Grant's Indian is a novel based on the life of Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian who, as Grant's military secretary, penned the surrender at Appomattox. From Appomattox, the story loops back to Parker as an Indian boy in upstate New York, his youth as tribal translator and diplomat and his meeting "Useless" Ulysses Grant in a barroom in Galena, Illinois. After Appomattox, Parker marries a white girl half his age, becomes commissioner of Indian affairs, resigns in disgrace, makes and loses a fortune on Wall Street and spends his last twenty years as a clerk in the New York City Police Department. Parker is an American Indian becoming an American, whose quest gets him into all sorts of trouble, including his comic-opera wedding, which he misses once by getting drunk and throwing himself into the Potomac. He dons successive careers, succeeding inwardly (while his outer success fades) through his young wife's urging him not to be an Indian or a white, "Just be a man!"