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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.