300 Mulberry Street

An old friend was responsible for Ely Parker's final career as a desk clerk. General William F. Smith was a Civil War veteran, and had supervised Ely's engineering work at Detroit and in Chattanooga. By 1876, Smith was president of the New York City Police Department's Board of Commissioners, and he used his influence to get Parker a job. The pay was a modest $2,400 a year, but it was work, and on September 30, 1876, the former Commissioner of Indian Affairs walked to his office at 300 Mulberry Street and reported for duty.

"He was hired as a clerk. A clerk to the supply and repair committee. A job that kept food on the table, but no real responsibilities, little satisfaction. Parker served in that job the last 19 years of his life, working on requisitions for brooms and shovels and pens and erasers. Quite a come down."

William Armstrong
Parker Biographer

New York Harbor

The Parkers moved to New York and, according to William Armstrong, Ely became a familiar sight on the city's streets, "usually dressed in a suit of slate-colored cloth, a Prince Albert coat, and a sugar-loaf hat with a stiff, flat brim." Inside 300 Mulberry Street, Ely was a mostly silent observer - as politics raged and commissioners and clerks were cleaned out, he stayed at his desk contending with what he called an "overwhelming" amount of work. But he also made new friends; one of them was Jacob Riis, who worked as a police reporter for the New York Tribune and Evening Sun. Riis also authored The Making of an American, which contained a tribute of sorts to his Seneca friend:

"I suppose it was the fact that he was an Indian that first attracted me to him. As the years passed we became great friends, and I loved nothing better in an idle hour than to smoke a pipe with the General in his pokey little office at Police Headquarters. That was about all there was to it too, for he rarely opened his mouth except to grunt approval of something I was saying. When, once in a while, it would happen that some of his people came down from the Reservation or from Canada, the powwow that ensued was my dear delight. Three pipes and about eleven grunts made up the whole of it, but it was none the less entirely friendly and satisfactory. We all have our own ways of doing things, and that was theirs. He was a noble old fellow. His title was no trumpery show, either. It was fairly earned on more than one bloody field with Grant's army. Parker was Grant's military secretary, and wrote the original draft of the surrender at Appomattox, which he kept to his death with great pride. It was not General Parker, however, but Donehogawa, Chief of the Senecas and of the remnant of the once powerful Six Nations, and guardian of the western door of the council lodge, that appealed to me, who in my boyhood had lived with Leatherstocking and with Uncas and Chingachgook. They had something to do with my coming here, and at last I had for a friend one of their kin. I think he felt the bond of sympathy between us and prized it, for he showed me in many silent ways that he was fond of me. There was about him an infinite pathos, penned up there in his old age among the tenements of Mulberry Street on the pay of a second-rate clerk, that never ceased to appeal to me."

Jacob A. Riis
Making of an American

Ely Parker also found companionship with fellow war veterans. He joined the Grand Army of the Republic, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, and the Society for Colonial Wars. He rekindled his skills as a powerful orator, and in 1889 traveled as far as Chicago to speak to a Masonic gathering. He carried with him the silver Red Jacket medal that he proudly displayed and explained to hundreds in the audience. The medal seemed to be his most cherished memento, and as evidenced by the following newspaper article, Parker was vigilant about its authenticity.

Geneva Gazette, March 18, 1891 Preface by the Editor:
The following letter is so self-explanatory that nothing more need be said about the matter contained in it, the writer merely adding that another, said to be, Red Jacket medal, is in the hands of the indefatigable investigator, George H. Harris, Rochester, NY, similar in size an appearance to the Canandaigua medal, but dated 1795, and having 15 stars, the number of States at that time.

This letter is remarkable for its elegant diction and beauty and plainness of writing. The writer, General Ely S. Parker, is a prominent Civil Engineer in New York City, is the leading Seneca Sachem, was "raised up" to the Sachemship in 1851 with the title of "Door Keeper" (Donehogawa) and was an officer in the civil war on the staff of General Grant, and drew up the articles of capitulation at the time of the surrender of General Lee.

New York, March 9th, 1891

To:Geo. S. Conover, Esq., Geneva, NY

Dear Sir:

Permit me to thank you sincerely and heartily for your able circular and letter, dated February 1891, on the Washington Red Jacket Medal.

