Hello and welcome to Erichoy History and Legends.

I'm Caleb.

And I am Andrew.

We are continuing with our series on the illustrious Mr. Ely S. Parker.

Last episode, we talked about his early life, his education, his diplomacy with the United States and his job as a civil engineer.

And where he finds himself now is in between jobs and at the brink of the Civil War, the United States breaking out.

And I'm going to sum this up.

What had happened was we saw all these Native American peoples being removed from their

land and forced to move west across the Mississippi and into the Oklahoma Territory. With all

these native peoples depopulated from the eastern United States that left all kinds of area

that opened up for agriculture and farming.

And this led to more tension between the northern and southern states because you had people joining to rush into these southern and western states.

And they wanted to make sure that slavery was instituted in these places because then they could keep their balance of power higher

in the U.S. Congress, where they could get more senators and more members of the House of Representatives

to make policies that would guarantee the rights of the southern territories and states.

So that's where we find ourselves in, and states are rushing around to be declared slave or free and then Abraham Lincoln gets elected president and all heck breaks loose.

Now you may think, hey, Parker, he became a captain in the New York State militia, right?

So he's probably getting ready for war too.

But no, he wasn't called upon for his services in engineering in the military

or anything. So after he finished his contracts in Illinois, he moved back to the Tonawanda

reservation and began farming. He quickly became very bored, Andrew. Farming was not the life for a man like him. Many of the

Seneca were gearing up for war looking to join the United States Army. Parker went and spoke to his

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