Ely S. Parker and Ulysses S. Grant (Part 2)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. This is part two of
our episode on Eli S. Parker. In part one, we

(00:23):
talked about his early life and his many years long
involvement in the Tonawanda Seneca's two decade fight to have
their reservation land restored in western New York. That effort
led to a new treaty being signed between the United
States and the Tonawanda Seneca in eighteen fifty seven. Parker

(00:44):
had also trained as an engineer, and that same year
he was appointed to work for the Treasury Department, overseeing
the construction of a customs house in Galena, Illinois. In Galina,
he met someone who would become a big part of
a lot of the rest of his life, and that
was Ulysseses Grant. That's where we are picking up today.

(01:06):
This is a heavier episode than Monday's was. There will
be various discussion of warfare and massacres, and will also
be reading from some historical documents that include racist descriptions
of indigenous peoples. When Eli S. Parker met future Civil

(01:27):
War general and US President Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was
working as a clerk in his family's leather goods store.
After graduating from West Point and serving in the Mexican
American War, Grant had resigned from the army and taken
over a farm that his wife's father gave him. That
farm failed, and Grant started a real estate venture, which

(01:49):
also failed. Alcohol may have been a factory. In all
of this, Parker described Grant as reminding him of the Seneca. Apparently,
Grant did not like to make small talk with customers.
He was quiet and reserved, and he did not open
up to people until he got to know them. And
when people came into the store, he'd go into the back,

(02:12):
which is obviously not a great sales tactic. Over time,
these two men became friends. Yeah, it absolutely did not
seem in this moment that Eli Parker was becoming friends
with a future president of the United States. When the
Civil War began in eighteen sixty one, Grant returned to service.

(02:33):
Parker went home and asked his father, William's, permission to
join the army, as William had done during the War
of eighteen twelve. One of Parker's frequently repeated stories was
about showing his father an illustration of the US Army
generals from Harper's Weekly. His father pointed to Grant and

(02:54):
said that man will be the great captain. If you
follow that man, you too will become a great war captain.
But Parker's efforts to join the military were initially denied
because he was indigenous. He tried to recruit a Seneca
force for the war, but the army denied that too.
Parker even wrote a letter directly to Secretary of State

(03:17):
William Seward. According to a letter Parker wrote to his
friend Harriet Maxwell Converse much later on, Seward replied, quote,
the fight must be made and settled by the white
men alone. Go home, cultivate your farm, and we will
settle our own troubles without any Indian aid. But the

(03:37):
army was short on engineers, and Parker was an engineer,
and eventually, apparently thanks to the involvement of Ulysses S. Grant,
Parker received a commission to become a captain, which he
accepted on June fourth, eighteen sixty three. He became chief
engineer of the seventh Division under Brigadier General John Eugene's.

(04:01):
Parker served in this capacity until eighteen sixty four, when
President Abraham Lincoln appointed Grant as General in chief. Grant
then recruited Parker onto his staff as his aide de camp,
and Parker was promoted to lieutenant colonel. Parker essentially acted
as Grant's secretary, and his education was a big asset

(04:22):
in this role, as was his immaculate handwriting. While he
was working as an engineer and a secretary rather than
being in a combat role, his work often took him
into the line of fire, such as carrying messages through
active battle zones. During his service, Parker also became seriously
ill with fever and agu which has been described as

(04:46):
either malaria or dysentery, and it was treated with quinine
and whiskey. Parker's most memorable act during the Civil War
took place at Appomattox Courthouse on April ninth, eighteen sixty five,
when General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Grant's adjutant, General Colonel
Theodore S. Bawers, was supposed to write out the formal

(05:09):
copy of the terms of surrender that was in the
form of a brief letter written from Grant to Lee.
Bower's penmanship was too poor, or maybe he was just
overcome by the magnitude of what was happening to do
this well. I found contradictory descriptions. The task fell instead

(05:31):
to Ele S. Parker, who also worked with Grants on
drafting those surrender terms. Another often repeated story from Parker's
life was about meeting Lee at the surrender. In Parker's account,
Lee seemed startled for a moment when he saw him.
Most sources interpret this as Lee initially thinking that Parker

