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Ely Samuel Parker, or Hasanoanda ("Leading Name"), was born in 1828 at Indian Falls, on the Tonawanda (Seneca) Reservation in western New York State. He descended from a politically powerful family, and his mother belonged to the Wolf Clan, the same clan as the famed Seneca orator Red Jacket. In 1851 the Seneca formally acknowledged Parker's role as a community leader and "raised" him to a position as one of the fifty sachems of the Iroquois Confederacy. He was just twenty-three years old. Along with his new status in the community came a new name: Donehogawa, or "Open Door." This was the customary name bestowed upon the Iroquois sachem who guarded the western door of both the physical and symbolic longhouse against outsiders.

In 1857 Parker negotiated a treaty that ended the decades-long land dispute with the Ogden Land Company, an important victory for the Seneca leader. In 1861 he alleviated some of the community tensions unleashed by the legacy of the land dispute and, in his first attempt at political reform, reshaped the reservation government by instituting a system of elective offices and legislative mandates.

In 1863, during the Civil War, Parker was granted a commission in the Union Army at the rank of captain and joined General Ulysses S. Grant at the battle of Vicksburg. After the war ended, Parker worked as Grant's aide-decamp and personal adviser on Indian affairs. In this capacity Parker developed a four-point program of reform for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and submitted it to the War Department in 1867. This document served, at least in part, as the foundation of Grant's peace policy, an important reform movement in post-Civil War Indian affairs. After his inauguration as president, Grant appointed Parker as the first Indian commissioner of the BIA, a post that he accepted, optimistically convinced that his experience working with legislators and policy makers would allow him to implement the reform agenda reflected in his 1867 plan. In his first annual report as commissioner in 1869, Parker wrote about the various ways his reform program had begun to be executed. This report focused closely on developments related to congressional funding, education, and the establishment of an oversight board, all issues that would continue to hold much significance in Indian affairs. It did not reflect, however, the fierce opposition he faced from a group of conservative, Christian, elitist, non-Native reformers.

In 1870 one of these men, William Welsh, filed formal charges against Parker, alleging that Parker had committed fraud and had willfully mismanaged the BIA. Although a House of Representatives investigation exonerated Parker in 1871, he resigned from his position. His resignation letter stated that congressional legislation and the actions of the Board of Indian Commissioners had removed all the power and influence of his office and that therefore he could no longer hold the position. Following his career as a public servant, Parker became close friends with Harriet Maxwell Converse, a poet and Indian political activist, and aided her as an informant and confidant. In 1885 he wrote a very insightful and powerful letter to her, in which he reflected upon the history of federal Indian policy and reform. This letter revealed the frustrations and anger that many Indian policy reformers felt about the direction of Indian policy in the nineteenth century.

References:

1. Armstrong, William H. Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union General and Seneca Chief. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1978.

2. Conable, Mary H. "A Steady Enemy: The Ogden Land Company and the Seneca Indians." PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1994.

3. Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.

4. Konkle, Maureen. Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827-1863. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

5. Michaelsen, Scott. The Limits of Multiculturalism: Interrogating the Origins of American Anthropology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

6. Morgan, Lewis Henry. The League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois. New York: Mark H. Newman & Co., 1851.

7. Parker, Arthur Caswell. The Life of General Ely S. Parker: Last Grand Sachem of the Iroquois and General Grant's Military Secretary. Buffalo, N.Y.: Buffalo Historical Society, 1919.

8. Tooker, Elisabeth. "Ely S. Parker." In American Indian Intellectuals: of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Margot Liberty. Norman: University Press of Oklahoma, 2002.

9. Waltmann, Henry G. "Ely Samuel Parker 1869-71." In The Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 1824-1977, ed. Robert M. Kvasnicka and Herman J. Viola. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

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