LALouisiana State Symbols

Louisiana's defining symbol is a bird tearing open its own chest. The brown pelican has stood for the state since the early 1800s, borrowed from a medieval Christian image called the "pelican in her piety," in which a mother pelican wounds herself to feed her young with her own blood. Louisiana read that image as self-sacrifice by the state for its people, put it on the seal and the flag, and eventually made the eastern brown pelican the official state bird in 1966. The rest of Louisiana's symbols are just as local: crawfish, alligator, cypress, accordion, gumbo.

Official state symbols

What is on the Louisiana state flag

The Louisiana flag is a solid blue field with a white pelican at the center, wings spread, head bent down toward a nest holding three chicks. Below the nest runs a white ribbon carrying the state motto in blue capitals: UNION JUSTICE CONFIDENCE. The blue is meant to echo the field of the United States flag, tying the state to the Union named in its own motto.

The detail that makes this flag unusual is the blood. For most of the twentieth century, artists drew the pelican with or without wounds depending on the printer. In 2006 the legislature settled it by law: the pelican must show three drops of blood on its breast, one for each chick, restoring the wound that the "pelican in her piety" image had always implied. A 2010 act fixed the full official design. Louisiana is the only state whose flag statute specifies a count of blood drops.

The seal, the motto and the two state songs

The state seal carries the same pelican and nest, ringed by the words "State of Louisiana" and the motto "Union, Justice, Confidence." The three words are read as a set: loyalty to the federal union, an even hand in law, and public trust. The pelican device predates statehood in 1812 and was already in use under the territorial governors, which is why no single adoption year is cited for it.

Louisiana is one of a handful of states with more than one official song. "Give Me Louisiana" was adopted in 1970. "You Are My Sunshine" was added in 1977, and it is there because Jimmie Davis, the singer who popularized and recorded it, served two separate terms as governor of Louisiana. A country standard and a state anthem are the same piece of music here.

Symbols that surprise people

• The state dog was bred in Louisiana and nowhere else. The Catahoula leopard dog, adopted in 1979, is named for Catahoula Parish and is the only breed known to have developed in the state.
• The state fossil is wood turned to stone. Petrified palmwood, designated in 1976, comes from palm trunks buried in Louisiana sediments millions of years ago and is cut and polished as a gemstone.
• The state musical instrument is an accordion. Louisiana named the diatonic accordion official in 1990, recognizing the single-row squeezebox at the center of Cajun and zydeco music.
• Louisiana names its food in law. Gumbo is the official state cuisine, the beignet is the official state doughnut, and the Natchitoches meat pie has its own designation, named for the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase territory.
• The crawfish outranks any fish. The crawfish became the state crustacean in 1983, the same year the alligator became state reptile, and Louisiana produces the large majority of the crawfish eaten in the United States.

Neighboring states and more Louisiana pages