Behind the Scenes Minis: Complicated Ely

Tracy relays how Sarah Winnemucca's story inspired this week's episodes, though they were recorded about a month apart, and also how Ely S. Parker is one of the most complicated figures she has ever written about. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and Happy Friday. I Am Tray c V. Wilson,
and I'm Holly Frye. This week number one. Just so
listeners know, we're having to record this completely over because
of a technical problem. Hopefully just the behind the scenes,
not the actual episodes. Those sounded okay, fingers crossed. But

(00:32):
in addition to that, because of our travel schedule and
also how we like to have two part episodes run
the same week without other stuff in between them, we
are recording this episode four weeks after the one that
we recorded on Sarah Winnemucca, but they are only coming

(00:52):
out like two weeks apart. Yeah, so it's gonna feel
kind of like there's a theme for a period of
time I'm in the podcast that in terms of when
we actually recorded things farther apart. Also researching Sarah Winnemaca
and the brief reference to the peace policy in that
episode was definitely what led me to wanting to talk

(01:15):
about Eli S. Parker, who one of the most complicated
people I have needed to write an episode about. Yeah,
because we've talked about a lot of Indigenous people in
the nineteenth century who have, to a greater or lesser degree,

(01:36):
felt like they and their people needed to assimilate with
white culture in order to survive. And I am in
no way judging any person who is a descendant of
any of those people and is like living with the
ramifications of those decisions. I feel like it's impossible to

(01:56):
know which decisions would have been the best ones in
those contents. But this is the person who has had
the most powerful and the most power and the most
influence in terms of the impact of those decisions. Right, Right,
We've talked about a lot of people who have either
themselves wanted to assimilate with white culture or they wanted

(02:18):
their children or their people to assimilate, and their decisions
were impacting themselves and their families and maybe also their
specific tribe or nation. And then Eli S. Parker became
the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and was making these policies
related to all of the indigenous people in the United States,

(02:42):
and you know, a lot of those decisions continuing to
have impact and influence today.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, we didn't refer back to it really in the episode,
but we mentioned at the top of the episode that
his mother had had this vision of him being this
person who succeeded in both worlds, and you know, and
I always wonder how much that was informing his decisions,

(03:11):
whether consciously or subconsciously. Right, I'll star Wars it up
and make it about how Anakin is told he's the
chosen one and that ultimately like causes problems and whether
or not this is a case of like all of
that weight being put on him inherently would have probably
impacted his decisions, whether he realized it or not.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the episode, we talked
about this documentary from nineteen ninety nine, which obviously now
is twenty five years ago. What shush, no, it isn't
it six years ago? So weird, and that it was
shown on PBS. It was still available for me to
watch on one of the PBS websites. But they talked

(03:55):
to a number of indigenous historians and scholars leaders as
part of that documentary, and a lot of them really
talked about his personal ambition and how they felt like
his personal ambition had led him to make decisions that
were a betrayal of his people in his roots, and

(04:18):
that reminded me a little bit of something we talked
about with Sarah Winnemaca about how her people a big
focus was everyone making decisions collaboratively, and so the fact
that she went and did things on her own and
made decisions on her own was really controversial. And I
see some parallels there to Eli Parker clearly having a

(04:44):
desire to, you know, based on his own writing and
things that he said that himself, like having a desire
to really excel at things like the English language and
really wanting to get into positions of power, and then
how that was viewed among the Seneca and among the
Seneca who were being directly impacted by decisions that he

(05:07):
was making, like with Ulysses Grant in Washington, and all
of that. Truly a remarkable life though, Like even if
we stopped before becoming Commissioner of any and Affairs, the
process of like going through an education and becoming an
engineer and doing the engineering work that he did, and

(05:28):
then being the person who wrote out the surrender terms
at Appomatics during the Civil War, all of those things
are fascinating to me. He's actually been depicted in a
couple of movies related to the Civil War. I don't
remember the names of either of them, but in one
of them he doesn't have any lines, and in the

(05:49):
other one he has like one line, which really does
not in any way encapsulate his very long relationship with
Grant and how close the two of them were and
how involved they were in one another's work.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
So, yes, whatever's happening on your weekend, I hope that
it is as great as it could possibly be. We
will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow, and we
will have a brand new episode on Monday. Stuff you

(06:28):
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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