It seems that your article was written in consequence of a medal purporting to have belonged to the famous Indian orator, having been presented to the "Red Jacket Club" at Canandaigua by Mrs. Thomas Francis Meagher, a grand-daughter of Capt. Jasper Parrish of Canandaigua, whilom interpreter for the Seneca Indians.

I saw this medal during its exhibition a short time ago at Tiffany & Co.'s' jewelry store on Union Square in this city. It was labeled "The Red Jacket Medal". I took pains to assure Tiffany's people that it was not a Red Jacket Medal, nor the one he wore throughout his life, and at the same time showed them the genuine medal which is in my possession. I also took an early opportunity of writing to the Hon. Thos. Howell of Canandaigua about it, and gave it as my firm conviction that Red Jacket never wore, or owned, this medal. It is however a genuine Washington Indian medal, shaped and inscribed on both sides like mine, with same date, viz.: 1792. Its longest diameter is about 5 inches, mine is 7 inches. I suggested to Mr. Howell that it would be well to advise the Club of the preceding facts. Whether he has done so or no, I am unable to say.

Perhaps it would be well for history if this medal question should now be definitely settled. But how can it be done? It is almost a century since these medals were given, and I believe nearly all of the present possessors of the Washington Indian medals have begun to trace their ownership back to Red Jacket. Besides mine and this one at Canandaigua, I hear of one being in some collection at Albany, another in the collection of the Pennsylvania Historical Society at Philadelphia, and another still in Texas.

At Red Jacket's death, and in accordance with Indian custom, my medal was given by his relations, in the distribution of his personal effects, to one James Johnson, a favorite nephew of his, and at that time a young and promising chief. Johnson retained it about 20 years, and at my installation as a leading Sachem of the Iroquois Confederacy in 1851, I was formally invested with it by the master of ceremonies placing it about my neck, the speaker remarking that it was given by the great Washington to my tribal relative Red Jacket, and that it was to be retained and worn as evidence of the bond of perpetual peace and friendship established and entered into between the people of the United States and the Six Nations of Indians at the time of its presentation. There were scores of chiefs and other Indians present at this ceremony who personally had known Red Jacket and were familiar with the medal, and it is not probable or supposable that they all would have been deceived as to its genuineness, or countenanced an imposition by having a bogus medal placed abut my neck on so important an occasion.

I have since met many old settlers of Buffalo and vicinity, among whom I will only mention Hon. O. H. Marshall, Orlando Allen, H.N. Porter, John Ganson, Benj. Dole, Mr. Sibley, Mr. Turner (author of the "Holland Land Purchase") who have asked me to show them the medal, and they have instantly and invariably recognized it as the one they had so often seen worn by Red Jacket, and also the bead string by which it is suspended.

The Washington medals are all inscribed alike upon both sides, varying only in size and date. Mine is a large one and dated 1792 - has 13 stars, the eagle holding 13 arrows in one claw and an olive branch in the other.

Respectfully yours, & c., Ely S. Parker Or Do-ne-ho-ga-wa, Iroquois Sachem

Although Parker still signed his letters as an "Iroquois Sachem," he hadn't fulfilled the responsibilities of that title for over three decades. When he did journey to western New York, it was for a vacation. Once or twice a year he would visit his brother Nic at the Cattaraugus reservation - there he was greeted as an elder statesman. A portrait of him in full military dress was prominently featured in Nic's sitting room, and over it hung one of Ely's military swords. The sword captured the imagination of Nic's grandson, Arthur Parker, who wondered if he could ever be "as great as Uncle Ely, and wear a sword like that." When Ely came to visit, Arthur Parker said, "He would bring a suit of clothes for my grandfather, made in the exact pattern of his own; and a big satchel of presents for everyone else. I must have been seven years old when I first saw Uncle Ely. I did not know he had come, and rushing into the sitting room, I called out "Gramp!" Then I fell back in dismay, for there were two "Gramps," dressed alike and to my startled eyes, each an exact counterpart, but when they spoke I noticed that their voices were slightly different."

Ely and Nicholson Parker did look strikingly alike, and shared the closest bond among the Parker siblings. Another brother, Levi Parker, and his sister Carrie, died in 1891; Nicholson passed in 1892, and Ely was "left alone," said Arthur Parker, the last of the "grandfather generation."

Arthur Parker's comments quoted from,
The Life of General Ely S.Parker,
Arthur C. Parker, Buffalo Historical Society, 1919.