This first person account by an educated Native American not only describes recruitment, training, company life, and combat, but also deals with the harsh realities of war including racial prejudice in recruitment, loneliness, and deaths of trusted comrades. Parker was one of a handful of Seneca in this period of time thoroughly versed in both Indian and non-Indian worlds.
Ely Parker grew up on the Tonawanda Reservation in New York in the 1830s. There he learned the ways of his people, the Seneca Indians. Ely worked many years to save his reservation from a land company, and as a result, he was made a sachem, or chief, by his people. At the same time, he was working as a translator and ambassador to bridge the gap that divided his people from the white Americans. After serving in the Civil War, Ely went on to become a United States general and lead the agency in charge of Indian affairs. Author Elizabeth Van Steenwyk tells this inspiring, and surprising, story of a man who achieved amazing success in two very different worlds.
For use in schools and libraries only. Biography of the Seneca Indian who helped save his people s land, was elected a sachem, served in the Union Army, became a general, and was named commissioner of Indian affairs.
Tragic historic story of the destruction of Native American peoples as a result of the Civil War, including their own service in both the Union and Confederate armies.
Warrior in Two Camps is the biography of Ely S. Parker, the first native American to serve as commissioner of Indian Affairs. The name Ely Samuel Parker is seldom found among famous Indian chiefs. Indeed, the name seems somehow out of place in the company of men called Black Hawk or Crazy Horse or Geronimo. But the prosaic name is part of the story of an American Indian who chose to live his life in the white man’s world. It is a story in which a frock coat replaces the traditional deerskin, and a surveyor’s level and a soldier’s orderly book take the place of the wampum belt and the war club.
Children's book icon Joseph Bruchac tells the fascinating story of a Seneca (Iroquois) Civil War officer Ely S. Parker (1828-1895) is one of the most unique but little-known figures in US history. A member of the Seneca (Iroquois) Nation, Parker was an attorney, engineer, and tribal diplomat. Raised on a reservation but schooled at a Catholic institution, he learned English at a young age and became an interpreter for his people. During the American Civil War, he was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel and was the primary draftsman of the terms of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. He eventually became President Grant's Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American to hold that post. Award-winning children's book author and Native American scholar Joseph Bruchac provides an expertly researched, intimate look at a man who achieved great success in two worlds yet was caught between them. Includes archival photos, maps, endnotes, bibliography, and timeline.
Despite the perennial interest in the American Civil War, historians have not examined sufficiently how Native American communities were affected by this watershed event in U.S. history. This ground-breaking book by one of the foremost Iroquois historians significantly adds to our understanding of this subject by providing the first intimate look at the Iroquois' involvement in the American Civil War and its devastating impact on Iroquois communities. Both fascinating and fast-moving, The Iroquois in the Civil War exposes many myths about Native American soldiers. To correct old stereotypes about American Indians, Hauptman discusses the Iroquois' distinguished war service as commissioned and noncommissioned officers as well as ordinary cavalrymen and common foot soldiers. Drawing upon archival records and personal wartime letters and diaries never before used by ethnohistorians, Hauptman portrays the dilemma the Iroquois experienced during this era. He assesses the Iroquois' military volunteerism, their loyalty to the Union, and their concurrent effort to maintain their lands, sovereignty, and cultural identity just at a time when new pressures for tribal dissolution were increasing. He not only provides us with a remarkable glimpse into the hearts and minds of Iroquois Indians on the battlefield but also adds significantly to our understanding about the conflict affecting the women and children remaining on the reservations.
One of the best known of the six nations is the Seneca, and arguably the most famous Seneca chief was Ely Samuel Parker. Over the course of his life, he was a Seneca chief, a civil engineer, a close friend and adjutant to General Ulysses S. Grant, an advocate for the Indian peoples, and the first Native American Commissioner of the Department of Indian Affairs. His marriage to a much younger socialite scandalized Washington, and he made a fortune on Wall Street and lost it all. He ended his life in genteel poverty, working for nearly 20 years in an obscure position for the New York City Police Department. Parker was a largely self-taught engineer, who worked on various canal projects, and was hired by the Department of the Treasury to supervise the construction of several buildings in Galena, Illinois, where he met a shy salesclerk named Ulysses S. Grant. At the age of 18, he dined with President Polk, later talked with President Lincoln, and had the commanding general of the U.S. Army as the best man at his wedding. He was the principal source for the first serious ethnological work by one of the first American ethnologists, who dedicated the book to Parker. He was a plaintiff before the U.S. Supreme Court when he was in his teens and was so important in the Seneca's struggle to retain their Tonawanda reservation that he was made grand sachem-principal chief-in his early 20s. He tried twice to join the Union forces but was rejected, being told it was a "white man's war." He was only able to join the Army through the influence of Grant and another general. His most famous moment came during the surrender of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. He transcribed and copied the surrender documents which were signed by Lee and Grant, and he shook hands with Lee, who said to Parker, "It is good to see an original American here." To that, Parker responded "We are all Americans." The total population of Indian Territory in 1861 was about 100,000. There was a small population of non-Indians that included tradespeople, missionaries, blacksmiths and so on, the largest of which were about 8,000 slaves. An unknown number of free blacks lived in the territory, and some of the Indian groups were racially mixed. Most of the population was settled, meaning that subsistence farming, ranching, and even plantation agriculture were all to be found. The far western region of the territory was nearly empty, but sometimes frequented by Plains Tribes. In general, the pre-War Indian inhabitants were probably the most prosperous and safest of all the country's Indians. About 10,000 Native Americans are thought to have died in Indian Territory as a result of the Civil War, including soldiers, but also as a consequence of a total breakdown of law and order and chronic guerilla war. That estimate could be low, because the Cherokee population alone dropped from 21,000 before the Civil War to 15,000 after it. Stand Watie's life connects the traditional Cherokee homeland in Tennessee and Georgia, the fight within the tribe over leaving for the West or staying on their homeland and trying to resist, and the Trail of Tears. At the same time, his life also includes the ongoing split between mixed-blood and full-blood Cherokee in the Cherokee Nation, and the chaos of Indian Territory during the Civil War. Like the country as a whole, the Cherokee Nation was split over the question of slavery, and with an estimated 100 slaves owned, Watie was the biggest native slaveholder in the region. At the start of the war, Watie was commissioned as a colonel in Confederate service and later as a brigadier general. His 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles Regiment fought more engagements than any other Confederate unit west of the Mississippi River. As a result, Watie is perhaps the most famous figure of a widely overlooked aspect of the Civil War.
Description: Pencilled data in leather bound notebook and on loose sheet, giving names, approximate ages, etc. of about 20 Seneca Indians, together with brief testimony concerning their participation in the War of 1812.