(05:53):
was black, but then Lee shook his hand and said,
I am glad to see one real American here, and
to that Parker replied, we are all Americans. On the
day of the surrender, Parker was promoted to brevet brigadier general.
Brevet means that while he was given the higher title,

(06:14):
he did not receive the pay or the authority that
came with that rank. This was really meant to be
an honorific and recognition of outstanding service. This was the
highest rank awarded to any Indigenous soldier during the Civil War.
After serving in the Army during the Civil War, Parker
was also regarded as a US citizen, when most other

(06:37):
Indigenous people still were not. Indigenous people in the United
States didn't automatically have US citizenship until the Indian Citizen
Act of nineteen twenty four, and that was controversial because
some Indigenous people did not want citizenship or just did
not want to have it unilaterally granted to them by
the United States. After the war, Parker worked with the

(07:00):
War Department and was part of the Southern Treaty Commission,
which renegotiated treaties with tribes that had sided with the Confederacy.
Under their new treaties, these tribes were required to free
anyone they had enslaved and to be placed under more
stringent federal jurisdiction. Some of the terms addressed in these
negotiations continue to have ramifications today, including issues of whether

(07:25):
the people enslaved by these tribes or today those people's
descendants are eligible for tribal citizenship. Delegates from the Choctaw
and Chickasaw nations are quoted as saying, the fact that
the United States Government have seen fit to include a
member of an Indian tribe with its commissioners has inspired
us with confidence. We are anxious to have the benefit

(07:47):
of his presence and council in any deliberations or interviews.
Parker also started working as Grant's military advisor on Indigenous affairs,
and in eighteen sixty seven Vin the two men worked
together on a four point plan to establish a quote
permanent peace between the United States and indigenous nations. There

(08:10):
had been a lot of warfare and a lot of
that was still ongoing, and so they were looking for
a different way to do things to try to bring
that warfare to a stop. This included a plan to
reform the Bureau of Indian Affairs and to transfer it
from the Department of the Interior to the War Department.

(08:31):
Parker thought the War Department was a better choice because
there were widespread issues with civilian agents working in collusion
with traders to basically do as little as possible while
making as much money for themselves as possible. This was
a whole network of corruption and graft known as the
Indian Ring. He thought that soldiers would be motivated by

(08:53):
honor and duty and would follow their orders, and could
also be removed through the chain of command if they
did not follow orders. This may seem surprising considering that
army units had already carried out multiple massacres against indigenous peoples,
and Parker knew about these massacres and other misconduct. It's

(09:15):
possible that Parker believed that a smaller, professionalized peacetime military
would be less prone to these kinds of atrocities than
a wartime force largely built through conscription, but it's clear
that he thought that white settlers were a much bigger
threat to Indigenous people than the army was, and that
the army was more equipped to deal with white encroachment

(09:36):
onto Indigenous lands than anyone else. In the years after
the Civil War, the War Department also had a more functional,
established bureaucracy than any other department that might have been
given this responsibility. Their plan also involved land protections, educational resources,
money and opportunities provided by the federal government to indigeniness people,

(10:00):
basically as compensation for centuries of colonialism and dispossession. A
board under this plan would oversee distributions of all of
this to make sure that everything that was due to
the tribes and the nations was delivered promptly and that
all of the things that were delivered were suitable, so
no sending people things like spoiled food or bad quality goods.

