Massachusetts State Coat of Arms

The shield is blue with a gold figure at its center. A five-pointed silver star appears in the upper portion of the shield, beside the figure. A wreath of blue and gold supports the crest above, which shows a bent arm in a sleeved and ruffled cuff holding an upright broadsword. A blue ribbon below carries the motto in gold lettering.

The coat of arms appears on both the state seal and the state flag. The flag, adopted on March 18, 1908, shows the coat of arms on a white field. The coat of arms is used on official state documents, government buildings, and the seals of state agencies across Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts coat of arms traces to the first seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, granted under a royal charter issued by King Charles I in 1629. That original seal showed a Native American figure with a downward arrow and the English motto 'Come over and help us,' a phrase drawn from the Bible. This design remained in use through the colonial period.

On July 28, 1775, the revolutionary General Court commissioned a new seal. Paul Revere engraved this version, which replaced the Native American figure with an English-American man holding the Magna Carta. The new seal also adopted the Latin motto Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem, a phrase written around 1659 and attributed to the English republican writer Algernon Sidney.

On December 13, 1780, Governor John Hancock and the Council approved a new design prepared by Nathan Cushing. This version returned to the Native American imagery of the 1629 original while keeping the Latin motto from the 1775 revolutionary seal. Paul Revere engraved the new design and submitted his bill on December 23, 1780. The legislature formally standardized the design in 1885.

In 1898, illustrator Edmund H. Garrett produced a new rendering of the coat of arms after consulting historical and ethnological sources. For the figure's proportions, he used a skeleton of a Native American discovered in Winthrop, Massachusetts. For the facial features, he used a photograph of an Ojibwe chief known as Little Shell. Garrett's version became the official standard rendering and remains the basis for the design used today.

Every element on the Massachusetts coat of arms has a specific visual and historical meaning established in the 1780 legal description or the official explanations that followed.

The coat of arms holds two separate ideas in one design. The Native American figure with the downward arrow represents peace and the original inhabitants of the land. The sword arm and the motto represent the willingness to fight for liberty. Massachusetts placed both ideas on its official emblem in 1780, the year the Commonwealth's constitution took effect.

The downward arrow is the most important visual detail on the shield. It is the difference between a figure about to fight and a figure choosing not to. The 1629 colonial seal used the same image for the same reason, showing the Native American as a figure of welcome rather than threat.

The broadsword above the shield completes the argument the motto makes. Peace is the goal, the design says, but only a peace that comes with liberty. This position, written in 1659 by a man who would later be executed for opposing tyranny, gave Massachusetts a motto that matched the reason the Revolution was fought.

The Massachusetts coat of arms has gone through several distinct versions since 1629. Each major change reflected a shift in the political and historical situation of Massachusetts, from colonial dependency to revolutionary independence to statehood.

The original 1629 seal used a missionary framing, with the phrase 'Come over and help us' attributed to the Native American figure. The 1775 revolutionary seal dropped the Native American entirely and used an English-American figure instead. The 1780 design restored the Native American figure while keeping the revolutionary motto. Later standard renderings preserved the 1780 structure rather than redesigning it.