The dark cloud of the Indian Removal Act cast its shadow on the Choctaw tribe in 1831 as they were forced to relocate to a reservation in Oklahoma.1 The survivors of this forced removal never forgot their struggle, and perhaps that is why in 1847 they gave $170 to the Irish during the height of the famine.2 This gift is significant because it came only sixteen years after the Choctaw were forced off their lands by the US government and suffered a great loss of life and traditions. Today, near Cork, Ireland, a monument, an empty bowl made of feathers, symbolizes the gratitude of the Irish people to the Choctaw and represents kindness transcending tragedy.3
An examination of the newspaper coverage of the 1847 gift and the 2017 erection of the monument offers insight into the connection forged between the Choctaw and Irish by sacrifice and gratitude. This study delves into the struggles both peoples faced in the nineteenth century and the news coverage of the building of the monument. The newspapers of both eras and nations offer a glimpse into the mindsets of each era and how they have changed, and it also demonstrates that there is a connection of media beyond national borders.
The Choctaw people believed that their ancestors had migrated to the area that now makes up the state of Mississippi from western North America, “a place they called ‘the Land of Death.’”4 The story of this migration is a tale of weary travelers marching east, toward a better life. The story maintains:
The years passed; the People walked on. Babies were born, the young grew old, the aged passed away. Their bones were added to the packs. The burdens of the ancestral bones increased with each passing year. Forty-three long years passed in this manner, with thousands of living Choctaws bearing their ever-increasing sacred burdens.5
Finally, the Choctaw reached their final home, known to them as Nanih Waiya. After traveling with their ancestors’ bones, they laid them down and, “then to manifest their respect for the spirits of the dead, everyone carried earth to cover the bones until a great mound was built.”6 “The Great Mother Mound” is now known as the state of Mississippi.7
After living peacefully in Mississippi for generations, the early to mid-nineteenth century brought a series of hardships. President Andrew Jackson, during the 1830s, instituted his “Indian Removal” policy.8 This plan was a “thinly veiled” attempt at forcibly removing Native Americans from their lands for “very little compensation, and no apologies were offered to the Indian people” for this act of thievery.9 “Ironically, the man who forced them off their lands was . . . the son of Irish immigrants,” who some claim came to America when they were forced out of Ireland to make way for wealthy English landowners to lay claim to Ulster’s fertile land. Others surmise the Jacksons emigrated to escape persecution as non-Anglican Protestants (Presbyterians) or that perhaps a French invasion in 1760 that had French troops marching through their land to assault Carrickfergus Castle “had a last straw effect.”10
The Unites States acted swiftly, and, “within a mere half century . . . would use its laws to force Native people to appear to willingly dispossess themselves, an amazing accomplishment in and of itself.”11 The American press was instrumental in pushing the idea that the Indians were willing and excited to leave their ancestral homeland for land west of the Mississippi. “Jackson and the American agents painted a picture in the press and Congress of a Choctaw majority who wanted to move west but were restrained from doing so by the efforts of the intermarried whites and ‘mixed bloods,’ who wanted to remain where they were because of their financial interests, of which, of course, the average Choctaw had none.”12
In 1829 the Boston Recorder published a speech, translated from Choctaw, that the Choctaw are “a small people; who do not know much” and are “like an infant so high, who has just begun to walk.”13 This speech was almost self-deprecating, as the Choctaw perhaps expected the white people to see them. However, it did call out the hypocrisy of the American government, stating, “The American people say that they love liberty.” If that was true, then “Why will they take it from the red man?”14 This speech was obviously tailored to white Americans with its references to the inferior Choctaw, but it also called for Americans to question the morality of their reasoning behind seizing Choctaw land. The last statement of the speech is telling: “Here we have lived and here we wish to live. But whatever the white man wishes to do with us, he will do. If he shall will us to stay here, we shall stay. If he wishes us to go, then we shall go.”15 This statement seems to foreshadow the tragedy that was to befall the Choctaw people in 1831.