(10:25):
And their plan there would also be a commission involving
quote such white men as possessed in large degree the
confidence of their country, and a number of the respectable
educated Indians selected from different tribes, and this board would
individually meet with every indigenous community to try to work
toward peace. Boundaries would be clearly established for Native land,

(10:49):
and then those boundaries had to be absolutely maintained and respected.
But at the same time, under this plan, the people
living on that land also had to understand and that quote,
civilization was coming, including large numbers of people as the
United States expanded westward, and that they would be swept
away if they did not adapt. In eighteen sixty seven,

(11:12):
Parker got married to Minnie Sackett, who was described as
one of the bells of Washington d c. Society. E
Lee was thirty nine and Many was eighteen, but for
most people, the bigger issue was that e Lee was
Seneca and Minnie was white. Some people were scandalized, but
at the same time there was another train of thought

(11:33):
that supported this marriage, seeing it as an example of
a successfully assimilated indigenous man. Grant was supposed to be
the best man. On December seventeenth, eighteen sixty seven. The
church where Eely and Many were supposed to get married
was packed with onlookers who wanted to see or maybe

(11:53):
wanted to disrupt, this spectacle of an Indigenous man marrying
a white woman. But Parker didn't show up. There was
a ton of speculation about where he was, including rumors
that he had been murdered for intending to marry a
white woman. Arthur C. Parker's biography of him claims that

(12:13):
Parker had been drugged by arrival. We don't really know
what happened privately between Eely and Minnie after he reappeared,
but the wedding was rescheduled for Christmas. Onlookers who arrived
at the Church of the Epiphany for this second attempt
found the doors closed. Eli and Minnie instead got married

(12:35):
quietly and privately at a smaller church not far away.
Eli Parker continued to serve as Grant's secretary until eighteen
sixty nine, when Grant retired from the Army to become
President of the United States. And we will get to
that after a sponsor break. On March fourth, eighteen sixty nine,

(13:03):
Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as President of the United States.
One of his first appointments was Eli S. Parker as
Commissioner of Indian Affairs. As we said back at the
beginning of part one of this episode, Parker was the
first Indigenous person to hold a cabinet level position and
the first Indigenous person to serve in this particular role.

(13:26):
On April sixteenth, eighteen sixty nine, the Senate confirmed Parker
with a vote of thirty six to twelve. Parker also
resigned from the Army to take this appointment. Estimates vary,
but there had been millions of people living in North
America prior to European colonization, and those estimates ranged from
as little as two million people to as many as

(13:47):
twenty million. But by the time Parker became Commissioner of
Indian Affairs, centuries of introduced disease, enslavement, warfare, and genocide
had left only about three hundred thousand Indigenous people in
the United States. This, of course does not include Hawaii,
which the United States had not annexed yet, and Parker

(14:09):
had very little information to go on about Alaska, which
the United States purchased from Russia only two years before
he took on this role. The ongoing wars between the
United States and indigenous nations were destructive, they were expensive,
they were awful in all ways, and Grant and Parker
started trying to implement many of the proposals they'd worked

(14:32):
on together while serving in the Army to try to
bring those wars to an end. Parker got the War
Department to assign sixty eight officers to the Indian Affairs Office,
and also appointed eighteen Quakers to work as Indian agents.
A federal delegation was sent to the West to meet
with nations that were still at war with the United

(14:52):
States to try to find out what it would take
to reach some kind of settlement, and Ely was one
of the members of that delegation. They had already concluded
that the United States entire Indian Affairs system was inefficient
and flawed. Article one, section eight of the US Constitution
gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with the tribes,

(15:14):
and Congress had passed various laws about that commerce, specifically
in what was then known as Indian Country. Traders within
this system were federally licensed, and Indian agents and superintendents
were political appointees who were not paid very much. That
Indian ring we referenced earlier was a corrupt system meant

(15:36):
to enrich both the traders and the agents. Parker started
working on efforts to get the military to assume most
of the responsibility for all of this. I will add
that people do use the term Indian country still, but
this area is now states. It was not States at
the time. Parker also thought the federal government had an

(15:58):
obligation towards indigenous peoples who had been progressively stripped of
their land, their opportunities, and their autonomy. As we mentioned before,
he thought it was inevitable that indigenous peoples would ultimately
assimilate with white society. His writing on this absolutely mirrors
the prevailing view of a lot of reformers, including reformers

(16:20):
who genuinely wanted to help Indigenous peoples as well as
some Indigenous leaders, and that view was that Indigenous peoples
needed to be Christianized and quote civilized. This was also
happening alongside the post Civil War reconstruction, which often had
a similarly paternalistic attitude toward free black people and an

