THE LINK BETWEEN THE CHOCTAW INDIANS & THE IRISH?

Ireland was ravaged by famine during the 1840s. In 1847, the relationship began when the Choctaws, who had only recently arrived over the ruinous “trail of tears and death” to what is present-day Oklahoma, took up a donation and collected over $5,000 (in today’s currency) to support the Irish during the Potato Famine.

The Choctaw was a tribe of Native American Indians who originated from modern Mexico and the American Southwest to settle for close to 1,800 years in most of the central and southern Mississippi River Valley and into parts of eastern Louisiana and western Alabama. They are known for their head-flattening and Green Corn Festival; they built mounds and lived in a matriarchal society. They rapidly adopted modernity, developing a written language, transitioning to yeoman farming methods, and having European-American and African-American lifestyles enforced in their society.

Physically, they were not large nor well-developed men, but rather inferior to the Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles. Below the medium height, they were straight and neat, having small and well-formed hands and feet.

The Shawnee was a former enemy that had raided Choctaw country years before, but Tecumseh convinced the Choctaw to join a Native American confederacy to limit the continued expansion of the United States into tribally-held lands. Tecumseh was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the expansion of the United States into Native American lands.

In 1992 a group of twenty-two Irish men and women walked the 600-mile Choctaw Trail of Tears, raising $1,000 for every dollar contributed by the Choctaw back in 1847. The money went to relieve suffering in famine-stricken Somalia.

Sammy RNAJ — sammy.rnaj.writer@gmail.com — WhatsApp +96170499352