The Needham Branding & Town Seal Committee has agreed on an image to replace the current seal. Pending its approval by the Select Board on March 10 and Town Meeting in May, it will replace the image that has represented Needham for more than 100 years.
The same committee created a brand logo for Needham, an image of Town Hall, that was voted on by Needham residents. Now two years later, it can be seen in many places including town websites and vehicles.
“The logo is used on non-official town stuff like the DPW trucks and trash barrels,” committee chair and Select Board member Kevin Keane said. “I haven’t seen it yet on the trash bags, but I’m sure that’s coming.”
Settling on an image for the town seal took two years of work. The central issue in all seal redesigns — including the Commonwealth’s which is currently underway — is creating an accurate and fair representation of Native people.
Newton and Natick removed images of native people. After four years, Newton’s seal committee selected an image of Town Hall and Natick selected the bridge at South Natick falls after three years of work.
Keane said one member of the Needham Committee, Amber Autumn Sun Orlando of the Massachusett Natick Praying Indians, lobbied to keep native people on Needham’s seal. “She told us to please not erase her people from our history.”
The current seal depicts Nehoiden and two settlers agreeing to a land deal in 1680, 31 years before Needham’s founding. This took place in the wake of King Philip’s War, a bitter struggle that decimated people from both sides, especially the indigenous people. The committee worked with many versions of a white settler and a native person conducting an amicable exchange, but none of them worked.
“We tried to keep a sort of parity, that there was respect or equality, but there wasn’t,” Keane said. “There is no way to sugarcoat this. This was a clash of two cultures.”
When the committee opted to abandon this approach during its deliberations, Gloria Greis, committee member and director of the Needham History Center & Museum, noted the real story would not evoke town pride. “The deeds were mostly fictional,” she said. “They essentially codified the land that had already been stolen.”
Also, only Nehoiden and his family benefited from the land deal. The land that would become Needham was sold off and his family was allowed to retain Hemlock Gorge, which his heirs eventually also sold.
“This is the native people’s final capitulation to the English,” Keane said. “And maybe upon reflection, that shouldn’t be our town seal.”
Instead, Keane said the committee settled on what he called a positive image, that of a lone native canoeist, purportedly Nehoiden himself, on the Charles. The committee voted 7-0 with one abstention to approve the image.
The abstention was from former town clerk and committee member Tedi Eaton. “The new image doesn’t do anything for me,” she said. “Some people think it looks like an L.L. Bean model.”
Eaton, who spent more than four decades as town clerk, was, as per state law, the keeper of the seal. She used it thousands of times to emboss marriage certificates and other official documents and to enact bylaws.
Eaton said the two Christian crosses in the old seal are realistic representations of history. She pointed out that Needham was formed so that the settlers didn’t have to ford the Charles on a long journey to church services.
“I also understand that our Native Americans were not treated fairly in any way,” she said. “But they purchased the land from Nehoiden.” She said she would have preferred to keep the image of that land transaction on the town seal.
According to Keane, the imagery on the proposed seal accurately reflects the topography of Needham. He said the mountain in the background of the current seal looks like it’s in the Grand Tetons.
The image of High Rock in the proposed seal comes from a photo at the Needham History Museum. It was taken when High Rock was surrounded by open fields and when the unique rocky outcropping could be seen from a distance. The new design also eliminates the teepee, a type of dwelling not used by indigenous people of this region.
With this item on the warrant for the upcoming Town Meeting, members will get a chance not only to impact actual policy, but also to debate history and to make a symbolic statement.
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