A poignant letter published in 1830 in the Cherokee Phoenix and Indian’s Advocate (New Town, GA) disputes the claim that the Choctaw were excited to leave, a claim President Jackson and his cronies were making, and takes a firmer tone than the speech published in 1829 in the Boston Recorder. The letter from the Choctaw to the US government shows that the Choctaw were well informed about how the US government worked, and their worries were spelled out in this letter:
Will not the great American people, who are men of truth, and love justice, still love us Choctaw red men? Surely we think they will love us. And although there are new thoughts about red people, and new language held out to them we cannot think that the American government will turn away from us and not even look on us. We have no expectation that if we should remove west of the Mississippi, any treaties would be made with us, that could secure greater benefit to us and our children, than those already made. The red people are of the opinion, that, in a few years the Americans will also wish to possess the land west of the Mississippi. Should we remove, we should again be removed by white men. We have no wish to remove to one that is not fertile and good, wherever situated.16
The Choctaw knew that if they accepted a treaty to remove west, it was likely nothing would stop the US government from asking them to move further west in time. The letter further explains that their refusal to remove was not simply because their land was fertile. They stood firm: “But here is our home, our dwelling places, our fields, and our schools, and all our friends; and under us are the dust and bones of our forefathers. This land is dearer to us than any other.”17 This emotionally charged and insightful letter shows how the Choctaw referred back to their story of coming out of the Land of Death into Mississippi. This land was not just their home physically, it was also their spiritual and ancestral home, one they could not fathom breaking away from.
On September 15, 1830, the US government got what it so desperately wanted. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek ceded the Choctaw’s ancestral lands to the United States of America.18 The treaty was published in the Statesmen and Gazette (Natchez, MS) and gave the Choctaw land west of the Mississippi. The treaty required the Choctaw to start removal in the fall of 1831. It was stipulated that the US government would pay the Choctaw Nation $20,000 over a span of twenty years.19 To put this in proper perspective, the United States Telegraph (Washington, DC) reported the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, and one with the Chickasaw tribe, gave the United States “seventeen millions of acres” and “the Choctaw and Chickasaw lands will net to the government, when disposed of, thirty millions of dollars.”20 This was obviously more advantageous for the United States than it was for the Choctaw Nation. However, there is more to this treaty than what was published in the newspapers.
One historian has claimed that “the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was procured with the rankest sort of dishonesty and foul play on the part of the U.S. government negotiators.”21 No friends of the Choctaw were present, “whiskey vendors” were invited by the US government, and negotiations were postponed to ensure intoxication of the Choctaw.22 When the negotiations began, the Choctaw were told “that the U.S. government wanted them to remove from their lands and sell them or give all lands east of the Mississippi to the government and not one Choctaw was in favor of such a treaty.”23 The Choctaw “reminded the American negotiators” that they had always been a friend and ally to the United States, and “they called upon the United States to honor its treaty promises and allow the Choctaws to remain on their homeland in peace.”24 Secretary of War John H. Eaton threatened the Choctaw with military retribution and told them “the president, in twenty days, would march into their country—build forts in all parts of their hunting grounds” and “their lands would be forcibly seized on as the property of the enemy and the Choctaws would be forcibly removed west of the Mississippi.”25
The Choctaw stood firm and refused to sign a treaty they did not agree with. Eaton ended negotiations, but when the Choctaw had left, he told the “few Choctaws who had been bought by the U.S.” to sign the treaty. So, “in the absence of the great majority of the Nation . . . John H. Eaton, secretary of war of the United States, fraudulently obtained a few signatures of the Choctaws who were not empowered or authorized to negotiate by the Choctaw National council.”26 Once the ratification of the treaty had reached the public, newspapers such as the United States Telegraph published that the “Indians were delighted with the prospect before them, and are anxious to move, west of the Mississippi, as soon as arrangements can possibly be made for that purpose.”27 The Farmers Cabinet (Amherst, NH) published in 1831 that the Choctaw had explored west of the Mississippi and found it abundant with natural resources, and that “the Indians expressed themselves highly delighted with the country and are anxious to remove immediately.”28 The letter in the Cherokee Phoenix and Indians Advocate in 1830 disputed this claim, as the Choctaw expressed in the letter that they did not wish to move to land that was not fertile.29
In 1832 many Choctaw were hastily forced off their homeland and embarked on what would become known as the Trail of Tears. “Their faces grimly set against the wind . . . miles of Indians on horseback, on foot, and in wagons with an escort of shouting ‘conductors’ in army blue.”30 Many died on the road west and left a gaping hole in the social fabric of the Choctaw Nation.31 After arriving in their new lands, they tried to rebuild their lives, but nature was against them. In 1833 “the Arkansas river overflowed its banks in one of the greatest floods in its history.”32 Rushing water took with it food, homes, lives, providing yet another devastating blow to the disheartened yet resilient Choctaw. “Many families went hungry and almost starved, waiting for relief from the U.S. government.”33
The Choctaw Nation suffered horrific blows, one after another in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Just as they would recover from one disaster, another would strike. This cycle of suffering seemed endless and perhaps that is why, when news spread of suffering in Europe, they stretched out their hand to help another group of people who also had suffered with their experience of colonialism.