(16:43):
ultimate goal of their assimilation to white norms. It's clear
from Parker's personal and professional writings that he had come
to believe that civilization as defined by white norms was superior,
and that by extension, that the people who conformed best
to those norms were also superior. This applied to how

(17:04):
he wrote and spoke about both black and Indigenous people.
At the same time. He thought this inevitable assimilation should
happen according to the tribes and nations' own timelines and
on their own terms. So he thought any federal efforts
should be focused on assistance and incentives, not on coercion

(17:27):
or punitive measures. And there were aspects of this that
mirrored what we talked about in our recent episodes on
Sarah Winnemucca. While Parker was focused on, in his words
the quote humanization, civilization, and Christianization of the Indians, he
also thought that the tribes should be able to retain

(17:47):
their languages and their heritage, and that they should have
autonomy and respect and defense of their reservation lands. In
the words of Arthur Parker quote, two ideas controlled his policy.
The first was to make the Indian himself see his
duty in becoming a useful and constructive member of society,

(18:07):
to make him economically independent, contributing his share to the
sum total of human welfare. The second idea was to
impress the various departments of the government with the idea
that the people of the United States owed the Indians
a clean administration of their affairs, and not only that,
but that they must take upon themselves the burden of

(18:29):
rescuing the Indian from the unhappy state into which he
had been thrust, and of lifting him up into an
understanding of civilization and Christianity. In eighteen sixty nine, Parker
filed what was to be his first annual report on
Indian affairs. It began with a forty five page summary,

(18:49):
and it was followed by another five hundred and fifty
pages of additional documents and correspondents. This report really highlights
how he was making recommendations that he really thought would
help indigenous peoples living in US territory, while also basing
these recommendations on racist ideas and a perception of European

(19:11):
culture as superior to Indigenous culture. He characterizes indigenous peoples
as ignorant and superstitious, especially those who had not yet
been forced to live on reservations and adopt European style
farming methods as a way to sustain themselves. At the
same time, he advocated for more land for indigenous peoples,

(19:33):
including additional lands for reservations that needed it and new
reservations for peoples that did not have one yet. He
called on Congress to pass appropriate legislation to provide for
these people quote until they become capable of taking care
of themselves. He also offered an update on what came
to be known as the Peace Policy, describing a quote

(19:57):
different class of men being appointed as superintendents and agents
due to the dishonesty and the inefficiency of the men
who had been holding those roles in the past. He wrote, quote,
the experiment has not been sufficiently tested to enable me
to say definitely that it is a success. For but
a short time has a lapse since these friends and

(20:19):
officers entered upon duty. But so far as I can learn,
the plan works advantageously and will probably prove a positive
benefit to the service. And the indications are that the
interests of the government and the Indians will be subserved
by an honest and faithful discharge of duty, fully answering
the expectations entertained by those who regard the measure as

(20:43):
wise and proper. Another of Parker's recommendations was that the
United States respect and uphold treaties with indigenous peoples that
were already in place, and ratify any treaties that have
been negotiated over the previous two years, but he recommended
against negotiating new treaties. He argued that a treaty was

(21:06):
a compact between two or more sovereign powers quote, each
possessing sufficient authority and force to compel a compliance with
the obligations incurred. He went on to say that the
tribes were not sovereign nations capable of making treaties quote,
as none of them have an organized government of such
inherent strength as would secure a faithful obedience of its people.

