Is The Wyoming Flag Bison Facing The Wrong Way? Creator’s Granddaughter Says Yes

Verna Keays Keyes designed Wyoming’s state flag with its iconic bison emblazoned with the state seal. She’s known across the Cowboy State as Wyoming’s Betsey Ross.

Privately, however, the nickname was something that irked the artist just a little bit. She was a designer, not a seamstress. She did not personally herself sew Wyoming’s state flag.

“She could sew really well,” Keyes’ granddaughter Rebecca Keays told a group of historians gathered in Laramie last week for a presentation about Verna. “She was one of those people who could just look at something and make it, from hats to dresses. She was extraordinary.”

There was something else that also irked Keyes when it comes to Wyoming’s state flag, according to her granddaughter’s research — the bison is facing the wrong way.

The bison on the flags we see today faces toward the pole or staff, the opposite of what Keyes had envisioned in her original design, according to Rebecca’s research. And its outline isn’t always the one that Verna originally drew. That’s because the state flag legislation never specified which particular outline to use, nor which way the bison should face.

“What flies over Wyoming today is not what was ratified,” Rebecca told Cowboy State Daily. “The main takeaway is that there is a 107-year-old flag, and since it was ratified, there have been many mysteries and areas of silence. There is a flag story that is true fact, but is not the whole story.”

Fueling the debate is that while Keyes insisted her vision was the bison looking away from the flagpole when it’s flying, was prominent suffragist and University of Wyoming professor Grace Raymond Hebard insisting the bison must look toward the pole as if hitched to it.

An Artist Is Born

Keyes honed her artistic skills at the then famous Art Institute of Chicago, working with Louis Millet, a nephew of the well-known French painter Jean Francois Millet.

“Louis Millet had studied in Paris at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts with two American friends, the architect Louis Sullivan and George Healy, who was the son of a renowned at the time U.S. portraitist,” Rebecca said. “So they all moved back to Chicago after they graduated and Louis started the Art institute.”

Millett had connections throughout the art world with manufacturers in Chicago and elsewhere, which would later become very important to Verna, who was a talented and skilled artist in her own right, producing a number of nature studies of wildflowers in Wyoming throughout her lifetime.

“It is sad that Verna did not keep much of her work as an artist,” Rebecca said. “She was a dynamite water colorist, and she loved art history.”

There are a few things that have been donated to the Wyoming State Museum, as well as the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo, where Verna grew up and where she returned after finishing her studies in Chicago in 1916.

In that same timeframe, Verna’s father, W.P. Keays, read in the Buffalo newspaper that the state’s chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) — of which Hebard was the state regent — was seeking appropriate designs for a state flag. The prize was $20.

“After 26 years of statehood, Wyoming still didn’t have a flag,” Rebecca said. “And the DAR’s Grace Hebard was determined to have one introduced during the 1917 legislative session.”

Dream Design

Verna’s design was something that came to her in a dream after a summer of wrestling privately with ideas for the flag.

“That summer a school friend was visiting me from Cleveland, Ohio, and she made an excellent excuse for me to do everything but draw,” Verna recalled in the official narrative she shared when she was speaking about the flag. “As the closing date for the competition approached and my father’s persuasion increased, I knew it was time to heed him.”

The idea, when it came, was part of a dream that woke her from sound sleep. It was a clear, complete and perfect design, and she was so excited she even woke her friend from Ohio to tell her about it.

“She was uninterested, and sleepily mumbled something incoherent about not caring,” Verna wrote. “The following morning, I drew the design as it had been revealed to me that night; such inspiration reaffirms the true Source of all Creation.”

In that original drawing, Verna drew the bison facing away from the staff, something she mentions at the end of her public story.

“My reasoning on this was that the bison had once roamed freely over the plains of Wyoming, and I thought he should fly so on the flag,” she wrote in the account. “Dr. Hebard did not agree with this and thought it would be better design and balance to have the bison facing the staff.

“Consequently, when the first flags were manufactured she had them done the latter way, and so they have remained.”

The Details

Verna’s mother Estella penned an explanation of all the symbols and colors used in the flag for Verna in “her beautiful handwriting.”

• The great seal of the state of Wyoming serves as the “heart” of the flag, representing the truly Western custom of branding.

• The bison was once known as the “Monarch of the Plains.”

• Red was for the “Red Men, who knew and loved our country long before any of us here; also, the blood of the pioneers who gave their lives in reclaiming the soil.”

• White was for “purity and uprightness.”

• Blue for beautiful Wyoming skies and distant mountains, as well as fidelity, justice and virility.

• And finally, red, white and blue together represents the “greatest flag in all the world, the Stars and Stripes of the United States of America.”

The whole package was mounted, packed and mailed off to Sheridan — arriving, according to Verna, a little bit later than the contest deadline.