Across the Atlantic, the English oppressed the Irish for centuries before they wielded power over the American colonies and Native peoples. The English justified their unethical treatment of the Irish with the perspective that the Irish were savage and unworthy of fair and just treatment.34 Colonization of Ireland was grounded in the same behaviors and beliefs used later to justify the poor treatment of Native Americans.
The culture of Ireland was similar to that of Native Americans in some ways. “History for Irish and Indians alike was essentially genealogical, an account based on memory, of the succession of kin and friends.”35 The Irish, like the Indians of America, were tribal and loyalty was supremely important.36 “Both the Irish and Indians were ruled by tribal/clan chiefs or chieftains,”37 and one of the most important aspects of similarity was the lack of a concept of private property in a way that was familiar to the English. “Neither the Irish nor Indians had developed any sense of private property.” This was especially true of “land that was used communally and for which there were no titles or anything resembling them.”38
Before the famine, the Poor Law Act of 1838 was passed in Ireland to provide a safety net for the millions of poor Irish people.39 Newspapers such as the Belfast Newsletter reported on the potential Irish poor laws. It stated:
A system of poor laws, if established in Ireland, must not be expected to work miracles. It would not immediately give employment or capital; but it would, I think, serve to help the country through what may be called its transition period; and in time, with the aid of other circumstances, would effect a material improvement in the condition of the Irish people.40
The article continued, “It is, I think, a circumstance favourable to the establishment of poor laws, that there is so much land lying waste and uncultivated in Ireland.”41 The Poor Law established workhouses to provide a place for the poorest in society to work and live—and open up the land for more English landowners. However, “The Irish people feared the workhouse, with its harsh and degrading conditions.”42 Like the reservation conditions the Choctaw were experiencing, the conditions of workhouses were almost unbearable. “The paupers, as the poor were called, were badly treated,” and the food was hardly palatable.43 The Irish workhouse was not unlike the reservations set aside for the Native Americans who were removed to the west. Workhouses provided a similar, small-scale “reservation” from which residents were not allowed to leave without permission.44
In 1845 disaster struck, and for millions of Irish, their conditions deteriorated to an unimaginable state when “a mysterious blight attacked the potato crops, destroying the only real food of Ireland’s rural population.”45 Over the course of the famine, one million people died due to starvation, and two million fled their country.46 Like many disasters of this magnitude, the famine became increasingly political, and the English debated just how serious the situation was in Ireland. “The letters and reports about the crop failure poured into the British government, but the British leaders remained cautious and skeptical.”47 The Kerry Evening Post (Tralee, Ireland) reported that the failure of the potato crop was concerning; however, “The alarm, we are told, is somewhat abated; ‘still under the most favourable circumstances, and allowing for every exaggeration, there will be a lamentable deficiency of the crop, which will be far under an average one’”—yet optimistically reported that some of the crop may be salvageable.48 The Belfast Newsletter also reported on the blight, but the majority of its article focused on the crop failures in England and on the European continent. It briefly mentioned the Irish potato blight, stating that “in Ireland, the failure has been only partial, and far more insignificant than the failures of former years.”49
In 1846, as the suffering of the Irish people increased, newspapers began to cover the story with a sense of urgency that would only strengthen as the famine dragged on. The Nation reported that “the ravages of the blight by which the potato crop is likely to be utterly consumed are now felt in every county in Ireland.”50 It continued, saying that “the result of the fog on the growing crops is most appalling, cabbages and other vegetables having been attacked with a disease similar to that in potatoes. Throughout the entire county the potato fields look as withered as they would be in the month of November.”51 Some newspapers, such as the Tuam Herald, published articles questioning English morals, asking if they “would quietly submit to the destitution and privation which the poor but honest, virtuous, and loyal peasantry of this country are now enduring.”52
Another subject that newspapers focused on during the famine was the case of the Anglo-Irish landlords and their relationship with their tenants. In the years preceding the famine, British prejudices against the Irish, in addition to religious prejudices, included reasons such as “the Irish didn’t work hard enough to improve their lives,” and the Irish married too young, had too many children, and depended overwhelmingly on the potato.53 After the potato blight began, “one Kerry landlord even called the potato destruction ‘a blessing to Ireland,’ while others claimed it was an act of God, designed to reduce the Irish population to realistic levels.”54 For landlords, the famine created an opportunity for them to “consolidate their land and lower their poor rate.”55
