Repaid

I think that most acts of kindness are repaid in some way, and here's an example of one such event.  Let's go way way back to a shameful period in our history.

Andrew Jackson was president then. Some people even today think of him as a fine, fine man, but fine, fine men don't force thousands of people off their ancestral land. Jackson did that to the Choctaw people, sent them marching away from their own land on what is called the Trail of Tears. They lost thousands of people to disease and starvation along the way, and wound up re-settled in the "Indian colonization zone" in what is now Oklahoma, having given up valuable agricultural and hunting land in the southeast.

The Choctaws, resourceful as always, made the best of their new situation, but they weren't exactly living like kings in 1845. That's when word reached them that people in Ireland, across the sea, were having a tough time too. Their chief crop was potatoes, but a fungus had destroyed their crop, leaving the Irish in great need of food and funds just to survive.

Just as the Trail of Tears exacted a toll of death and disease among the Choctaws, so did the potato famine to the Irish.

It was a man named Major William Armstrong who came to Oklahoma to "raise money for the starving poor of Ireland," as historian Turtle Bunbury writes. Armstrong called together missionaries, traders and chiefs of the Choctaw Nation to appeal for help, passing the hat, as it were.

Hearing about this, the Choctaws - and it cannot be stressed enough that they were hardly rolling in money at the time - came up with $170 to send to people across an ocean they had never crossed, for people they had never met.

That $170 is the equivalent of about $5,000 today.

Did the Irish forget? They did not. Hearing that the Navajo and Hopi people here are being hit hard in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic, people all across Ireland are sending money to a GoFundMe account set up to help them.

"From Ireland, 170 years later, the favour is returned!" says a message from one of the donors.  "To our Native American brothers and sisters in your moment of hardship."

So far, the Irish have donated a half million dollars to the campaign, which started when Naomi O'Leary, a journalist from the Irish Times, tweeted about the need for funds.

"Native Americans raised a huge amount in famine relief for Ireland at a time when they had very little," O'Leary wrote on Saturday. "It's time for us to come through for them now."

The funds raised will go toward food, water and other necessary supplies for Navajo and Hopi communities, which have seen more than 2,400 confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 70 deaths. On the Hopi reservation 53 cases are reported.

This monument stands in Midleton, Ireland's Bailick Park as a tribute to the Choctaw charity during the Great Famine. It's called “Kindred Spirits.” It features nine giant stainless steel feathers, in the shape of an empty bowl.

Kindness in another's trouble...