Grant's Indian

Moving on from Confederate Indians to the most prominent one on the other side: Ely Parker, often called "Grant's Indian," was actually the more successful man when they became friends in Galena, Illinois, in 1860. He had already studied law and helped save from expropriation the Tonawanda Seneca Reservation in upstate New York, and was working as an engineer for the federal government. The next year, though, he lost that job when the incoming Lincoln administration exercised its power of political patronage, and also found himself unable, as an Indian, to join the US Army. So he went back to the reservation to farm.

Grant brought him into the war, from Vicksburg to the famous scene at Appomattox. Afterward, he remained at Grant's side, and was a key architect of his Indian peace policy. Yet, like Grant, Parker had difficulty negotiating the shoals of The Gilded Age. In his later years, he was an engineering clerk for the New York City Police Department, where he became a friend and source to Jacob Riis.

Parker, three-quarters Seneca, married a white woman, and is pictured above in the 1890s with his daughter Maud. 

He was well acquainted with Adam Badeau, the anti-hero of the story of Grant's last few months. I have taken the liberty of imagining how Parker might have helped solve the crisis provoked by Badeau, and elaborated on his revised thoughts about Indian policy, and put him into other not implausible encounters, making him as significant a character as any bar one in The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant.