Volume 13 Number 1
October 1973

Neal Fitz Simons

GENERAL LEE looked pensively at the document as it was handed to him by the bearded Union colonel. He probably did not notice the face of the colonel who had just transcribed the terms of surrender dictated by his chief, General Grant. Later the Confederate general was to learn that Grant’s military secretary was a Sachem of the Seneca Nation. Do-Ne-Ho-Geh-Weh, also known as Ely Spencer Parker.

Thirty-seven years earlier Parker was born on the Tonawanda Reservation in upstate New York. His father had been a friend of the great chief Red Jacket and Ely was his tribal grandson. The young Senecan had a carefree youth, but later attended Yates Academy and still later Cayuga Academy, but neither was far from home. From school Parker returned to the reservation, but he grew restless with this bucolic life and when he was about 21 entered the civil engineering profession as a second assistant engineer on the western end of the Erie Canal. A year later, in 1851, he was promoted to first assistant and for four more years he served as an engineer making improvements on the Erie Canal, the enlargement of which had begun 15 years earlier. With this experience, Parker received his first major appointment as chief engineer of the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal. This waterway began in an inlet south of Norfolk and went southeasterly into Currituck Sound which, in turn, led to Albemarle Sound.

His next job took him back to the brisk climate of the Great Lakes where he worked as a "constructing engineer" for the Lighthouse District of Huron, Michigan and Superior. About 1857 the federal government began construction of several buildings at Galena, Illinois, and Parker was put in charge of their construction.

Returning to the Tonawanda Reservation, the Senecan asked advice of his father, a Sachem who had served under Scott in the War of 1812. He was told to follow his conscience and that if he wanted to serve only patience was required. Just before the Battle of Gettysburg, his application was approved and he accepted a captain’s commission in the volunteers.

For a few months he served as a divisional engineer, but his skill as a staff officer was recognized and, as such, he was given increasingly responsible positions until August of 1864 when he joined the personal staff of his old friend, U. S. Grant. After Appomattox, having obtained the rank of Brigadier General, U. S. Volunteers, he remained with General Grant. Shortly after the General was sworn in as President, Parker resigned from the army to serve Grant as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

It may have been fortuitous, but during Parker’s administration (April, 1869-August, 1871) of the Indian Affairs Bureau, there was no significant hostile activity by the Indians. However, political forces overwhelmed Parker and in 1871 Congress reasserted the Jacksonian proposition that treaties with Indian tribes were absorbed and henceforth no more would be made. Further, corrupters known as the "Indian Ring" had infiltrated both Grant’s Cabinet and Congress. Five years later the forces that forced Parker’s resignation were exposed in the Belknap scandal and Parker himself was vindicated.

In 1871, the ex-commissioner and ex-general decided to return to the profession he had left. But although only 43 years old, the disconsolate Parker was to write some years later, "Before the war I was in the successful practice of an honorable profession (but I found during my absence) the profession ran away from me; other and younger men had stepped in and filled the place, old men were discarded."

His post-war engineering career is hazy; apparently he received no major consultantships. He later accepted an appointment with the New York City Police Department which included responsibility for engineering and maintenance of the department’s facilities. He also decided to try his hand in the financial world, and by adroitly handling his money, he seems to have amassed a small fortune, at least enough to retire to a beautiful country home and farm near Fairfield, Connecticut. It was here that Ely Parker died on August 30, 1895. However, Do-Ne-Ho-Geh-Weh ("Keeper of the Western Door") was interred in the land of the Senecas in the shadow of the monument of his idol, Red Jacket, in Buffalo, New York.