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Phoenix Buttons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Emory Strong
Emory Strong*
Affiliation:
4704, St. Johns Road, Vancouver, Wash.
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Abstract

Metal buttons bearing the Phoenix bird, a motto in French, and a number are found in quantity in historic sites along the lower Columbia River, and less commonly throughout western North America. Phoenix buttons were not made for Napoleon, as often claimed, but were manufactured by an English firm in the early 1800's for King Christophe of Haiti. The Phoenix bird and the motto come from his coat of arms; the numbers refer to regiments. These military uniform buttons were brought to the Northwest before 1835 by an independent trader, most likely Nathaniel Wyeth, who probably used uniform coats, which he may have obtained earlier when shipping ice to the West Indies, to trade for fish for his salmon packing plant on the Columbia River.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , January 1960 , pp. 418 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1960

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References

MacLennan, William 1953 Restorer of the Missions. Westways, Vol. 45, No. 10, pp. 20–1. Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Wyeth, J. B. 1905 Oregon, or a Short History of a Long Journey from the Atlantic Ocean to the Region of the Pacific, by Land… . Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, edited by Thwaites, R. G., Vol. 21, pp. 20–106. Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland. [Originally published 1833.]Google Scholar