This was strikingly similar to the forced migration of the Choctaw and other tribes from their traditional homelands so as to free up land for whites. One landlord’s agent “calculated that it would cost the major [client] £11,534 per annum to keep his tenants in the local workhouse, twice the cost of transporting the tenants to Canada (£5,768).”56 The statement “a Celtic Irishman will be as rare in Connemara as is the Red Indian on the shore of Manhattan” shows how possible it was to draw similarities between the Irish emigration and the removal of Native Americans.57
This issue of the landlord was reported on in Ireland and the United States in further demonstration of the similarities between the Choctaw and Irish. The Irish Examiner (Cork) published in 1847 “A Picture of Irish Landlords.”58 The article reports that:
To Irish landlords, as a class, are all the evils of Ireland mainly attributable. To Irish landlords is the famine which has so desolated the land solely attributable. . . . These same Irish landlords, how clamorous too they are for “a bill to facilitate emigration!” Of course, in pure charity for the poor and not at all to enable themselves to “clear their estates.”59
The article continues to say that “if the clearance of 1846–7 will not satisfy them [landlords], I know what can, Emigration! How many thousands have emigrated to the—grave?”60 In America, newspapers such as the Wisconsin Democrat (Madison) reported that “the parchment of an Irish Landlord should drip with blood” and that “the naked truth is that it would be more in accordance with justice that every Irish landlord should die of hunger than one of the poor, plundered peasantry of Ireland should starve.”61
The similarities between the Choctaw displacement and the Irish emigration are evident. Like the Choctaw, for the Irish “many evictions occurred under the guise of voluntary surrender.”62 The tenants were “under threat of eviction” to abandon their homes for “a small cash handout.”63 “Although not strictly speaking evicted, they often had little choice but to leave when faced with a landlord who made up his mind to take the land.”64 Both “the British and the Americans who arranged for the relocations did so in the name of kindness” and unsurprisingly “both sets of Natives saw their removal as an act of unspeakable cruelty—and were condemned as ungrateful as a result.”65 American newspapers of the time seem to have been quick to accuse the Anglo-Irish landlords and the English of cruelty without turning the lens of scrutiny upon themselves and drawing similarities between the evictions of Native Americans and the Irish poor.
At the height of the famine in 1847, the Irish press boldly showed its displeasure at relief attempts by the English, and the Kerry Evening Post was no exception. It published an article titled, “English Legislature and Irish Suffering” that stated that while Irish aid measures were postponed for two weeks, “The fat, contented English members, whose easy indolence has been insolently disturbed by the death-shrieks of contemptable Irish thousands, may sip their claret in quiet for two happy weeks.”66 This seems to mirror the tragedy the Choctaw faced when the Arkansas river flooded its banks and government aid was slow.
In America, the Wisconsin Democrat reported in 1847 that “some of the recitals before coroners’ juries in Ireland are too horrible for publication.”67 In another article, the same newspaper wrote that “amid our own excitements it is not well for us to forget that one million of our fellow-creatures, separated from us by a distance of only 15 days, are dying of hunger and pestilence.”68 The New England Puritan (Boston, MA) in 1847 reported on the lawlessness in Ireland fueled by hunger and desperation, as well as reporting the aid from America, saying they “have been slow in their operations” due to the magnitude of this disaster.69
As the Irish were suffering through the famine, the Choctaw Nation was trying to establish a semblance of normal life on their new land in Oklahoma. Hearing of the Irish plight and remembering the recent apocalypse of their way of life and traditions, the Choctaw decided to send a portion of what little they had to the Irish. The gift of $170 was reported in both Irish and American newspapers. The Belfast Newsletter published that “the Choctaw tribe of North American Indians have contributed a sum of 170 dollars for the relief of the distressed Irish.”70 The Arkansas Intelligencer described the gift as “the poor Indian giving his mite to the poor Irish.”71
The gift was an act of great compassion by the Choctaw. The fact that it was reported on in both Ireland and America is remarkable in a way, especially since in the United States, Americans used the idea that the Native Americans were savages, incapable of charity and civilized behavior, to remove them from their homeland just over a decade before. The gift, although small, was monumental in displaying the kindness of the Choctaw. “The Choctaw . . . had every reason to turn their backs on a European country that, despite its own colonization, was contributing to the colonization of North America.”72 Instead, they showed true compassion for a people suffering in similar ways they had.
