Doing desultory research for a not-yet-imagined novel, T. ran across another fascinating tidbit of history, and had another moment of sighing and shaking her head, and asking, “Why don’t more people know this story???”
Now, you will.
The Choctaw, Native persons forced from their land in the 1838-39 by an expansion-happy American government, essentially lost everything – lives and property – on Oklahoma’s five hundred mile Trail of Tears. In terms of bait-and-switch jobs, this so-called treaty that ended with “and we’ll now make Oklahoma ‘Indian Territory, so all of you, go,'” was a doozy. T. remembers wincing through teaching this section of American history. The shock to her students was inevitable. What? The government did that? (Sorry, kids. This is why we study history – to prevent the recurrence of life and soul-destroying mistakes.)
What most people don’t know is that despite their horror and grief and loss, the Choctaw people were still a sovereign nation, and their elders behaved as statesmen. When they heard of others in trouble, they still helped.
By 1847, the Irish had a huge problem. To simplify the tale, they’d been pushed off decent pastureland by the British, so without grazing animals, potatoes were what they depended on to survive. We all learned in school about the potato blight that spread from the eastern U.S. to the UK and throughout Europe, which presaged a famine of such epic proportions in Ireland that approximately a million people died, and another million emigrated elsewhere. The Irish were in dire straits… so the Choctaw, impoverished, disenfranchised, herded onto reservations, and without much of their own — sent the Irish people aid.
…in the form of $710. Which was an immense amount of money in the 1800’s. Which, in 1847, so few years after their own forced diaspora, must have taken tremendous effort from a people who, in starkest appearance, at least, had nothing.
They had something, though. Something which the wisest of us should want.
Though T’s family has Caddo roots established from her mother’s side, the family has often suspected some small tributary on her father’s side wends through Choctaw veins. T. would like to think this kind of integrity and grace might be some small part of her birthright.
It’s probably not. But one can aspire.
Yes they were a sovereign nation and because of that they were considered one of the 5 “Civilized” Tribes that included the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole who all had similar government systems…the Caddo, not so much.
Yeah, well, you didn’t want to be part of anything civilized anyway, right? xxx