What's the deal with New York's weird municipal seals?
Left: The Village of Whitesboro’s municipal seal. Right: The cover of City & State’s Feb. 1 issue.
An hour east of Syracuse, the small upstate village of Whitesboro has been getting national attention in recent weeks over its municipal seal. The government of Whitesboro claimed it depicts a white man and an American Indian engaged in a recreational wrestling match. But to “The Daily Show” correspondent Jessica Williams, it seemed to depict a white settler putting a chokehold on a struggling Indian. Pair that with the town’s name, and the story was perfect for “The Daily Show’s” brand of comedic news. The pressure turned out to be too much for the 1-square-mile village, and its mayor has announced he plans to change the seal.
Amid this controversy, we armchair sigillographers at City & State created an updated version of the seal, altering the characters involved but retaining all of the intrigue over whether they’re are engaged in a respectful tussle or a no holds-barred brawl.
While the world waits to see what Whitesboro will decide, City & State spoke to a man who is probably the foremost authority on municipal seals of small northeastern towns, Marvin Bubie. The Rensselaer County native became interested in municipal seals after seeing German heraldry while serving in the U.S. Army and has since written three books on seals, most recently, “Celebrating the Revolutionary War: Municipal Symbols of a Free Country.”
Not all town seals are ambiguously racist, said Bubie. Some are downright civil, like Clinton’s, which features Moses Foote, the town’s founder, and the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, a missionary to the Oneidas, convening around a Bible with Oneida Chief Skenandoa.
The Rev. Samuel Kirkland is featured again on the seal of the town named after him, holding an Oneida peace pipe. According to Bubie, it was Kirkland who persuaded the Oneida Nation to join the Americans in the Revolutionary War. He and Chief Skenandoa became close, and when the chief died at the age of 110, he asked to be buried next to Kirkland.
This seal features another missionary to the Oneida nation, James Dean (no, not that James Dean), shaking hands with an unidentified Oneida. Dean learned the nation’s language and was said to have been adopted by the Oneidas, even representing them in the 1774 Continental Congress.
Like many other seals across the state, New York City’s includes a reference to its Dutch heritage: in this case, windmill blades. The colonist and the Lenape native together support the crest, meant to represent unity between the white settlers and the American Indians.