It did not alter the treaty system or the reservation system or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

It did not make the next Seneca man who wanted to practice law in New York able to do so.

Parker may have understood all of this.

He may have known, with the clarity that comes from spending a lifetime navigating the distance between exceptional access and structural change, that being in the McLean house was not the same thing as the country having changed.

The Span of His Life, Measured Differently