The Thing About Salem’s Seal

 

There are places in New England where the past doesn’t just whisper—it screams. Salem, Massachusetts, is one of those places, and if you’ve ever walked down its cobblestone streets on a fog-thick October morning, you’d know what I mean. The witch trials of 1692 left scars on that town deeper than any Puritan preacher’s hellfire sermon, but there’s another story lurking there, one that most folks never heard tell of. It’s about a seal—not the barking kind that tourists snap pictures of down at the wharf, but the official city seal that’s been watching over Salem since 1839.

And let me tell you something about watching—sometimes the things doing the watching ain’t what they seem.

The Task Force

Regina Zaragoza Frey had the kind of eyes that saw too much and said too little. As chairwoman of Salem’s newly minted City Seal Task Force, she’d taken on a job that would’ve made lesser mortals run screaming back to their split-level ranch houses in the suburbs. But Regina wasn’t lesser anything. She was the kind of woman who’d stare down a Category 5 hurricane and ask it what took so long to get there.

The controversy had started simple enough—the way these things always do. A few concerned citizens had looked at their city seal, really looked at it for maybe the first time in their lives, and saw something that made their stomachs turn over like bad clam chowder. Right there in the center, bold as brass and twice as bright, stood the figure of an Acehnese man. Traditional dress, umbrella in hand, like he was waiting for a trolley that would never come.

“Racist,” some said. “Stereotypical,” others whispered. The kind of words that spread through a New England town like black mold in an old basement.

But here’s the thing about Salem—and this is important, so listen close—Salem’s got secrets buried deeper than any Salem witch ever was. And sometimes when you start digging, you find more than you bargained for.

The History That Wouldn’t Stay Buried

R. Michael Feener knew about buried things. As a historian with letters after his name that went on longer than a Stephen King novel, he’d spent most of his adult life excavating the past like some kind of academic archaeologist. When the Task Force came calling, he didn’t run. Maybe he should have.

The Acehnese man on Salem’s seal wasn’t some fever dream cooked up by a racist city council in 1839. No sir. That figure had a name—Po Adam—and a story that stretched back through the centuries like a chain of souls reaching across the Pacific Ocean.

You see, Salem and Aceh had been dancing together since 1654, a two-hundred-year waltz of ships and spices, of pepper and profit. American vessels—179 of them by the final count—had made the journey to that distant shore, their holds filling with the kind of black pepper that would make your eyes water and your soul sing.

Po Adam hadn’t been some exotic curiosity. He’d been a businessman, the wealthiest pepper trader in Salem during his time. The kind of man who could make or break fortunes with a handshake and a smile. And when George Peabody—that’s right, the same Peabody who’d practically invented American philanthropy—designed Salem’s seal in 1836, he put Po Adam right there in the center.

A tribute, the old records called it. A bond of friendship.

But you know what they say about the road to hell.

The Voices in the Dark

Not everyone in Salem wanted to see the seal changed. Take Cindy Jerzylo, a city councilwoman with the kind of steel backbone that her Puritan ancestors would’ve recognized. She’d grown up seeing that seal as something good, something that honored the people who’d helped put Salem on the map when it was nothing but another fishing village with delusions of grandeur.

“How can we now say that the city no longer wants to honor or acknowledge a history that continues to enrich our community today?” she’d asked during one of those interminable city council meetings where democracy goes to die a slow, bureaucratic death.

But the voices of protest were louder, and they carried the weight of modern sensibilities. The seal was “disrespectful,” they said. “Exoticizing.” The kind of words that cut through historical nuance like a chainsaw through kindling.

The Man Who Remembered

Halfway across the world, in a place where the call to prayer still echoed across pepper fields, a man named Reza Idria was fighting his own battle. An Acehnese anthropologist who’d earned his doctorate at Harvard—because of course he had—Reza saw the controversy brewing in Salem and felt something twist in his chest like a fishhook setting deep.

The figure on Salem’s seal wasn’t a caricature to him. It was his ancestor, his heritage, his people’s contribution to a story that most Americans had forgotten faster than last week’s lottery numbers. When the tsunami had devastated Aceh in 2004, it was Salem—Salem—that had organized relief efforts, honoring those “old ties” that stretched back through the centuries.

The Boston Globe had covered it, naturally. New England remembering old friends in their darkest hour. It was the kind of story that should’ve ended up in a feel-good movie starring Tom Hanks.

Instead, it was turning into something else entirely.

Reza had written letters, made phone calls, reached out to anyone who’d listen. Even Governor Muzakir Manaf had gotten involved, sending an official letter to Massachusetts asking that Salem preserve its seal. Strengthen its meaning, the Governor had written, through broader cooperation.

Sister cities. Cultural exchanges. The kind of international friendship that diplomats dream about and politicians campaign on.

But you know what they say about good intentions.

The Thing That Lurks

Here’s what nobody wanted to talk about, the thing that made Regina Zaragoza Frey’s eyes go cold when she thought about it late at night: Salem had a history of getting things wrong. Catastrophically, historically, burn-twenty-innocent-people-at-the-stake wrong.

Andy Varela, another city councilman with the kind of political instincts that kept him awake at night, had put his finger on it during one of the Task Force meetings. “When it comes to writing history,” he’d said, “there are deeply rooted biases. We cannot ignore that English and American writers have consistently drawn parallels between Southeast Asians and Native Americans, labeling them as savages or as lesser than Euro-Americans.”

The words hung in the air like smoke from an extinguished candle. Because that was the real fear, wasn’t it? Not that the seal was intentionally racist, but that it carried the weight of centuries of unconscious bias, of “othering” that ran so deep it had become invisible.

The Task Force had eighteen months to figure it out. Eighteen months to sift through historical documents, conduct public forums, and somehow divine the difference between honoring the past and perpetuating its sins.

Eighteen months to avoid making the same mistakes their ancestors had made in 1692.

The Seal Endures

As I write this, the seal still stands. The figure of Po Adam still gazes out from official documents and city letterhead, caught forever between honor and controversy, between past and present, between the way things were and the way things ought to be.

The Friendship—that replica merchant ship that sits moored at Salem’s old wharf like a museum piece that’s seen too much—still tells the story of Kuala Batee, of pirates and pepper, of the kind of adventure that belonged in boys’ books and history classes.

But late at night, when the fog rolls in from the Atlantic and the streetlights cast shadows that seem to move on their own, you might wonder about other things. You might wonder if Po Adam’s spirit still walks those old trading routes, if the connection between Salem and Aceh runs deeper than spice and commerce.

You might wonder if some bonds, once forged, can never really be broken.

And in Salem, Massachusetts—a town that knows something about the persistence of the past—that might not be such a comfortable thought after all.

The Task Force continues its work. The seal endures. And somewhere in the space between honor and harm, between memory and mistake, Salem searches for the truth about itself.

Just like it always has.

Just like it always will.