Brass military buttons with the figure of a phoenix bird are reported with great regularity from the West Coast of the United States. In spite of the excellent previous research and published conclusions of Emory Strong, there is a wealth of misinformation still being published. The literature, including both historical data and speculation on the original source of the buttons as well as site reports listing such buttons, is assembled and summarized, essentially an annotated bibliography with locational maps, as an additional step in the analysis of these distinctive artifacts. A bipolar distribution — involving burial caches and body ornamentation on the lower Columbia River and use as buttons in mission sites of California — is suggested, but as yet there is a dearth of research tying the two areas together. New directions for additional research include locating unreported buttons, developing distributional studies, verifying the theories of origins, and determining trading patterns.