Category: Appomattox. Robert E. Lee

“Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World”

“Rumble” is a 2017 Canadian documentary film that I’d missed until it hit public television. I watched it twice, taking notes the second time, wanting to get in my mind the names of Rock n’ Roll, jazz, and blues musicians I’d listened to—and many I had not heard or heard of before.

I’d have to slow it down and stop action to get all the names and dates, but I know enough now to know that once again the roles of American Indians in the American story have been hidden or muted, and that there is again the story of resilience. Joy Harjo, our current national poet laureate and a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation, says, as the credits roll, that “We’re still here; we’re still alive; we’re still singing.Read Rich’s Post →

Eli Parker and Robert E. Lee at Appomattox

Ulysses Grant and staff. Parker at left.

The most amazing thing to come my direction after the Charlottesville disaster was a piece by Mark Trahant in High Country News. Trahant is enrolled Shoshone-Bannock, the author of a book on Scoop Jackson and Termination, and, currently, a professor of journalism at the University of North Dakota. And, I am proud to say, someone we had at Fishtrap during my tenure there.

On reading Trahant’s “History Tells Us Donald Trump’s Presidency is Over,” I thought immediately of Alvin Josephy’s contention that Indians have been systematically omitted from the standard version of American history. They are, Josephy contended, seen as impediments to Euro-American progress across the continent, or as a side show, literally or figuratively participants in Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.

But Trahant reminds us that “Eli Parker, a Seneca Indian, drafted the documents that spelled out the surrender to be signed by General Robert E. Lee on April 9, 1865.”

Parker had gone to law school, but could not take the bar exam to practice law, because Indians were not citizens and one had to be a citizen to practice law. So he became an engineer, gained wealth, and in one of his engineering projects met and befriended a down and out Ulysses S. Grant. Years later, Parker was at first rebuffed in gaining an officer’s post in the Union Army, but, eventually Grant found him, he was made an officer, and at the Appomattox courthouse, Parker was an officer, Grant’s scribe, and the man who drafted the document of surrender.

That fact, and Eli Parker, have been effectively scrubbed from the standard history. Which makes the irony of Parker’s interchange with General Lee all the greater:

“I am glad to see one real American here,” Lee said while shaking his hand. Lt. Col. Parker responded: “We are all Americans.”

# # #

We Are All Americans: Ely Parker at Appomattox