The patronage and corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs were not eliminated by his reforms — they were reduced temporarily, restored under his successors, and not seriously addressed again until the twentieth century.

The reservation system that he administered as Commissioner continued to operate after his departure, constraining Native lives in the same fundamental ways it had constrained them before he arrived.

This is not a failure of Parker’s.

It is a description of the structural durability of institutional arrangements.

Individual excellence can navigate those arrangements, can create openings within them, can demonstrate their arbitrariness by thriving despite them.

But individual excellence is not sufficient to change them.