The Choctaw/Irish Bond: Generosity and Compassion in the Face of Greed and Betrayal

I was walking down a sidewalk here in Seattle, and two men were headed my direction. The were so engrossed in their conversation that I chose to step out into the bike lane to let them continue on. While doing so, I caught a snippet of dialogue that intrigued me quite a bit. “The Irish and the Choctaw Nation have a strong connection, you know.”

I can’t speak for the other guy, but I certainly didn’t know that. How could a Native American tribe in the Southern US possibly be linked with people on an island in Northwestern Europe? I practically ran to my laptop to find out. That’s how I heard this heartwarming story of compassion and generosity in the most unlikely of circumstances.

In March of 1847, many members of the Choctaw tribe attended a meeting where William Armstrong, their US agent, spoke. He told them about the Irish Potato Famine, which was now in its second year. This famine was to eventually cause the death of about a million people in Ireland during its 4 long years, so it was clearly the source of great suffering.

Despite various rebellions and wars, the rural Irish had been reduced to being tenant farmers to absentee landlords in England by around 1641. They raised grain crops for those landlords, but they were not allowed to eat any of this grain themselves. Their diet consisted of mainly potatoes that they grew for sustenance.

The Irish already had a pretty miserable existence, often living in one-room, windowless mud huts. When the potato famine came along (which was not the first famine they had had to endure), the English still refused to allow the Irish to hold back any of the grain, which still grew in abundance. In other words, starvation did not have to occur. Instead, the English evicted many of them for not being able to keep up with their farming duties in their emaciated state, thus adding homelessness to their starvation. The death toll sharply increased.

When Armstrong described this famine to the Choctaw, many were moved to tears. They knew quite well what the yoke of colonialism felt like. They understood the bitter injustice and suffering that comes along with it.

That proud nation had suffered a variety of betrayals by the US government. They had considered themselves close allies to the United States by 1786, and had always been a peaceful tribe as the settlers moved in. They had even fought in Andrew Jackson’s army in the War of 1812, and had acquitted themselves well in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. But none of that mattered to Jackson when he became president 15 years later.

Jackson (who was of Irish descent himself, ironically), was the man who concocted the Trail of Tears. He signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, and over the next 20 years, 60,000 Native Americans from 7 nations were forcibly removed from their homelands, resulting in about 16,000 deaths. The Choctaw themselves accounted for 15,000 of the people forced to walk that trail, and around 2,500 of them died along the way. They were led to believe that they would find freedom at the end of their journey.

To get to Oklahoma, they walked through blizzards, floods, and disease laden swamps. Many died of cholera and starvation. They arrived with little or nothing and tried to start over.

It was there, in Oklahoma, where they would hear Armstrong describe the potato famine. Even as Armstrong spoke, hundreds of Choctaw were camped around that very building. They were hungry, destitute, and dying of illness.

Despite living under the harshest of circumstances themselves, and having little hope of improving their lot, the Choctaw still managed to feel compassion for these people across the ocean that they had never met. They understood their suffering and hunger. And so they raised $170 to help these people. That would be the equivalent of more than $6,000 today.

That contribution was highly praised at the time, but as the famine became a distant memory, knowledge of this generous act became lost to the sands of time. Then, in 1984, a writer named Don Mullan was researching the famine and came across half a sentence about it in a book written in 1962, and decided to dig deeper.

In 1989, Mullan produced a radio program about the Choctaw gift, and word spread throughout Ireland. Then, in 1990, he visited the Choctaw, who had also forgotten about the gift, but weren’t surprised by it, because their culture is very much about helping others.

Also in 1990, Mullan invited several tribal members to join him on the annual famine walk in Ireland, in County Mayo, where my paternal grandmother was born. I wonder if that gift so long ago was part of the reason that I’m here to write this blog today. It’s fascinating how the tendrils of history weave their way around the world.

On that walk, Mullan was made an honorary chief of the Choctaw Nation. In 1992, he decided to walk the trail of tears. He did so with Gary White Deer, of the Choctaw tribe, who has since become a good friend. In 1995, White Dear led the famine walk in Ireland. Two years later, on the 150^th anniversary of the Choctaw gift, he was commissioned to do a painting for the Irish government, and he donated the $14,000 the government paid him for it to an Irish humanitarian organization.

In 2015, an Irish artist named Alex Pentek created a sculpture of 9 stainless steel feathers, each 20 feet tall, fashioned in the shape of a bowl. This represents the many bowls of food that the Choctaw provided the Irish with their generous gift. He named the work Kindred Spirits, and it can be seen in the Irish town of Midleton.

In 2018, the Irish prime minister visited the Choctaw and announced a scholarship fund so that Choctaw students could attend school in Ireland. In 2020, when the Navajo and the Hopi were hit hard during the Covid epidemic, the Irish donated 2 million dollars to their relief fund. The Irish and the Choctaw now work together to help people suffering from famine worldwide.

What you see below is a painting by Gary White Deer entitled “An Arrow Shot Through Time”. It commemorates the Choctaw gift, and how the memory of it has reignited an unlikely friendship between two faraway peoples who understand suffering and betrayal as well as generosity and kindness.

I’d like to say “Thank You” to both the Choctaw and the Irish, in their own languages, for setting such a good example for the rest of us. In Choctaw: Chi̱ yakōkilih chi̱toh. In Gaelic: Go raibh maith agat.

Additional (and highly recommended) sources:

A book about gratitude is a gift that keeps on giving! http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5

The View from a Drawbridge

The random musings of an autistic bridgetender with entirely too much time on her hands.