The Indiana state seal has been in use since it was a territory, but a standardized description was not put into law until 1963. The seal has been criticized for not accurately representing the state’s geography, and proposals were made in 2004 and 2005 to change the setting sun to a rising sun. The seal’s motto symbolizes a better civilization arising from chaotic and wild origins.
The general design of the Indiana state seal has been in use since it was a territory and the first constitution specified that it should be used on official documents. The main elements of the work include the sun shining on the mountains behind a field of bluegrass with a buffalo and a lumberjack cutting down a tree in the foreground. An official description of the state seal, however, was not put into law until 1963, resulting in a great deal of inconsistency in its use. Indiana’s state seal has also been criticized for not accurately representing the state’s geography. In 2004 and 2005, proposals were made to the legislature to change the official description of the setting sun on the seal to a rising sun in response to criticism of this element in the artwork.
When Indiana was the Northwest Territory of the United States, a seal was used to designate official documents, but there was no written record that legitimized its use. The design, which has remained largely the same over the years, was surrounded by the words “The Seal of the Territory of the USNW of the River Ohio.” It also contained the motto “Meliorem lapsa locavit!” which means: “he planted a better of the fallen”. These words illustrate the symbolic meaning of the Indiana state seal, which is to show a better civilization arising from chaotic and wild origins.
In 1801 a provision was added to the written laws of the North West Territory requiring the use of an official seal, but still lacked a description. This omission persisted throughout the process of making Indiana statehood, and once again official state law required the use of a state seal without a standardized description of its appearance. For this reason, different versions of the seal have been used over the years and the artwork has been modified several times to reflect the preferences of the time. In the early 1900s, critics of the Indiana state seal claimed that the setting sun behind the mountains was inaccurate because there are no mountains in western Indiana and the Rocky Mountains are not visible from the state.
Despite criticisms of the setting sun on the Indiana state seal, this description was included in the official law that standardized the seal in 1963. Some who wrote on the seal believe the sun should rise in the east, signifying the birth of a new company in Indiana. It has also been suggested that the mountains are actually hills and that the orientation of the sun is therefore not inaccurate. The controversy continued into the current decade, however, with motions appearing before the Indiana Legislature in 2004 and 2005 to change the legal description to that of a rising sun.
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