(21:29):
In the observance of compacts of this character, they are
held to be the wards of the government, and the
only title the law concedes to them to the lands
they occupy or claim is a mere possessory one. But
because treaties have been made with them, generally for the
extinguishment of their supposed absolute title to land inhabited by

(21:49):
them or over which they roam, they have become falsely
impressed with the notion of national independence. It is time
that this idea should be dispelled, the government ceased the
cruel farce of thus dealing with its helpless and ignorant wards.
I will say the United States also did not have
a government of such inherent strength that it could secure

(22:12):
a faithful obedience of its people and observation of these treaties.
But aside from that, some historians have interpreted this as
Parker really buying into the federal government's colonial efforts and
opinions on whether Indigenous people were capable of governing themselves.
The federal government thought they were not. But others have

(22:35):
seen it more as an acknowledgement of how absolutely destructive
that colonial effort had already been to the nations that
had maintained their own sovereignty and their own systems of
government for centuries before colonization. It's also been noted that
Parker clearly understood that the United States could never be

(22:56):
fully trusted to uphold these treaties, so like I go
through the farce of making more of them. If that
was the case, Congress did formally outlaw the making of
new treaties under the Indian Appropriation Spill of eighteen seventy one,
which Grant signed into law. In this report, Parker went
on to say, quote many good men, looking at this

(23:18):
matter only from a Christian point of view, will perhaps
say that the poor Indian has been greatly wronged and
ill treated, that this whole country was once his, of
which he has been despoiled, and that he has been
driven from place to place until he has hardly left
him a spot where to lay his head. This, indeed,

(23:38):
may be philanthropic and humane, but the stern letter of
the law admits of no such conclusion. And great injury
has been done by the government in deluding these people
into the belief of their being independent sovereignties, while they
were at the same time recognized only as its dependents
and wards. As civilization advances and their sessions of land

(24:00):
are required for settlement, such legislation should be granted to them,
as a wise, liberal and just government ought to extend
to subjects holding their dependent relation. In regard to treaties
now in force, Justice and humanity require that they be
promptly and faithfully executed, so that the Indians may not

(24:20):
have cause of complaint or reason to violate their obligations
by acts of violence and robbery. He also addressed the
subject of people of African descent who had been enslaved
by one of the tribes. As we said earlier, inn
issue that has continued to be relevant through to today.
Quote attention is invited to the condition of the freedmen

(24:42):
among the Choctaws and some of the other tribes in
the Indian territory, whose status as slaves became changed by
the results of the late war, and who now appeal
to the government for kind treatment and protection. Denied the
rights and privileges of all the members of the tribes
with whom they reside oppressed and persecuted. This people have

(25:03):
claims which should not, injustice, be longer disregarded. They prefer
to remain with those among whom they were raised, but
fear losing the protection of the laws of the United States.
Parker's summary also walked through the status of the different
tribes and nations across the country. Here's how he described

(25:24):
his own people. Quote. New York Indians residing on several
reservations in the state of New York number four thousand,
nine hundred ninety one against four thousand, one hundred thirty
six reported last year, an increase accounted for by including
the Saint Regis Indians who were not enumerated in the
census of eighteen sixty eight. These tribes, the descendants of

(25:47):
the powerful six nations, who filled so large a space
in the early history of this country, have to a
great extent, if not altogether, abandoned the habits and customs
of their forefathers, and are now now steadily and successfully
following the pursuits of a higher style of life, many
of whom will compare favorably in their attainments with the

(26:08):
whites by whom they are surrounded. Their schools, farms, and
houses regard for morality and religion are the evidence of
a real and marked advancement in the scale of a
Christian civilization. An increase of interest is manifested in reference
to education. On the several reservations, twenty six schools are

(26:29):
in operation, besides which there is a large institution known
as the Thomas Orphan Asylum established for their benefit, and
a large manual labor school is about to be opened
upon the Tanawanda Reservation, the Senate having passed an act
appropriating three thousand dollars for that object, the Indians giving
the necessary land. Therefore, I would call attention to the

(26:53):
interesting report herewith from their agent, Captain Ames United States
Army in regard to the agricultural as held by these
people Friday. This report was, of course, not the only
thing Parker did as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and we
will have more after another sponsor break. On January twenty third,

(27:22):
eighteen seventy, Major Eugene M. Baker of the US Second
Cavalry attacked a Pagan encampment on the Marias River in Montana.
Most of the people at this camp were women, children,
and elders who had quarantined themselves due to a smallpox outbreak.
Baker had been told that these people were stealing horses,