A few days later, Hebard called to let Verna know that her design had been selected as the winner from among 37 entered in the contest.

“There followed many discussions and much correspondence with Hebard to perfect each detail of the design,” Verna wrote in her public account. “A technical description of the flag was then written, and this drafted into a bill for presentation to the Fourteenth Legislature.”

Hidden Verna

Growing up, Rebecca never really questioned the public story her grandmother told, nor the direction of the bison on the flag.

There were times, however, when she noticed that her grandmother could become a little impatient with a young girl’s questions about curiosities she’d noticed with the flag’s design.

Later as Rebecca grew older, she began to realize there was much more to the story of Wyoming’s flag than her grandmother had publicly told.

That led her on a search through the tracks of history, uncovering what she calls the “hidden Verna.” She found clues in old letters and correspondence between her grandmother and various people, including Hebard herself.

The most telling detail of all, however, is just the original design itself.

“Most people have never seen the image I’m holding in that photo,” Rebecca said, referring to a photo of herself holding up the original design. “They’ve never seen the actual original design because it’s been kind of hidden away since 1919, in first the state Historian’s Office, and then at the Wyoming State Museum. It was displayed for a while, but it’s not on display now.”

Rebecca also calls into question stories that have Hebard driving around the state to show Verna’s rough mockup between October and January after the contest.

“Grace Hebard did not roll that up,” she said. “It looks terrible, and it has mistakes in it. It has the pencil lines positioning the Great Seal. It has drips. So she was never intending for that to be the final, suitable for presentation.”

Instead, Verna and Hebard, who were both perfectionists, worked on a postcard that could be sent out via mail to lobby legislators and supporters.

“Verna loved postcards,” Rebecca said. “And they were handy because they could be impactful and they were easy to mail. Grace didn’t have time to drive around the state circulating Verna’s design, so that’s what they came up with.”

That original postcard, which appears in Grace’s own collection, is what Rebecca calls a “smoking gun. ”

“I’m certain that postcard image is what Grace lobbied with, and I’m certain that’s what the legislators saw,” she said. “And this was a secret that both women curated. They culled a lot from their archive that they donated to the American Heritage Center.”

Photos of the proposed post cards Hubard used to show Keyes how she wanted the flag to look are telling. Over the one looking away from the pole is written, “Not like this — head also wrong way.” And over the image of the bison looking the other way in what appears to be the same handwriting is, “Like this.”

Few Questioned Or Crossed Her

One thing that was not culled, however, was a letter from the Wyoming state historian of the time, Ellen Crowley, asking Verna for more detail on why the bison was facing two different directions and other discrepancies, like the different bison outlines.

“In that response, Verna tells us that when Grace decided something, she just got what she wanted and that few people questioned or crossed her,” Rebecca said. “And then she says Grace Hebard wrote the state flag statute leaving out the direction the bison was to face.”

She also left out which particular state seal was to be used in the design, and which bison outline.

“That was very intentional, and it was a way to have this iconic — I mean, it’s a great brand, it’s been a great brand for Wyoming,” Rebecca said. “She did not specify anything particular to Verna Keyes’ design. It was very premeditated.”

The first Verna knew that things were not as they seemed was a letter she received just after the flag’s ratification, dated May 31, 1917.

“The tone of that letter is completely different,” Rebecca said. “It’s very official. It’s very arm’s length. It’s, ‘My dear Miss Keays.’”

Along with the letter came a copy of the state flag statute, which did not include anything specifying the particulars of Verna’s design.

Among this correspondence are also instructions from Hebard directing Verna to make six flags, which will be the final, official version of the flag, with a postcard that shows the bison facing opposite the way Verna had envisioned it.

“That letter is likely the first time Verna finds out that her design has not been mandated in the state flag statute,” Rebecca said. “And she and Verna toiled away creating those two gorgeous little images that were definitely what was shown to legislators.”

Yet, the changes to her design was something Verna never talked about publicly, even to family, which Rebecca believes was due to the imbalance of power between the two women. Hebard was 55 at the time, Verna was just 23 and had no idea what she was in for.

“To me, it’s worse than just petty,” Rebecca said. “It’s dishonest. She loved Verna’s design, and she appropriated it. She knew, just as she had done with her history books that she wrote and was later reviled for, that she could figure out a way to make Verna’s work her own. That’s what this really boils down to.”

And that is why Rebecca believes there are no photos showing Verna triumphantly holding up her flag with a bison facing the direction she wanted it to face.

“Think about, compare that to today’s Instagram,” Rebecca said. “I mean, it’s unthinkable that there’s nothing.

“So my mission is just to tell this story, to make sure that people find out there’s a lot they don’t know about Verna, about her flag, about what went down, and that’s something that I’m still figuring out.”

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.