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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello and Happy Friday. I Am Tray c V. Wilson,

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Speaker 2: and I'm Holly Frye. This week number one. Just so

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Speaker 2: listeners know, we're having to record this completely over because

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Speaker 2: of a technical problem. Hopefully just the behind the scenes,

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Speaker 2: not the actual episodes. Those sounded okay, fingers crossed. But

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Speaker 2: in addition to that, because of our travel schedule and

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Speaker 2: also how we like to have two part episodes run

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Speaker 2: the same week without other stuff in between them, we

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Speaker 2: are recording this episode four weeks after the one that

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Speaker 2: we recorded on Sarah Winnemucca, but they are only coming

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Speaker 2: out like two weeks apart. Yeah, so it's gonna feel

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Speaker 2: kind of like there's a theme for a period of

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Speaker 2: time I'm in the podcast that in terms of when

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Speaker 2: we actually recorded things farther apart. Also researching Sarah Winnemaca

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Speaker 2: and the brief reference to the peace policy in that

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Speaker 2: episode was definitely what led me to wanting to talk

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Speaker 2: about Eli S. Parker, who one of the most complicated

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Speaker 2: people I have needed to write an episode about. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: because we've talked about a lot of Indigenous people in

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Speaker 2: the nineteenth century who have, to a greater or lesser degree,

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Speaker 2: felt like they and their people needed to assimilate with

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Speaker 2: white culture in order to survive. And I am in

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Speaker 2: no way judging any person who is a descendant of

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Speaker 2: any of those people and is like living with the

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Speaker 2: ramifications of those decisions. I feel like it's impossible to

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Speaker 2: know which decisions would have been the best ones in

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Speaker 2: those contents. But this is the person who has had

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Speaker 2: the most powerful and the most power and the most

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Speaker 2: influence in terms of the impact of those decisions. Right, Right,

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Speaker 2: We've talked about a lot of people who have either

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Speaker 2: themselves wanted to assimilate with white culture or they wanted

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Speaker 2: their children or their people to assimilate, and their decisions

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Speaker 2: were impacting themselves and their families and maybe also their

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Speaker 2: specific tribe or nation. And then Eli S. Parker became

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Speaker 2: the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and was making these policies

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Speaker 2: related to all of the indigenous people in the United States,

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Speaker 2: and you know, a lot of those decisions continuing to

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Speaker 2: have impact and influence today.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't refer back to it really in the episode,

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Speaker 1: but we mentioned at the top of the episode that

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Speaker 1: his mother had had this vision of him being this

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Speaker 1: person who succeeded in both worlds, and you know, and

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Speaker 1: I always wonder how much that was informing his decisions,

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Speaker 1: whether consciously or subconsciously. Right, I'll star Wars it up

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Speaker 1: and make it about how Anakin is told he's the

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Speaker 1: chosen one and that ultimately like causes problems and whether

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Speaker 1: or not this is a case of like all of

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Speaker 1: that weight being put on him inherently would have probably

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Speaker 1: impacted his decisions, whether he realized it or not.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the episode, we talked

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Speaker 2: about this documentary from nineteen ninety nine, which obviously now

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Speaker 2: is twenty five years ago. What shush, no, it isn't

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Speaker 2: it six years ago? So weird, and that it was

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Speaker 2: shown on PBS. It was still available for me to

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Speaker 2: watch on one of the PBS websites. But they talked

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Speaker 2: to a number of indigenous historians and scholars leaders as

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Speaker 2: part of that documentary, and a lot of them really

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Speaker 2: talked about his personal ambition and how they felt like

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Speaker 2: his personal ambition had led him to make decisions that

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Speaker 2: were a betrayal of his people in his roots, and

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Speaker 2: that reminded me a little bit of something we talked

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Speaker 2: about with Sarah Winnemaca about how her people a big

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Speaker 2: focus was everyone making decisions collaboratively, and so the fact

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Speaker 2: that she went and did things on her own and

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Speaker 2: made decisions on her own was really controversial. And I

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Speaker 2: see some parallels there to Eli Parker clearly having a

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Speaker 2: desire to, you know, based on his own writing and

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Speaker 2: things that he said that himself, like having a desire

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Speaker 2: to really excel at things like the English language and

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Speaker 2: really wanting to get into positions of power, and then

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Speaker 2: how that was viewed among the Seneca and among the

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Speaker 2: Seneca who were being directly impacted by decisions that he

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Speaker 2: was making, like with Ulysses Grant in Washington, and all

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Speaker 2: of that. Truly a remarkable life though, Like even if

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Speaker 2: we stopped before becoming Commissioner of any and Affairs, the

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Speaker 2: process of like going through an education and becoming an

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Speaker 2: engineer and doing the engineering work that he did, and

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Speaker 2: then being the person who wrote out the surrender terms

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Speaker 2: at Appomatics during the Civil War, all of those things

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Speaker 2: are fascinating to me. He's actually been depicted in a

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Speaker 2: couple of movies related to the Civil War. I don't

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Speaker 2: remember the names of either of them, but in one

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Speaker 2: of them he doesn't have any lines, and in the

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Speaker 2: other one he has like one line, which really does

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Speaker 2: not in any way encapsulate his very long relationship with

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Speaker 2: Grant and how close the two of them were and

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Speaker 2: how involved they were in one another's work.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So, yes, whatever's happening on your weekend, I hope that

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Speaker 2: it is as great as it could possibly be. We

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Speaker 2: will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow, and we

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Speaker 2: will have a brand new episode on Monday. Stuff you

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Speaker 2: Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.