(27:44):
and in response, he attacked the camp before dawn, while
almost everyone was asleep. His force massacred more than one
hundred and fifty people, some sources say more than two hundred,
and they took at least one hundred and fifty people prisoner. Afterward,
Baker's force destroyed the camp's food and lodges, claiming this
was necessary because of the smallpox outbreak, and they also

(28:07):
captured hundreds of horses. This would have been an atrocity
under any circumstance, but to make things worse. Pagan Chief
Heavy Runner carried papers specifying that he was on peaceful
terms with the United States, and he was bringing those
papers to the soldiers when they shot and killed him. Initially,

(28:28):
the army covered up this massacre, but eventually Lieutenant William B.
Peas reported it. In the aftermath, John A. Logan, chair
of the Committee on Military Affairs, requested that the Bureau
of Indian Affairs be kept in the Department of the Interior,
rather than being moved into the War Department as Parker
had been proposing. Meanwhile, Parker still continued to defend the army,

(28:52):
including in this massacre as the best choice. I think
this massacre could be its own episode for sure. Beyond
this one, another of Parker's efforts in eighteen seventy involved
negotiations with Oglala Chief Red Cloud and Lakota Chief Spotted Tail.
The Oglala and Lakota are both part of the Ocheti

(29:15):
Sacohen also called the Sioux, who were party to the
Treaty of Fort Laramie in eighteen sixty eight. Red Cloud
and Spotted Tail both believed that the terms of this
treaty had given them rights to a reservation in their
ancestral homeland. They thought that because that was how it
had been explained to them, but now they were being

(29:37):
told they had to move hundreds of miles east to
the banks of the Missouri River. Parker, hearing about this,
invited them to Washington, and when their delegation arrived, he
heard them out and arranged a meeting with Grant. Parker
had to explain to them that the treaty did not
give them the right to a reservation in their ancestral

(29:59):
homeland as the interpreters had told them that it would,
but it did give them the right to hunt there.
Parker told them that there was nothing in the treaty
to prohibit them from also living on their hunting grounds.
So this indigenous delegation really saw this as a victory,
but then they return home to find that nothing had
actually changed in practice. This treaty is one of many

(30:22):
things in this episode that is still relevant today, with
cases going all the way up to the Supreme Court
during our lifetimes. Also in eighteen seventy, Parker visited indigenous
communities and attended a general council in Indian Territory in
what is now Oklahoma. He hoped to work toward establishing
a government for Indian Territory that would be exclusively made

(30:44):
up of Native people, who would govern themselves and have
autonomy over their own affairs. He conceived this as an
eventual home for all indigenous peoples in the United States,
which would eventually become its own state. Unsurprisingly, there were
people who opposed Parker in his role as Commissioner of

(31:05):
Indian Affairs due to racism, or to his policies, or
a combination of both, and when he returned to Washington
after this council, he learned that William Welsh, chair of
the Board of Indian Commissioners, had accused him of fraud,
claiming that Parker was part of the Indian ring he
had been trying to dismantle. Unlike the Bilateral Commission that

(31:29):
Parker had envisioned, the Board of Indian Commissioners was made
up of white men only, and unlike Parker, who advocated
for tribes and nations to progress toward assimilation on their
own terms and with their own autonomy, Welsh and the
Board were focused on getting Native people to assimilate by
any means necessary as fast as possible. When Parker was

(31:52):
creating his first report, in eighteen sixty nine, the Board
was creating its own document that was focused on forced assimilation,
further concentrating indigenous people into smaller reservations, and discouraging what
it called tribal relations, which meant any semblance of tribal sovereignty.
In addition to this, Congress passed legislation prohibiting army officers

(32:17):
from serving in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and limited
the President's authority. In the winter of eighteen seventy one,
Parker was called before the House of Representatives on thirteen
different corruption charges, relating to things like how much he
had spent on food and supplies and weather that food
and supplies had been needed. While the investigation found quote

(32:41):
much to criticize and condemn, it found no evidence of
fraud or corruption. But in the face of ongoing scrutiny
and a board that was really continually undermining him, Parker
resigned on June twenty ninth, eighteen seventy one. In his
resignation letter, he said that Congress had divested his office

