Cavalry standards and guidons.

Since this movie has a spectacular cavalry & Indians battle, based on the Battle of Warbonnet Creek on July 17, 1876, it has a number of cavalry flags, besides the one flying at the fort.

Each regiment or battalion in the US army has a pair of colors, regimental or battalion flags. Colors are now three feet high by five feet long, made of silk (artificial silk these days) with yellow fringe on 3 sides. The national color is a version of the United States Flag, with the regimental name and number written on the central stripe. The regimental color usually has the heraldic achievement of the United States, with an eagle and the US coat of arms (the regimental coat of arms these days) on a shield on the eagle's breast, and a scroll with the regimental name and number. As far as I know, the United States army might be the only one that has colors based on both the national flag and the national coat of arms.

IMHO colors are the most beautiful military artifacts.

In the 19th century cavalry colors were called standards, just to confuse people I guess, and a cavalry regiment only had a regimental standard until the 1890s, I think. The pre 1890s cavalry regimental standards had a dark blue background, and were smaller than the 3 foot by 5 foot size adopted in the 1890s. In the 1880s yellow, the branch color of cavalry, became the color of cavalry standards.

Western movies show all combinations of types of standards, national standards, small blue standards, large blue standards, and yellow standards, sometimes in a pair and sometimes just one.

In Buffalo Bill there is a pair of standards, that seem to be the same size, like the 1890s and later ones, but the regimental standard is blue and not yellow.

Each company of cavalry also has a guidon, a small fork-tailed flag. Materials and sizes have changed, but they have had only three designs since 1833. From 1833-1862 guidons were red above and white below, with white letters "U.S." above and the company number in red below. From 1862-1885) guidons had a pattern closely resembling the United States flag. From 1885 the design has been red above and white below, with the regimental number in white above and the company letter in red below.

And western movies have used all three historic guidon types regardless of their fictional dates, as well as many imaginary guidon designs.

The makers of Buffalo Bill didn't make a set of guidons of the same design for the movie, but reused flags made for other productions, I guess.

One guidon was a squarish white flag with a dark letter A above and red crossed sabers below.

Another guidon was red, with markings on it I couldn't seen clearly.

A third guidon was fork-tailed, red above and white below, which I couldn't seen clearly enough to read any markings on it.

A fourth guidon was fork-tailed, blue with white crossed sabers above and red with the white letter C below.

The second guidon, the one that was red, looks sort of like one seen in Column South (1953) which was red, fork tailed, with "B" or "8" above and yellow crossed sabers, or rifles,or cannon below symbolizing either the cavalry, the infantry, or the artillery. https://moviechat.org/tt0045637/Column-South/5bc3b5da83aaed0013ddf591/Cavalry-flags