Welcome to the American Story. Stories about what it is that makes America beautiful.

Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery Institute.

I call this one.

We are all Americans.

Eli Parker was born in 1828 to Elizabeth and William Parker of the Tonawanda Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy in Western New York.

Parker became a leader in his tribe at a very young age,

trained as a civil engineer,

and earned himself a reputation in that field.

In 1857, when he was 29 years old, he moved to Galena, Illinois as a civil engineer working for the Treasury Department.

And there his life took a fateful turn.

He became friends with a fellow named Ulysses S. Grant. In these years

Grant was an ex-army officer working as a clerk and his father's store. Parker liked to tell the story of coming to Grant's aid in a barroom fight in Galena,

the two of them back to back, fighting their way out against practically all the other patrons.

At about 5 feet 8 inches and 200 pounds,

the robust Parker referred to himself as a savage Jack Falstaff. When the Civil War came on, Parker tried several times to join the Union Army as an

engineer, but was turned down because he was not a citizen.

When he approached Secretary of State William Seward about a commission, he was told that the

war was an affair between white men, that he should go home, and we will settle our own

troubles among ourselves without any Indian aid.

Eventually with Grant's endorsement,

Parker received a commission with the rank of captain

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