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PrintEly S. Parker
Seneca Indian, engineer, and architect of history.
The dark-skinned man oft-depicted in artistic renderings of Robert E. Lee’s Appomattox surrender to Ulysses S. Grant was born in 1828 on the Tonawanda Reservation in New York, a descendant from a prominent Seneca lineage. Parker was educated at a Baptist missionary school and was fully bilingual, but although he went on to work in a law firm and study law, he was not permitted to sit for the New York bar exam because he was not a U.S. citizen.
As a young man, he assisted the Seneca chiefs as a translator and diplomat, and served as a lobbyist for the tribe in Washington, D.C. After being rejected by the state bar, Parker obtained a position as a civil engineer, later working on the expansion of the Erie Canal in Rochester, New York. In 1851, a decade prior to the start of the Civil War, Parker attained the influential position of sachem of the Six Nations Confederacy. For the next several years, he led treaty negotiations that ultimately allowed the Tonawanda Senecas to buy back a majority of their land.
In 1857, at 29 years of age, Parker moved to Galena, Illinois, to supervise the construction of a federal custom-house. While there, he happened to strike up a friendship with another quiet man: Ulysses S. Grant. When Grant went off to the Union army so, too, did Parker — only to be denied admittance on the basis of race. After the intervention of friends, Parker finally received a commission and joined Grant as a member of his general staff. Parker’s appointment as the general’s military secretary led to his most famous moment in history, as he wrote out the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.
