Ely S. Parker - Post-Civil War

Post-Civil War

After the Civil War, Parker was commissioned as an officer in the 2nd United States Cavalry on July 1, 1866. He again became the military secretary to Grant as he finished out his time as general in chief. Parker was a member of the Southern Treaty Commission that renegotiated treaties with Indian Tribes that sided with the Confederacy. Parker resigned from the army with the brevet rank of brigadier general of Regulars on April 26, 1869.

Grant appointed Parker as Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1869 to 1871. He was the first Native American to hold the office. Parker became the chief architect of President Grant's Peace Policy in relation to the Native Americans in the West. Under his leadership, the number of military actions against Indians were reduced in the west.

After leaving government service, Parker invested in the stock market. At first he did well, but eventually lost the fortune he had accumulated, after the collapse of 1873. Through his social connections, Parker received an appointment to the Board of Commissioners of the New York Police Department's Committee on Supplies and Repairs. Parker received many visits at Police Headquarters on Mulberry Street from Jacob Riis, the photographer famous for documenting the lives of slum dwellers, who enjoyed "smoking a pipe in his poky little office" and was "famous for his access to internal police reports." Parker is featured as a character in a short story by Riis, "A Dream of the Woods," about a Mohawk woman and her child stranded in Grand Central Terminal.

Parker lived his last years in poverty, dying in Fairfield, Connecticut on August 31, 1895, where he was buried. The Seneca did not feel Algonquin territory was appropriate for a final resting place, and requested that his widow relocate the grave. On January 20, 1897, his body was exhumed and moved to Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York. He was reinterred next to his ancestor Red Jacket, a famous Seneca orator, and other notables of western New York.