(33:03):
of its importance, leaving the Commissioner of Indian Affairs as
a clerk to the Board of Indian Commissioners. He wrote, quote,
I would gladly and willingly do anything in my power
to aid in forwarding and promoting to a successful issue,
the President's wise and beneficent Indian policy, but I cannot,

(33:23):
in justice to myself longer continued to hold the ambiguous
position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs. After this, Parker left Washington,
d c. He and his wife moved to Fairfield, Connecticut,
where she had family, and they basically started over. He
went into business and commuted back and forth to New

(33:43):
York City, and he initially did quite well, but then
lost almost everything in the Panic of eighteen seventy three.
By eighteen seventy six, Parker was basically out of money.
After years away from the field of engineering, his knowledge
was no longer up to date. In his words, quote,
the profession ran away from me. So he became a

(34:06):
desk clerk for the New York City Police Department, and
he also did some public speaking. Eli and Minnie had
a daughter named maud in eighteen seventy eight. She was
raised without any connection to the Seneca. Elie and Minnie's
marriage had also been controversial among the Seneca because Seneca
kinship lines are matriarchal, so by marrying a white woman,

(34:29):
any children Eli had with Minnie would not be considered Seneca.
In eighteen eighty one, Parker met Harriet Maxwell Converse. She
was an author poet. He described Minnie as the love
of his life, but he and Harriet developed a really
deep friendship. Arthur Parker's account describes Harriet and her husband Frank,

(34:51):
as being friends with both e Lee and Minnie Parker,
so the four of them were all very close. In
a lot of his letters, e Lee addresses Harriet as
my dear cousin. Through their correspondence, Harriet developed a really
deep interest in the Seneca, and Parker started to rekindle
his own sense of himself as indigenous. Over the course

(35:14):
of their friendship, Harriet became a vocal advocate for the
Seneca and the Hadenashawnee more broadly, and she was eventually
adopted into the Seneca nation, as her father and grandfather
had been in earlier years. Parker's letters to Converse are
often very reflective and introspective. He expresses a lot of
disappointment in himself and a sense that he wasn't sure

(35:37):
whether the actions that he had taken in his life
had been the correct ones. They're simultaneously a sense of
pride in what he accomplished and a lot of regret.
Around eighteen eighty five, he wrote to her quote, I
have little or no faith in the American Christian civilization
methods of healing the Indians of this country. It has

(35:58):
not been honest or sincere. Black deception, damnable frauds, and
persistent oppression has been its characteristics, and its religion today
is that the only good Indian is a dead one.
In another letter, he described himself as haunted by the
accolades of his youth, writing quote, I have lost my identity,

(36:20):
and look about me in vain for my original being,
I am pursued by a still small voice, constantly echoing
Thou art a genius, great and powerful. Over the course
of these letters, Parker seemed to come to see his
earlier life as a chief as truer and more important
than his later life as an engineer, a soldier, and

(36:43):
a part of the federal government. He became increasingly focused
on the idea of indigenous people needing to retain their
own languages and traditions and identities, but he was never
able to put these ideas into practice with his own people.
He had developed diabetes and kidney disease, and he also
had a series of strokes. His diabetes diagnosis actually came

(37:06):
from doctor J. H. Salisbury, who he saw at Harriet's urging.
We talked about Salisbury in our fourth installment of our
eponymous Foods episodes. He is the namesake of Salisbury's steak.
Doctor Salisbury's health recommendations included an all meat diet, and
in one of Parker's letters to Converse, he describes being
placed on a diet of beef and water. Ely. Samuel

(37:30):
Parker died on August thirty first, eighteen ninety five, at
the age of sixty seven. He was buried at Oaklawn
Cemetery in Fairfield, Connecticut, with full military honors. Also present
were delegates from the Grand Army of the Republic and
the New York Police Department, and elders and clanmothers of
the Haddenishawnee Nations. On January twentieth, eighteen seventy nine, with

