As the Irish Potato Famine ravaged the country between 1845 and 1852, killing more than a million people and launching a mass emigration out of Ireland, a group of Native Americans in Oklahoma with almost nothing to give pooled their resources to send the majority of a $170 donation — which the BBC notes would be worth tens of thousands of dollars today — from their small town to starving strangers across the ocean.
Highlighted in a new piece in Atlas Obscura, this generosity forged a bond between the Choctaw people and the Irish that still endures today. The Choctaw people’s generosity becomes even more remarkable when considering the context of the time: They had been coerced into giving up 11 million acres of their land and lost many on their journey to relocate in Oklahoma.
So why did they do it?
“It is assumed that the Choctaw contributed because they felt immense empathy for the Irish situation, having experienced such similar pain during the Trail of Tears a little over a decade earlier,” historian Turtle Bunbury writes.
The selflessness exhibited by the Choctaw still resonates in Ireland today, with politician Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announcing a new scholarship last weekend for Choctaw youth.
“A few years ago, on a visit to Ireland, a representative of the Choctaw Nation called your support for us ‘a sacred memory,’” he said, according to the BBC. “It is that and more. It is a sacred bond, which has joined our peoples together for all time. Your act of kindness has never been, and never will be, forgotten in Ireland.”
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