A Native American leader who enlisted in the Union Army has been posthumously admitted to the New York bar after 176 years

By Ray Sanchez, CNN

(CNN) — Ely S. Parker, a Tonawanda Seneca from western New York, never took no for an answer.

At the start of the Civil War, Parker’s offer to enlist was rejected outright by another New Yorker, Secretary of State William H. Seward, who – according to historians – told the Seneca leader the war dividing America “was an affair between white men and one in which the Indian was not called on to act.”

“Go home, cultivate your farm, and we will settle our own troubles among ourselves without any Indian aid,” Seward told Parker, who also unsuccessfully petitioned Congress to grant him US citizenship so he could enlist. Native Americans would not be made citizens until 1924.

But Parker had connections: He was a close friend of future Union Army Commander Ulysses S. Grant, who eventually intervened and endorsed his commission as captain. He would become a top aide to the Union Army’s most revered general.

On Friday, in a ceremonial courtroom in downtown Buffalo, supporters and direct descendants of Parker gathered for a celebration of his resiliency, with the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, Fourth Department posthumously admitting him to the bar – 176 years after he had been denied because Native Americans were not considered US citizens.

“The posthumous admission to the bar is fitting and deserving of a man who lived his life with integrity,” said C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, an associate professor of history at George Mason University who has written extensively about Parker. “He didn’t give up. He continued to fight for what he believed in.”

Parker is the first Native American posthumously admitted to the bar in US history, according to legal experts. The petition for admission was made on behalf of his great-great-great-grandniece, Melissa Parker Leonard, whose father, Alvin, often played the chief in historical reenactments. The effort dates to 2020, when former Texas appellate Justice John Browning, a law professor at Faulkner University, first approached Alvin Parker, who died in 2022.

“Despite all the odds, all the adversity, the Seneca people still reside in western New York,” Parker Leonard, a 42-year-old educator and vice president of The Buffalo History Museum, told CNN.

“It’s recognition not only for Ely, but for anyone who had a role in keeping us here … I really believe my relatives back then, 200 years ago, were desperately trying to maintain their land because they were thinking of us and the generations to come.”

‘Weight of his community was on his shoulders’

At the Erie County Court Building on Friday, the bar admission ceremony opened with a recitation of the Thanksgiving address – an invocation within Indigenous Haudenosaunee communities that gives thanks to the earth and its abundance.

“Yes, the day has come,” said Justice Gerald Whalen, presiding judge of the appellate division, calling the moment “the last steps on the long road to correcting a historic injustice.”

“Despite his exclusion, Ely Parker served his community, his nation and this country in a manner that will serve as an inspiration to generations to come,” Whalen said.

Parker was born in 1828 on the Tonawanda Seneca Reservation in New York. His birth name was Ha-sa-no-an-da, which means “Leading Name,” according to the bar admission petition and other biographical information. During his formative years, in 1838, their ancestral land was taken from the Senecas through a treaty historians have called fraudulent.

He studied at a Baptist mission school, where he adopted the name of a minister named “Ely.” The petition said Parker excelled in debate and oratory in White schools. He learned to defend himself in more ways than one.

“Once or twice I have been severely abused,” he once wrote in a letter to a friend, according to the Historical Society of the New York Courts. “But I returned blow for blow with savage ferocity. Whether I gained the upper hand of my antagonist I leave the public to decide. For mind you, these quarrels were public. Bad business, but it could not be helped.”

He was just a teen, the petition said, when Parker began using his mastery of English to serve as “translator, scribe, and interpreter” during meetings in Washington between government officials and Tonawanda Seneca leaders.

“He wrote letters back home and it’s clear that this was very emotionally draining,” Genetin-Pilawa told CNN. “It was taxing on him. I think that he felt like a lot of pressure from his community, like the weight of his community was on his shoulders.”

Parker’s law studies started when he was 18 with a law firm in Ellicottville, a village south of Buffalo. With no formal licensing requirements at the time, most lawyers received their training “reading the law,” preparing arguments and sitting in on proceedings, according to the petition – which said Parker was “well-educated and steeped in the law” by the age of 21.

Still, Parker was denied bar admission. New York’s highest court had “ruled that only natural-born or naturalized citizens could be admitted to practice and, as a Seneca, he was neither,” according to the Historical Society of the New York Courts.

‘His best changed the course of our history’

Parker instead turned to studying civil engineering, which led to work on projects such as the Erie Canal and the construction of a customs house and post office in Illinois, where he befriended Grant, according to historians. But he continued to use his legal training to serve the Seneca people, embarking with another lawyer on a 20-year battle to win the Tonawanda Seneca ancestral lands, the petition said. The effort secured two “rare victories for Native American rights in the High Court.”

During Friday’s bar admission ceremony, one speaker lamented Parker is largely remembered for his role as a top aide to Grant during and after the Civil War. He was part of Grant’s inner circle and was present at Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. He is credited with drafting the articles of surrender.

“After today, Ely’s legacy will no longer appear as a mere footnote in the story of Ulysses S. Grant,” said Lee Redeye, a Seneca attorney and deputy counsel for the Seneca Nation of Indians, who, along with Browning, filed the petition for Parker’s admission. “From this moment forward, Ely’s life will stand tall on its own merits, an example for all native people aspiring to do great things.”

He added, “I wish that I could declare that the battles Ely fought in his lifetime are relics of the past, but even now, in this so-called modern age, Indigenous people face a relentless onslaught from external forces determined to erase our way of life.”

When Grant was elected president, Parker became the first Native American appointed to the post of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, according to the petition. He experienced financial troubles later in life and worked as a clerk with the New York City Police Department until the time of his death in 1895.

Ely Parker’s posthumous admission is the eighth in US legal history, according to Browning. Previous cases involved Asian American and Black American aspiring attorneys from the 19th and early 20th centuries who were also denied admission due to the color of their skin.

“This moment is deeply personal for our family. It allows Ely to rest in the knowledge that he did his best and that his best changed the course of our history,” Parker Leonard said.

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