretary of state, Francis Baasen, wrote to Governor Henry H, Sibley: “My office being without a Seal, I can of course do no official act, unless you make some direction in the matter.” In response, Sibley authorized the use of the territorial seal until a new design could be agreed upon and engraved.

Although under its constitution the new state was required to have a great seal, the fact that it lacked one was not due to oversight or to disinterest on the part of the framers of that document. Designs were proposed to both the Republican and Democratic wings of the convention that drafted the constitution in 1857, but efforts to adopt them proved futile.

Two designs considered by a special committee of the Republican wing are reproduced herewith. The original drawing for the one by Louis Buechner, St. Paul lithographer and engraver, is in the Sibley Papers, which are owned by the Minnesota Historical Society. The second was the work of Robert Ormsby Sweeny, a St. Paul druggist of some artistic ability. It is reproduced here from William H. Folsom’s Fifty Years in the Northwest, p. 659. It is of interest that Buechner’s name appears on this design as engraver.

Buechner's State Seal Design
Buechner’s State Seal Design (Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society)

In a letter written to J. Fletcher Wifliams in 1887, Sweeny recalled that the committee asked him to submit designs for a seal. The druggist complied by submitting two original patterns, and he soon was told that one had been accepted. For it he was given a vote of thanks.

Official records, however, disclose that early in January, 1858, a Senate committee recommended to the regular session of the legislature that one of Sweeny’s designs be adopted. The matter did not receive serious consideration until after the opening of the adjourned session in June of the same year, when the Senate agreed on a resolution adopting that design. Later m the month the House concurred. Although a bill accepting the design passed both houses of the legislature, it never became law. There is no record of its enrollment and it is not in the printed Laws of 1858. An ancillary resolution (Joint Resolution number 2), however, was passed, approved, and printed in that volume. It merely authorized the governor to cause the great seal to be engraved.

Governor Sibley acted promptly upon this authorization. Regarding the design, how- ever, he exercised his own judgment, deciding simply to modify that of the territorial seal. Under his instructions, the phrase “The Great Seal of Minnesota, 1849” was changed to “The Great Seal of the State of Minnesota, 1858”; the diameter was reduced from three to two inches; the drawing was reversed to picture the Indian riding westward and the plowman moving eastward; and the inaccurate Latin motto, “Quo sursum velo videre” was supplanted by the French “L’etoile du Nord,” the north star.

Robert Sweeny's State Seal Design
Robert Sweeny’s State Seal Design (courtesy Minnesota Historical Society)

Apparently Sibley did not feel compelled to use the design favored by the legislature, and he does not seem to have considered one submitted to him by Edward Duffield Neill, pioneer St, Paul clergyman, educator, and historian, Neill himself must have been highly impressed with his own pattern, for he used it at the end of the introductory chapter to his History of Minnesota published in 1858, and also on his office stationery when he became Minnesota’s first superintendent of public instruction in 1860.

Sibley’s liking for the territorial seal, for which he had been largely responsible in 1849-50, was well known. It was not, however, generally known that he had devised a state seal until August 25, 1858, when the St. Paul Pioneer and Democrat carried an advertisement of J. H. Felch, “Seal, Card, and Wood Engraver,” with .a statement that he had been employed to engrave the official seal of the state. The news of Sibley’s connection with the design was not well received in all quarters. For example, another St. Paul newspaper, the Daily Minnesotan, criticized the governor on September 10 and later for acting independently, as well as for selecting a French motto which the editor considered inappropriate. Despite these protests, the great seal of the state as designed by Sibley came into use.

Its legality was questioned by Neill two years later, when in his capacity as superintendent of public instruction he asked the acting governor, Ignatius Donnelly, what constituted the great seal of the state. Neill contended that the legislature had not acted under its constitutional mandate and provided an appropriate device and motto for a seal. His inquiry was referred to the attorney general, Gordon E. Cole, who stated that Sibley’s modified territorial seal could be used and that its employment had been sanctioned by usage. Although Cole’s opinion seemed to suggest that Sibley had acted without authority in selecting the design, the matter was settled satisfactorily the next year, when legislation was enacted providing “that the seal heretofore used as the seal of the state, shall be the seal thereof.”

TWENTY YEARS AFTER the legislature had effectively put an end to questions relating to the legality of the seal, the Minnesota Capitol burned. When the fire was discovered on the evening of March 1,1881, the legislature was in session. Its members as well as St. Paulites living in the vicinity of Wabasha and Exchange streets, where the Capitol was then located, hastily helped remove records and other valuables from the offices of state departments and of the Minnesota Historical Society, then located in the building. In the confusion, the removal was made with more celerity than system, and many items were lost or destroyed. Among them was the great seal, which was taken from a vault and dropped while being transported to a place of supposed safety.

Neill's State Seal Design
Edward Duffield Neill’s Minnesota State Seal Design (courtesy Minnesota Historical Society)

The story of its subsequent adventures can be traced in a series of letters recently discovered in the state archives and in the archives of the Minnesota Historical Society. They reveal that on the evening after the fire, Peter A. Bergsma, a native of Holland who was engaged in business in St. Paul, passed the ruins of the Capitol while on his way to his residence at 56 Summit Avenue. Near the corner of College and Wabasha he picked up a brass object and took it home with him. It proved to be the great seal.

Bergsma later returned to Holland and eventually he settled in Torquay, England, a seaport and resort town on the south coast of Devon. With him went the seal, which he forgot until one day in 1894, when he came upon it in his desk. He then realized that it should be returned to Minnesota, where he hoped it might “be accorded a place in some of the rooms of the historical society.” Some day, he felt sure, he would meet a person from St. Paul who could be asked to return it. The opportunity came in the summer of 1901, when Mr. and Mrs. William J. Dyer of St. Paul stopped in Torquay while on a European trip. A music importer and dealer who had known Bergsma in St. Paul, Dyer was delighted when his old friend called on him at his Torquay hotel and explained that he had seen Dyer’s name in a list of recently arrived American travelers. Dyer was more than surprised when his visitor told of finding the great seal, produced the device, and asked that he take it back to Minnesota with him.

In compliance with Bergsma’s wishes, when Dyer returned to St. Paul in September 1901, he promptly presented the seal to Governor S. R. Van Sant. He, in turn, contacted Peter E. Hanson, secretary of state, and the two official agreed that the original seal should be placed with the Minnesota Historical Society. Dr. Warren Upham, then secretary of the society, acknowledged the gift on October 18, 1901, assuring the donors that the much-traveled seal would “be preserved with religious care.”

Though the general design is the same, the original seal and the one now in use differ somewhat in detail. Variations, for example, occur in the scroll bearing the motto, the number and arrangement of the trees, the character of the ground being plowed, the pace of the horse, the position of the Indian’s spear, and the placing of the white man’s gun. Entirely absent from the present design is an ax, with its blade imbedded in the tree stump, which appears in the original design. Apparently engravers have been careless about including details from the die made in 1858 when new seals were needed.

Although details may not be important, it should be noted that the original seal of 1858 shows far more action and exhibits much more artistic merit than does the device now affixed to state documents. Quite apart from its sentimental interest, it is worth keeping as an example of mid-century craftsmanship. Thus it is fortunate that, after an absence of two decades, the great seal found its way back to Minnesota, there to be cared for and preserved among the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society.