AUGUST 31:

August 31, 1666:  Mohawk Chief Agariata is attending a peace conference in Quebec between the Iroquois and the French. Governor Alexandre de Proville asks, during a dinner, if anyone knew who killed his son a few months ago. Agariata brags that he did it. The governor becomes so angry, he has Agariata seized, and hung. This ends the peace process. Governor de Proville leads French troops against the Mohawks, himself.

August 31, 1778:  Wappinger chief, Daniel Nimham, was killed fighting with American forces in the Revolutionary War battle at Kingsbridge.  At the time of his death he had been chief for almost 38 years.  While he sided with the British in the French and Indian War, English authorities would not help him retrieve lands appropriated by settlers in New York along the Hudson River.  Nimham (sometimes spelled "Ninham") and his warriors would fight on the American side during the revolution.

August 31, 1905:  Ely Samuel Parker (Donehogawa) died in New York City. During his lifetime he was a Seneca chief, an engineer, a lawyer, the New York City Building Superintendent, a Brigadier-General in the Civil War where he wrote the surrender papers signed at Appomattox, and the first indian Commissioner of Indian Affairs.  Born in 1828, he was buried in Buffalo, New York.

1990 Schreiber Ontario - CP Rail sues Pays Plat Ojibwa Band for $37 million for blockading rail lines Aug 21-23 in sympathy with Oka occupation; also suit against Pic Mobert band at White River.

1988 Ottawa Ontario - Canada-US Free Trade Agreement becomes law.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From http://hawk.hama-med.ac.jp/dbk/parker.html
 

ELY SAMUEL PARKER (1828-95)

A Seneca, Ely Parker was not Red Jacket's grandson, even though you often see that in print. Ely's mother was Elizabeth Johnson (c1800-1862) of the wolf clan. Her mother was the sister of Jemmy Johnson, another famous chief at Tonawanda (1774-1856) and the chosen successor to Handsome Lake, the Seneca prophet. Jemmy and his sister were the children of Red Jacket's sister. All of them were also members of the wolf clan, which means that Ely was Red Jacket's great-grandnephew. In Seneca tradition, however, granduncles (peers of your grandparents or great grandparents) are called "grandfathers". Therein lies the confusion.

Ely became a condoled chief in 1852 upon the death of John Blacksmith (chief of the wolf clan at Tonawanda). In the Haudenosaunee (6 Nations, Iroquois) world, there are 50 chiefs, each having their own (condoled) name. When one chief dies, another one is chosen by the clan mothers and is given the condoled name. So when Ely was chosen chief of the wolf clan at Tonawanda, he was given the name Donehogawa--the name John Blacksmith held before him. That name is still used at Tonawanda today. Ely's Seneca name was Ha sa no an da, meaning "leading name". He took the name Ely (as he said, rhymes with "free-ly") after a well known Baptist minister/teacher in the area. Parker was a name given by a British soldier (named Parker) to the family, as an honor for treating him so well when he was a captive during the Revolutionary War.

Ely's military career: he was in the militia prior to the Civil War. He was appointed assistant adjutant-general with rank of captain in June 1863; commissioned first lieutenant, US Cavalry in 1866 (he resigned in 1869); brevitted brigadier-general of volunteers, Apr 9 1865; and captain, major, lieutenant-colonel and brigadier-general, US Army on March 2, 1867.(this is all according to Arthur Parker.) At the age of 14, Ely was first sent to Washington, DC as a messenger/representative for the Tonawanda Senecas who were trying to fight the fraudulent 1842 Compromise Treaty of Buffalo Creek. In that treaty (and in its predecessor, the 1838 Buffalo Creek Treaty), the Tonawanda Senecas lost all of their lands in Western New York. Ely remained a representative and advocate until 1857 when the Senecas were able to buy back part of that land.

Parker became Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, not because of his efforts in the Civil War, but because of his friendship with General Ulysses S. Grant. Because of his association with him, Parker had the "ear" of many politicians in Washington both during and after the war who were wrestling with the "Indian Problem". Grant appointed him commissioner in 1868. (Grant appointed many of his former Civil War staff to important positions after he was elected president). Parker was the first Native American to hold a federal office. It was Ely Parker's ideas that were associated with the Grant administration's "Peace Plan" which abolished the treaty system and advocated "assimilate, educate and Christianize". He also stated that if you wanted the Indians to remain peaceful, the government had to deliver what it had promised when they had made treaties with them. (This is why, he thought, the treaty system should be abolished. It just didn't work, and it made the Native Peoples in the US angry, unsettled, and distrustful of the US government). In 1871, Parker resigned that commission after being tried for fraud by the US Senate (he was exonerated). Ely died on August 30, 1895 from complications from diabetes. He was buried first at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield, Conn, where he, his wife and his daughter lived. Parker was reburied in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, NY on January 20, 1897 near the graves of several other Senecas, including Red Jacket.
 

Website Author's Credits: I would like to thank Jare Cardinal, historian and manager, Community Relations at the Rochester Museum & Science Center in Rochester, N.Y. for help in improving this page. I would also like to recommend two books: WARRIOR IN TWO CAMPS: ELY S. PARKER UNION GENERAL AND SENECA CHIEF (Syracuse University Press, 1989), by William H. Armstrong; and THE LIFE OF GENERAL ELY S. PARKER (Buffalo Historical Society, 1919), by Arthur C. Parker.