The Choctaw Nation, 150 years after the gift, received recognition for the extraordinary monetary gift to the Irish: a commemorative monument titled Kindred Spirits only a few miles outside of Cork in the town of Middleton. Kindred Spirits was unveiled in June 2017 in the presence of a Choctaw delegation.73 The sculpture, created by Alex Pentek, is a circle of “6m tall feathers, all unique ‘as a sign of respect’” to resemble the feathers the Choctaw use in ceremonies.74 Shaped like an empty bowl it “symbolizes the hunger suffered by Irish people in the famine.”75 Gary Batton, chief of the Choctaw Nation, said at the unveiling ceremony, “Your story is our story. . . . This was money pulled from our pockets. We had gone through the biggest tragedy we could endure, and saw what was happening in Ireland and just felt compelled to help.”76
The Irish relationship to the Choctaw has also been covered in Native American news. Indian Country Today published an article that said, “What is amazing is that the generosity came from a people who a decade earlier had been driven from their homes at a terrible cost in lives.”77 A Choctaw Nation press release also detailed the dedication of the Kindred Spirits monument. “The Mayor of the County of Cork, Councilor Seamus McGrath said, ‘We have a shared past as people who experienced unwelcome intrusion, and a shared sense of injustice.’”78 The recurring theme in these articles is that the selfless act of generosity to strangers across the ocean stemmed from a mutual understanding of great suffering and has finally received the recognition it deserves.
The dedication of the monument to the Choctaw was not the first time the Irish and Choctaw recognized one another’s sorrows. “In 1990, Choctaw leaders travelled to [County] Mayo to take part in a re-enactment of an 1848 protest.”79 In 1992 “Irish leaders took part in a trek from Oklahoma to Mississippi,” and the former Irish president Mary Robinson was named “an honorary Choctaw chief.”80 Irish Central reported that “thanks to the work of Irish activists such as Don Mullan and Choctaw leader Gary White Deer, the Choctaw gift has been recognized in Ireland.”81
For the future the Choctaw and Irish look to strengthen and build upon the unlikely friendship that started in the 1840s. In March 2018 “history was made for the Choctaw Nation . . . when Prime Minister of Ireland Leo Varadkar arrived in Durant [Oklahoma].”82 Chief Gary Batton said, “We consider it a great honor” to have the prime minister visit the Choctaw reservation; “we have a kindred spirit.”83 The biggest news came when “Taoiseach Varadkar stunned and elated those present with the announcement that Ireland is starting a scholarship program for young Choctaws to study in Ireland.”84 This program began in autumn 2019.
The American government in the nineteenth century trampled the Choctaw, dehumanized them, accused them of savagery, and eventually ripped them from their homeland to create opportunities for white settlers. The Choctaw lost their homeland, traditional way of life, and thousands of their people, but President Andrew Jackson and other Americans could not stamp out their generosity, kindness, and compassion. The gift of $170 to the Irish was a gesture that flies in the face of all the politicians and American citizens who claimed that the Choctaw were a savage, juvenile people not worthy of respect.
Not wanting others to suffer as they had, the Choctaw showed great compassion to destitute strangers across the Atlantic. Who knew then that that simple act of kindness would lead to a close and continued friendship, promise of future educational opportunities, and shared interactions of culture and gratitude. After hundreds of years of pain at the hands of colonialism, famines, disease, and displacement, human kindness proved resilient. Compassion of one people for another has not only survived a tragic history, it has thrived in the aftermath, and continues to create new opportunities for the descendants of those who suffered immense tragedy on both sides of the Atlantic. “The Irish Choctaw link . . . brimmed with solidarity like an arrow shot through time, waiting to land for almost 150 years.”85 Finally it did, and out of great pain and suffering, the Choctaw and Irish emerged stronger, as kindred spirits.