In an era when federal policy was premised on the assumption that Native people could achieve American success only by abandoning Native identity — that civilization and indigeneity were incompatible, that the path forward required assimilation and the erasure of what came before — Parker’s life was a refutation conducted in the most public arena available.

He had been a Seneca man when he walked into the McLean house.

He was a Seneca man when he walked out.

The surrender document he wrote that afternoon did not change that, and neither did anything else the country asked of him or denied him in the years that followed.

The leading name went on.

— END —

— EXTENDED SECTIONS —

The World the Haudenosaunee Built