On the cross-cultural relationship and
experiences of one of 19th century America’s most inspiring figures.
There are many reasons why I
began this blog with a brief (now tragically lost) entry on W.E.B.
Du Bois, but I guess what it boiled down to was that if I were to start an
American Hall of Fame—and honestly Fame is the wrong word, might imply that
somebody like Paris Hilton or The Situation could someday garner a plaque;
let’s go with American Hall of Inspiration instead—Du Bois would be one of my
first, unanimous inductees. Not because he was perfect—he wasn’t, far from it—but
because, I suppose, of a trifecta of core details: he spent his life trying to
do things he felt were significant; he committed to each of those things with
passion and seriousness and a desire to do them as well as he could and appropriate
levels of (and balance between) ambition and humility; and he remained, even
into his later years, very open to the voices and perspectives of the people
both with and for whom he was doing them. Yup, those are pretty much the
measuring sticks for induction into Ben’s American Hall of Inspiration.
I’ve known that I felt that way
about Du Bois for a long time, at least since my sophomore year of college when
I read a lot by and about him. Some of the other people who would be on the
short list for inaugural induction I’ve known about for even longer, and would
come as no surprise to anybody who knows me (Bruce, John Sayles, Val Kilmer)
(just kidding about the last one, I love the dude but I’m afraid he falls short
on that whole balance of ambition and humility item). But another one is a very
recent discovery who has rocketed toward the top of the list: Ely Parker
(1828-1897). I learned about Parker while working on a couple page portion of my second book—the
opening couple pages of my chapter on the 19th century focus on Lewis
Henry Morgan, the pioneering anthropologist who worked extensively on the
Seneca Iroquois and was even adopted into the tribe; and Morgan, who is pretty
impressive and inspiring in his own right, admired the heck out of Parker and
helped him enter many of the worlds (engineering and work on the Erie Canal;
law and politics and the fight for the tribe’s homeland and sovereignty; the
military and service in the Union Army, through which he ended up drafting the
Confederacy’s surrender terms at Appomattox Court House) to which he
contributed his tireless work and passion from the late 1840s to the end of his
life.
Any one of those worlds and
efforts would be a good starting point for Hall of Inspiration consideration,
and the cumulative effect of them is pretty overwhelming. But as with Du Bois,
what I find particularly interesting and inspiring about Parker is something
less explicitly heroic or impressive, but even more (to my mind) American—his
complicated location amidst and between multiple communities and identities,
and his determination not to simplify that position nor reject one or another
of his identities and worlds. The name he was given when he was made a sachem
of the tribe translates to “Open Door,” and I think that’s very apt (as was
Morgan’s tribal name, which translates to “Bridging the Gap”—they were spot-on
with those names, the Seneca), both in his own life and in his role as a
mediating figure (anthropologically, politically, legally, militarily,
ideologically, you name it) between the tribe and the American government on
multiple levels. As was sometimes the case with Du Bois, Parker’s attempts at
mediating and unwillingness to simplify either his own identity or his
connections to both his ethnic and his national communities (such as in his
post-Civil War marriage to a white socialite) were, at times, met with
harsh criticism from more fully ethnically focused peers (and Parker himself
apparently questioned, toward the end of his life, some of the work he did as the
first Native Commissioner of Indian Affairs, a position he held in the scandal-filled
administration of his old general, Ulysses Grant). But despite such specific
critiques, I don’t think anyone familiar with Parker’s life and work could
question for a second his thoroughgoing commitment to improving the lives of
his fellow Americans, native and otherwise.
The last years of Parker’s life
were defined at least in part by losses (financial, on Wall Street, and in
other ways) and self-doubts (particularly about whether he had been able to
maintain as well as he had hoped that balance between the different communities
to which he dedicated his life). But they were also defined by another dialogic
and mutually beneficial relationship, one very much parallel to his with
Morgan—he was approached by a poet
named Harriet Maxwell Converse who had an abiding interest in his tribe,
and the two
developed a friendship that helped Parker reexamine his life and identity
and communicate them to an interested European American partner once more. If I
can help him continue to do the same, even a century after his death, maybe
I’ll have helped pass his inspiration along. Next Cross-Cultural Day nomination
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Thoughts, responses, or other
Cross-Cultural Day nominations for the weekend post?
10/9 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two reformers
and activists
whose efforts
have made America
and the world more equitable, more democratic, and safer,
Francis Wayland Parker
and Jody
Williams.
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