Arthur Caswell Parker, archaeologist, historian, and museologist, was born on April 5, 1881, on the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation of New York. He was the son of Frederick Ely Parker of the Seneca nation and Geneva Griswold Parker, a teacher on the reservation of European descent. In 1903, A. C. Parker was adopted into the tribe and given the Seneca name Gawaso Wanneh (Big Snowflake). His uncle, Nicholson Henry Parker, was an influential Seneca leader, and his grandfather's younger brother was Ely Samuel Parker, Seneca chief as well as brigadier general and military secretary to General Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War. With an upbringing influenced by both traditional Seneca religion and Christianity and a strong interest in history, A.C. Parker went on to write many articles and become a noted authority on American Indian culture. Parker founded the Society of American Indians in 1911 and edited their publication, American Indian Magazine, from 1915-1920, and he directed the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration-sponsored and WPA-funded Indian Arts Project in the 1930s. Parker was the director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences from 1924 to 1945, and he was elected the first President of the Society for American Archaeology in 1935. While residing near Naples, New York, Arthur Caswell Parker died on January 1, 1955, at the age of 73.