reland, 1847: the country is decimated by the hunger and disease which has been raging since the first failure of the potato crop in 1845. In keeping with the laissez-faire economic policies of the day, food is being transported out of the Irish ports, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands are starving. The Poor Laws administer food in return for the execution of pointless hard-labour to a people barely able to walk, let alone work. The workhouses, a last resort, are charnel halls of contagion, where dysentery, cholera, typhus and smallpox reign.
While the British authorities culpability in the deaths of an estimated two million Irish people during the Great Hunger is still in dispute, there were inarguably many individuals and non-governmental organisations who did try to help the Irish at this time. One of the most fascinating and indeed symbolic of these gestures was the unlikely donation, in 1847, of a substantial sum of money from a people who had just barely escaped their own holocaust, Native American tribe, The Choctaw.
The story of the Choctaw/Irish connection originates from a report published on April 3, 1847, in The Arkansas Intelligencer, a local newspaper of the day. It describes how A meeting for the relief of the starving poor of Ireland, was held at the Choctaw Agency on 23 ultimo . . . A circular of the Memphis Committee was read by Maj. Armstrong, after which the meeting contributed $170. All subscribed.
While other groups throughout the United States had donated monies through the Catholic Churches and the Quaker s Society Of Friends , the Choctaw donation is particularly moving, considering the situation of the tribe itself at that time.
Historically, the Choctaw people were famed as a peace-loving tribe, who had managed to avoid extensive bloodshed with the Europeans. Along with some of the other South Eastern tribes, they opted instead for the adoption of European customs and education, which lead to the term The Five Civilised Tribes (Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole).
Reading the various histories, official and academic, it is interesting to see how conflicting in tone they can be. Some clearly celebrate the tribe s assimilation with the settlers, others detail the dreadful suffering and cultural and religious loss experienced by a people. An entire way of life was changed, as the Europeans forced a market economy and the concept of trade on the native peoples, causing amongst other things, several animal species to disappear from the area.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, moreover, the Choctaw found themselves in the midst of a massive territorial power-struggle. After siding with the apparently freedom-conscious United States against the British in the war of 1812, Chief Pushmataha was forced to give over more and more lands to settlers, a progression which culminated in 1830 with the Treaty Of Dancing Rabbit Creek .
This was a shabby coercion of a people who has placed their allegiance with what they believed to be a democracy, into relinquishing their remaining ancestral lands. It ordered the immediate removal westwards of the entire tribe, to an uncharted territory west of Arkansas, ambiguously dubbed Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
shared humanity
The Choctaw were the first to embark on their Trail Of Tears in 1831, and would be followed over the next decade by the rest of the Five Civilized Tribes. In fear of annihilation, some relented to peaceful removal, others fought. The Mississippi band of Choctaw, today based in Philadelphia, Mississippi, are the ancestors of those who bravely stayed, and probably suffered more down the generations than those who walked the Trail Of Tears.
The latter was a harrowing ordeal involving transportation through the Louisiana swamplands and treacherous winter storm and flood conditions; the Choctaw people suffered for months from cholera, dysentery, pneumonia, influenza, exposure and malnutrition. While 20,000 Choctaw began the trek, it is estimated that only just over half of them survived.
It was just fourteen years later, when they had barely begun to re-construct their lives, that the Choctaw, moved by the story of the Famine, donated monies to the starving Irish, thousands of miles away.
It is curious that this fact has never been discussed until recently. In Ireland, the long-time deafening silence surrounding the famine, is due partly, as we now recognise, to a kind of collective national repression of the shame and horror that has spanned generations. Worse, we have seen what renowned scholar Denis Donoghue has termed the polite school of Irish history, which attempts to tidy up the nasty facts of the tragedy, and diminish the degree of culpability on the part of Britain. Over the last few years, however, during the lead-up to the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the famine in 1997, a new awareness has burgeoned.