(37:55):
Many's permission, he was exhumed and reinterred at Forest lah
On Cemetery in Buffalo, New York. In Hodenashawnee ancestral homeland.
Seneca orator and leader Red Jacket had also been reinterred there.
Their burial places are next to one another. After Parker's death,
Many was left without many resources aside from a war

(38:17):
widow's pension of eight dollars a month. She sold off
a lot of his possessions in order to survive, including
the Red Jacket Peace Medal, which she sold to the
Buffalo Historical Society. She also sold his copy of the
Surrender Terms from Appomattics for two thousand dollars to the
Loyal Legion, whose members had raised money for it. Congress

(38:40):
later increased her pension to thirty dollars a month. She
eventually remarried to James Talmadge van Rensseler, and although he
died only a couple of years later, her inheritance from
that marriage made her a lot more financially comfortable. Eli
Parker's legacy continues to be really controversial. He's one of

(39:01):
many nineteenth century reformers and advocates who wanted to help
indigenous peoples, but whose methods of helping were based in
racism and were ultimately destructive. He had advocated for some
degree of autonomy for Indigenous peoples, and he had stressed
the need to protect Indigenous lands. But less than a

(39:22):
decade before his death, federal policy toward Indigenous people shifted
from moving people to reservations to breaking up those reservations
and forcing people to assimilate. We've talked about a lot
of things related to that on the show before his
efforts to protect Indigenous lands were really starting to be
rolled back while he was still alive. The bureaucracy that

(39:46):
Parker helped to establish at the Bureau of Indian Affairs
also really helped facilitate the United States effort to rid
itself of its Indigenous population through assimilation and cultural genocide
in later years. In the nineteen ninety nine documentary Warrior
in Two Worlds Eli S, Parker is described as being

(40:07):
perceived as a sellout among the six nations of the Hodenashani.
In an interview conducted for that documentary, the late Seneca
historian John Mohawk describes him as ambitious, with that ambition
leading to the loss of his Seneca identity. Mohawk went
on to say, quote, I don't think he lost his

(40:27):
loyalty to the Seneca world. I think he lost his
connections to it, and I think after he was gone
for thirty to forty years, people felt kind of like
he wasn't one of us anymore. I think he felt
like he wasn't one of them anymore. Tuscarora historian and
artist Rick W. Hill Senior was also interviewed for this

(40:48):
documentary and similarly described Parker as failing because he forgot
where he came from and what he was about. Hill
also described finding legitimacy both in the idea that Parker
was a trader because there was a betrayal to his
people and that he was trying to blend these two worlds,

(41:09):
and that there's also a lesson in that. In twenty twenty,
the Seneca Nation requested that the Red Jacket peace metal
be returned from the Buffalo History Museum, and that medal
was repatriated in May of twenty twenty one. So that
is Eli s. Parker. I feel like we've had two

(41:30):
a quick succession, complicated indigenous figures, yes, whose complexities are
interconnected with one another. I also have some listener mail.
This is from Alana, who wrote after a conversation that
hollyood I had about the terms Britain and Ireland and

(41:53):
British Isles and how neither of them really sums up
everything perfectly. So the email says, hello, just an additional
note to help with what term to use for the
islands here writing from Ireland. A term we use is
British and Irish Isles, as it includes all the small
and not so small islands around both Ireland and Britain.

(42:15):
It's also the term used by the rugby team, the
British and Irish Lions, when all the nations here team
up into a super team. I hope that helps. I'm
an American who's been living in Ireland for seven plus
years now and it took me a while to get
a handle on all the terms. Hope you're keeping well
in these difficult times. Kind regards, Alana, thank you very

(42:36):
much for this, and now that you've said that, boy,
that seems obvious to me that British and Irish Isles
also works really well, so thank you for that. If
you'd like to send us some notes about this or
any other podcast or history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com,

(42:58):
and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio
app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

(43:18):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Stuff You Missed in History Class News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Monster: BTK

Dateline NBC

The Bobby Bones Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ely S. Parker and Ulysses S. Grant (Part 2)