And neither did I!.
A former classmate, James Whalen, sent me a posting from another blog (by Rachael Robison) that mentioned the event and I was gob smacked (I am sure there is a better Irish saying, and I will try to find and insert it in this position before I post this---IF i find it).
I know about The Trail of Tears, and the Alabama connection. The National Park Service has an interactive map of some of the historic sites along the trail. But this wikipedia map gives a more complete view of which tribes were forced from their land.
The Choctaw Tribe was forced at gunpoint to march 500 miles to Oklahoma. The tribe was stripped of their land in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.
The Irish connection?
Just 13 years after their own terrible hardship, the Choctaw Tribe raised $170 ($71,000 today) to send to the starving Irish during the famine created by the English.
There is a monument to the tribe in County Cork Ireland in memory of their kindness provided such a short time after their own mistreatment by the U.S. Government. It is titled "Kindred Spirits".
Thank you James Whalen, and blogger Rachel Robison, for the history lesson.
[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com]
A former classmate, James Whalen, sent me a posting from another blog (by Rachael Robison) that mentioned the event and I was gob smacked (I am sure there is a better Irish saying, and I will try to find and insert it in this position before I post this---IF i find it).
I know about The Trail of Tears, and the Alabama connection. The National Park Service has an interactive map of some of the historic sites along the trail. But this wikipedia map gives a more complete view of which tribes were forced from their land.
The Choctaw Tribe was forced at gunpoint to march 500 miles to Oklahoma. The tribe was stripped of their land in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.
The Irish connection?
Just 13 years after their own terrible hardship, the Choctaw Tribe raised $170 ($71,000 today) to send to the starving Irish during the famine created by the English.
There is a monument to the tribe in County Cork Ireland in memory of their kindness provided such a short time after their own mistreatment by the U.S. Government. It is titled "Kindred Spirits".
Thank you James Whalen, and blogger Rachel Robison, for the history lesson.
[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com]
Founded 2007
About a half hour away from the site of the Kindred Spirits monument in Midleton, Cork is Youghall - a site recognized by some as the location where "Ireland's root" was perhaps first planted in 1586 by the English mercenary Sir Walter Raleigh. The food upon which so many of Ireland's peasants thrived was the poor mans friend while the oat, wheat and barley crops were exported. Like many of Ireland's poor who never tasted meat or fish - my father, who grew up during the depression in New York City and whose parents emigrated from Ireland, existed almost exclusively on the potato for a period of time.
ReplyDeleteSomeone else said, " he who has no wants beyond those of the appetites he shares in common with the brutes that perish is not likely to advance his social and moral condition."
Up the Choctaw Indians and all their kindred ancestors.