In 1989, Don Mullan of human rights group AFrI (Action From Ireland) was lecturing in New York as part of The Great Famine Project , which raises awareness on the famine, and fund-raises for famine relief world-wide today. After one talk, American Assemblyman Tom O Reilly, also a member of the Irish American Political Education Committee (a group attempting to bring an awareness of the famine to American schoolchildren by placing it on school curriculum), brought the matter to his attention.
I felt that it was important to point out this extraordinary gesture, and its significance within the context of the Choctaw s own history of suffering, said Mullan. And, of course, it is a story that has really touched people in a very deep way.
After researching the facts a little further (there are accounts of the donation in both The Great Hunger by Cecile Woodham Smith and The Rise And Fall Of The Choctaw Republic by Native American Historian Angie Debo), Don Mullen visited Oklahoma himself to thank the tribe. On behalf of AFrI, he invited the Choctaw Chief Hollis Roberts to head the 1990 Famine Walk in Co. Mayo, which annually mourns the deaths of the starving people who were forced to march from Louisburg to Doolough, before being refused aid by the local authorities.
Roberts placed special ritual objects at the cross commemorating them, to remember both the Irish and the Choctaw who died during that time. It is my hope that the relationship between the Irish and Choctaw will be an enduring friendship, starting new traditions and enriching the heritage of both cultures, he said.
The connection continued in May 1992, when Choctaw House Representative Randall Durant visited the Mansion House in Dublin for the unveiling of a special commemorative plaque thanking the Choctaw. At that time, President Mary Robinson was made an honorary Chief of the Choctaw Nation, the first woman recipient of this honour. It is something that none of us should forget, she said, that this tribe rich in its own history, its culture, its past was able to look beyond themselves to the suffering of another people, with whom it had no obvious links. I say no obvious links . . . No more and no less than a shared humanity.
The symbolism of this gesture has also served as a means for Irish people to examine their role in a world where famine is still very much present. Over the last few years, various events that have commemorated the famine, have at the same time raised money for present-day disasters.
One of these was the Trail Of Tears re-enactment, in which six people, including Don Mullan and journalist and writer Donnacha O Dulaing, re-traced the Trail Of Tears by walking from Oklahoma back to Naniah Waya , the ancestral home of the Choctaw People in Mississippi. The walk was undertaken specifically to raise money for the famine in Somalia.
Last year, at New York University, Glucksman Ireland House presented an International Conference On Hunger, which brought many leading scholars together to discuss the question of hunger world-wide, in combination with a re-examination of the Irish Famine.
Native American artist Gary White Deer, who donated one of his prints as a design for special T-shirts made for the Trail Of Tears walk, has since contributed a special painting as a fund-raising effort for Concern. Interestingly, the painting depicts a Choctaw mother holding an Irish child, and an Irish mother holding a third-world child. Proceeds from a series of 200 special limited edition prints go towards a famine-stricken region in Ethiopia.
indian territory
But what of the Choctaw today, one hundred and fifty years after that significant gesture was made from so far away? In Ireland, the events of the early quarter of the century liberated the country from colonial rule, but Native Americans have had no such revolution. The appalling history of betrayal, deception, abuse, the attempted systematic destruction of the Native American culture are too extensive to go into here, but the Choctaw have survived and indeed prospered in the twentieth century, despite the fact that some feel their success to be at the expense of the tribe s original cultural values. Today Choctaw Nation operates under a Federally recognised constitution, adapted from the original Choctaw constitution of 1860, ratified by tribal vote in 1983.
As two impromptu visitors to Choctaw Nation recently, this writer and Irish actress Aedin Moloney were lucky enough to travel around the area, and meet and stay with both Gary White Deer and his family, and visit the tribal government in Durant, Oklahoma.
What they did in 1847 was that they left a legacy of caring and sharing, continues Gary. It illuminates both our pasts, because we can t talk about it without referring to the Great Hunger or the Trail Of Tears. That is the context and it is because of that the story occurred. It s a remembrance of who we are and where we came from.
