(1828-95)
Seneca sachem, military secretary to General Ulysses S. Grant, and Commissioner of Indian Affairs
Born into a leading Seneca family and steeped in the history and lore of the Iroquois Confederacy, Ely Samuel Parker was also well educated in the white world in which he finally chose to live. Through his friendship with Ulysses S. Grant, he became the general's military secretary. In 1865 he transcribed the terms of surrender Grant offered General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse. When Grant became president, he appointed Parker Commissioner of Indian Affairs, making him the first Indian to hold that office.
Parker's parents, William Parker (Jo-no-es-sto-wa) and Elizabeth Parker (Ga-ont-gwut-twus), lived on the Tonawanda Reservation in western New York State. William, a veteran of the War of 1812 and a chief of the Tonawanda Senecas, had taken the name Parker from a British officer who had been adopted by the Indians. Elizabeth was a descendant of the prophet Handsome Lake and a grandniece of the Seneca orator Red Jacket. Ely Parker, one of their seven children, was born on the Tonawanda Reservation sometime in 1828 and was given the name Ha-sa-no-an-da (Leading Name), but when he attended the nearby Baptist mission school, he also acquired the name Ely (which he pronounced to rhyme with freely). He continued his education in western New York State, attending Yates Academy in Orleans County and Cayuga Academy in Aurora and then reading law with attorneys in Ellicottville. When he was refused admission to the New York bar because he was not a citizen, Parker turned to engineering, learning that profession by working on the New York canals.
During the course of his education, Parker also represented the Tonawanda Senecas in Albany, New York, and Washington, D.C., in a dispute with the Ogden Land Company. At the age of eighteen, Parker met personally with President James K. Polk and later boasted that he had ridden about Washington in Mrs. Polk's carriage. He also met with Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan and in 1857 helped negotiate a treaty that preserved most of the Tonawanda Reservation for the Senecas.
In 1851, Parker was elected one of the fifty sachems of the Iroquois Confederacy and was given the title Do-ne-ho-ga-wa (Open Door), the keeper of the western door of the Iroquois longhouse. Intelligent, articulate, and well versed in both Iroquois and white cultures, Parker became a valuable informant for Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and Lewis Henry Morgan in their studies of the Iroquois. When Morgan published his pioneering League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois, he dedicated the book to Parker, calling it "the fruit of our joint researches."
Parker's engineering skills led to positions with the New York State Canal Board, the Chesapeake and Albemarle Ship Canal in Virginia and North Carolina, and the U.S. Treasury Department in Detroit, Michigan; Galena, Illinois; and Dubuque, Iowa. At Galena, he met Ulysses S. Grant, who, during the Civil War, appointed Parker to his personal military staff. Parker remained on Grant's staff after the war, eventually reaching the rank of brevet brigadier general. He also served on two commissions to the western Indian tribes and assisted the Commissioner of Indian Affairs before his own appointment as commissioner in 1869.
As commissioner, Parker was responsible for the federal government's relations with the almost three hundred thousand Indians living in the United States and its territories. During the Grant administration the government dealt with the various Indian tribes through agents that were nominated by religious bodies. This departure, known as "Grant's Peace Policy," was intended to intensify the effort to "civilize" native people. The theory was to gather Indians onto reservations, where they could be introduced to "agriculture, to manufactures, and civilization," and to use military force on all who resisted. Parker, himself a military man, fully concurred with this approach. Working with religious bodies as well as the military, Grant and Parker hoped for justice and peace in Indian affairs.
Parker regarded his two years as commissioner as successful, particularly in preventing war with the western tribes, but his service as commissioner was clouded by controversy. The Episcopal reformer William Welsh soon brought charges of corruption against Parker, inspiring a congressional investigation. The investigating committee cleared Parker of wrongdoing but did question his judgment, and when, on the committee's recommendation, Congress passed a law limiting the commissioner's authority, Parker resigned and left Washington.
Parker retired to Fairfield, Connecticut, where he entered the business world. Business losses, however, forced him to take a minor clerical position with the New York City Police Department, a post he held for nineteen years. During his years in New York City, Parker was occasionally called upon for information about the Iroquois or to speak at major events such as the reinterment of Red Jacket's remains and a commemoration of the Delaware chief Tammany. Parker died on August 30, 1895. He was buried in Fairfield, but in 1897 his body was reinterred in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.
Physically, Parker was a strong person; he stood five feet eight inches tall and weighed two hundred pounds. He found it necessary to use his strength occasionally to defend himself against those who resented his living in white society. In personal relations, he was usually silent and reserved, although he could be assertive in public speaking or writing and was well read and exceptionally knowledgeable. Parker was active in Freemasonry and, after the Civil War, in various veterans' organizations.
In 1867, he married a younger white woman, Minnie Orton Sackett (1849-1932). The couple had one daughter, Maud Theresa (1878-1956). In his later years, Parker questioned whether he had been right in abandoning his Indian heritage. Yet, had he stayed on the Tonawanda Reservation, his remarkable abilities would almost certainly have been little known, whereas his successful career in the white world demonstrated those abilities to the entire nation.
See also
Indian-White Relations in the United States, 1776-1900;
Peace Policy;
Reformers and Reform Groups.
William H. Armstrong, Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union General and Seneca Chief (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1978); Arthur C. Parker, The Life of General Ely S. Parker, Last Grand Sachem of the Iroquois and General Grant's Military Secretary Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, vol. 23 (Buffalo, N.Y., 1919).
William H. Armstrong
Burton Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Burton, Ohio
