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The Union Shield is part of the Coat of Arms of the United States, which forms the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States.
The 1782 resolution of Congress adopting the arms, still in force, legally blazoned the shield as "Paleways of 13 pieces, argent and gules; a chief, azure." As the designers recognised, this is a technically incorrect blazon under traditional English heraldic rules, since in English practice a vertically striped shield would be described as "paly", not "paleways", and it would not have had an odd number of stripes. A more technically proper blazon would have been argent, six pallets gules ... (six red stripes on a white field), but the phrase used was chosen to preserve the reference to the 13 original states.
The Shield is shown on the coinage of the United States either on its own, or as part of the full Coat of Arms.
On the Indian Head Cents, it has six vertical and seven horizontal stripes representing the first thirteen states.
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