Of course, American road culture being as bland as it is these days, you could drive through Oklahoma along the freeways and barely notice that it is, in fact, very much Indian Territory . There are about 35 registered Native American tribes in Oklahoma, and the Five Civilised tribes are still located in the South Eastern section, with the Choctaw remaining one of the strongest tribal groups in the country, coming third in size.
From the freeway, you ll glimpse towns with names like Shawnee , Seminole or Tecumseh , but not unless you take the smaller roads, will you run into lovely towns like Broken Bow, Muskogee or Durant, where you can find, respectively, the Memorial Indian Museum, The Museum of the Five Civilized Tribes, or the headquarters of the Choctaw Nation.
Choctaw Nation is not a reservation as such, explains Greg Pyle, the Assistant Chief of the tribe, whose administrative offices are housed in the historic Presbyterian College building in Durant, Oklahoma. We have many lands, but it s spread out a little since the Federal Government came in back in 1907 to create the state of Oklahoma.
The Tribal administration s emphasis, he noted, is on education and employment for the tribe, which has grown and prospered economically since the early 1970s, when Chief Hollis Roberts was elected into power. For the last fifteen years we are the number one tribe percentage-wise for our kids to go to college. Our chief here believes that tribal members should stay here, work hard, get scholarships or go into business and make money for your people, that s what counts.
Today, Choctaw Nation boasts a number of tribal-run businesses, such as a Travel Plaza in Durant, Bingo in Pocola, Arrowhead and Idabel, extensive lands and agricultural assets, a chemical processing plant at Hugo and numerous other concerns. The revenues from these go to supplement Federal Government grants, so that the tribe is no longer dependent on the United States for its well-being. The Choctaw have increasingly assumed the management of, and improved upon, programmes previously run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, such as tribal health-care, housing, day-care, educational grants, vocational development, care of the elderly, nutrition programmes, forestry, environmental issues, small business development and more.
magical valley
A trip up to the Choctaw-owned and run Arrowhead at the heart of the nation reveals a large resort nestling right on Lake Eufaula, with camping facilities and, of course, a Bingo Palace, from which, like many other tribes, the Choctaw derive a substantial income.
The area is absolutely full of history, and Indian culture, and is also one of the best-kept secrets in terms of North American beauty spots. We first glimpsed the beauty and lushness of the countryside along the Indian Nation Turnpike , which heads north from Paris, Texas into Oklahoma. Rolling pastures dotted with cows and horses lined the comfortably empty roads, and are frequently punctuated by streams, woods and rivers.
The original Tribal Council House of the Choctaw in Tuskahoma (still the nation s official capital) is also worth seeing. Now a museum, it tells the story of the Oklahoma Choctaw through a range of fascinating artefacts. Interestingly, it also boasts a large display case full of Irish exhibits, focusing on the Choctaw/Irish connection. Tuskahoma is located in what can only be described as a magical valley, nestling within a range of low mountains through which the Kiamichi River ambles, before feeding into the great Red River.
It was here, at sunset, that Pam and Jody Waugh, who maintain the livestock on the tribe s surrounding lands, brought their two Irish visitors to see the rambling herd of Choctaw buffalo, about one hundred in all, grazing on the valley pastures. It was a beautiful sight, and one which, symbolically, echoes the growing renewal of interest in traditional Native American culture that has been developing over the last twenty years, in which people like Gary White Deer are key figures.
Among plans for the future, Gary is working with Don Mullan on the establishment of a foundation entitled CAIT Choctaw And Irish Together . Named after a woman who died in the famine, the documented story tells how Cait Buckley s body was found with her feet frozen to the chest of her husband, in a tiny cottage where they had huddled together, on a freezing famine night. The acronym is a powerful title for this group, whose aim is to raise money to combat famine world-wide.
I think the Choctaw/Irish connection is a parable, and like any parable, it keeps unfolding, and we keep learning things from it, says Gary White Deer. As it continues to unfold today, I am more and more appreciative of how the spirit of this story carries. n