INIndiana State Symbols

The torch on the Indiana flag is the state's signature image, and it carries a precise piece of arithmetic. Nineteen stars surround it because Indiana was the nineteenth state admitted to the Union, and the largest star, set directly above the flame, is Indiana itself. Paul Hadley designed it for the 1916 centennial. The nickname is the opposite case: nobody has ever settled where "Hoosier" came from, and the state adopted it anyway.

Official state symbols

What is on the Indiana state flag

A gold torch sits at the centre of a blue field, with rays spreading from the flame to stand for liberty and enlightenment, and for their influence spreading outward. Thirteen stars form an outer circle for the original colonies. Five more stars in a half circle above them represent the next five states admitted. The single large star above the torch, with the word "Indiana" arched over it, marks Indiana as the nineteenth state.

The flag came out of a competition organised by the Indiana Daughters of the American Revolution for the 1916 statehood centennial. Paul Hadley, an artist from Mooresville, won it, and the General Assembly adopted his design in 1917 with one change: the legislature added the state's name above the top star. Indiana called it a state banner rather than a flag until 1955.

The pioneer scene on the state seal

Indiana's seal shows a frontier clearing at sunset. A woodsman swings an axe at a sycamore. A buffalo leaps over a fallen log and runs west, away from the axe. More sycamores stand behind, and the sun drops behind western hills. The words "Seal of the State of Indiana" and the date 1816 ring the design.

The imagery predates statehood. Versions of the scene were used by the Indiana Territory under governor William Henry Harrison at Vincennes, and it passed into state use in 1816 without ever being formally specified. That created a century of drift, with different offices printing subtly different buffalo and different tree lines. The General Assembly finally fixed an official description in 1963. Read plainly, the seal is a picture of settlement pushing west, the forest coming down and the bison retreating ahead of it.

Symbols that surprise people

• Indiana has an official state rifle. The Grouseland rifle, adopted in 2012, is a flintlock long rifle held at Grouseland, Harrison's mansion in Vincennes.
• The state flower changed twice. The carnation was chosen in 1913, replaced by the zinnia in 1931, and replaced again by the peony in 1957.
• A school class named the state insect. Say's firefly became official in 2018 after pupils at Cumberland Elementary in West Lafayette lobbied for it across several sessions. It honours naturalist Thomas Say, who worked at the New Harmony community.
• The state stone is a building material. Indiana limestone, quarried around Bedford and Bloomington, faces the Empire State Building and the Pentagon. It became the state stone in 1971.
• The state song was written by a novelist's brother. Paul Dresser wrote "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" in 1897. His brother changed the family name and published as Theodore Dreiser.

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