From West to West
No doubt many of you have been watching and listening to the awful tragedy currently unfolding on the Carribean island of Haiti. As relief starts to move in to Port au Prince, millions of dollars are being pledged in aid to that shattered country. It is indicative of a shared human bond, an empathy toward those who suffer, that we see how, even in these cash-strapped times, people are willing to give what they can to those who have nothing.
Throughout history there have been many examples of generosity, and no-doubt countless tales of hardship. Irish people do not, of course, have to look far into the past to find our own moments of horror – the Famine of 1740 and the ‘Great’ Famine of 1845-1849 robbed this country of millions of its citizens.1 They were two devastating blows to the psyche of the nation, resulting, in the latter case alone, in the deaths of up to one and a half million people and the immediate eimigration of somewhere in the region of a million more. During the darkest moments of the Great Famine many came to Ireland’s aid in what may have been the first case of organised disaster relief. Amongst the worldwide giving there was one instance of astonishing generosity and fellow-feeling that was so unexpected as to be worthy of record in the history of both our peoples. It was the collection and donation of $710 2 to the men, women and children of Ireland from the men, women and children of the Native American Choctaw Nation.
The Choctaw Indian Nation traces its roots to the Mississippi Valley and the Deep South (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana). Only sixteen years before, in 1830, as a result of a treaty with the U.S. Government, 15,000 Choctaws were made to move to ‘Indian Territory’ (now Oklahoma). About 2,500 died from disease, famine and attacks from white men and Comanche during this trek, a move now remembered as the ‘Trail of Tears’.3 They had starved once themselves, and remembered the hunger. It is a source of amazement even today, that a people, so driven to destitution and insufficiency, should not only be able to scrape together the $710, but that they found it in their hearts to do so at all amidst all their own difficulties.4 To mark the 150th anniversary, eight Irish people retraced the Trail of Tears5 while President Mary Robinson extolled the donation in a public commemoration.
The effect of the Trail of Tears upon the Choctaw should not be underestimated; their lands6 were almost entirely taken from them and their people permanently divided. Reservations can now be found in Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.7 An agrarian people, they were not suited, equipped, or prepared for a move of such proportions and the hardships they endured were wondered upon even by European spectators of the era. Alexis de Tocqueville, noted French political thinker and historian, witnessed the Choctaw removals while in Memphis, Tennessee in 1831:
In the whole scene there was an air of ruin and destruction, something which betrayed a final and irrevocable adieu; one couldn’t watch without feeling one’s heart wrung. The Indians were tranquil, but sombre and taciturn. There was one who could speak English and of whom I asked why the Chactas were leaving their country. “To be free,” he answered, could never get any other reason out of him. We … watch the expulsion … of one of the most celebrated and ancient American peoples.
The removals continued, with the last recorded official deracination occuring in 1903. It was reported that even African slaves had more legal rights than did the Choctaws during this period. One contemporary Georgian described them as having “no nobility or virtue at all…beneath contempt”.8
There was one companion that did stand by the Choctaw during all their trials; the Choctaw Pony. This is an animal whose history many Connemara Pony enthusiasts will find ringing with familiarity. Just as the Connemara is supposedly partially descended from Spanish horses washed ashore after the dismal failure of the Spanish Armada9 in 1588, so too is the Choctaw Pony descended from the Spanish warhorses of the conquistadores – although definitely so in this case! Just as the English Penal Laws forbade Irish Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5, so too were the Native Americans forbidden from horses at all by the Spanish.10
The horse transformed the buffalo-hunting culture of the Plains Indians in particular, but even tribes such as the Choctaw, who were agriculturists, put the animals to good use. They developed a smaller strain of the Spanish horses into the Choctaw Pony,11 which measures between 13.2 to 14.2 hands. Obtaining food became easier and transportation was greatly assisted. Among the Choctaws, these ponies determined wealth, prestige, glory, and honor. They were also used like money to barter for other goods. One can draw many similarities between the Choctaw and some Connemara farmers: subsistence farmers, whose great comfort, companion and sport would have been their tough, enduring ponies. One gathering seaweed and potatoes, the other hunting and gathering corn.
H.B. Cushman, in the book, “History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez Indians”, published in Greenville, Texas, 1899 describes:
…His unwearied patience, and his seemingly untiring endurance of hardships and fatigue, were truly astonishing. In all the Choctaws’ expeditions the chubby little pony always was considered an indispensable adjunct…
…All things being ready, the hunter, as leader and protector, took his position in front, sometimes on foot and sometimes astride a pony of such diminutive proportions, that justice and mercy would naturally have suggested a reverse in the order of things, and … directly after whom, in close order, the loaded ponies followed in regular succession one behind the other, while the dutiful wife and children brought up the rear in regular, successive order, often with from three to five children on a single pony – literally hiding the submissive little fellow from view. Upon the neck of each pony a little bell was suspended, whose tinkling chimes of various tones broke the monotony of the desert air, and added cheerfulness to the novel scene.
In the 1970′s, the distinct breed of Choctaw Ponies began to face extinction, for much the same reasons that compelled Connemara breeders to form the CPBS to protect their own breed. In the mid-late 1800s, almost all Spanish stocks were crossbred with or replaced by horses of larger size including thoroughbreds, other riding horse breeds and draft horses. A few herds of pure blood remain in the Southeast and the Southwest owned by traditional ranchers or Native American tribes, and a few were found in isolated feral herds. The Choctaw strain is in particular jepordy, with some placing its total ‘pure-bred’ population at less than 200 ponies. They are a direct remnant of the horses of the golden age of Spanish horse breeding, a type that is largely gone from Spain as well as America. Besides being an important part of American history, says the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, the genes of remaining Spanish-stock horses and ponies are “irreplaceable”.
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Footnotes
- It is not known how many people died during the Famines, although population decrease estimates (counting both deaths and emigration for the Great Famine and principally just deaths for the Famine of 1740) hover between 20% and 30% of the population. That converts to about half a million in 1740 and around three million in the late 1840′s. These are of the ‘main’ famines in Irish history, although famines were not actually uncommon. The last ‘main’ famine occured in 1879 and, while causing mainly hunger rather than death, it is principally remembered as igniting in Ireland a battle for the ‘Three ‘Fs’ (fair rent, fixity of tenure, free sale) being waged by Davitt and the Land League, and as a contributory to the Irish Land War of the late 1870s and early 1880s. Back to Article
- About $20,000 today, or €14,000. Back to Article
- While the phrase ‘Trail of Tears’ was coined by a Choctaw chief to an American newspaper in direct reference to the Choctaw experience (“…a trail of tears and death“) the term has since, and is still, used to describe the relocation experiences of several other peoples also. These include the Seminole, Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee Nations. Back to Article
- It is worth comparing their generosity to that of the most powerful monarch in the world of the time: Queen Victoria. In 1845, the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid declared his intention to send £10,000 to the Irish but Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan send only £1,000, because she had sent only £2,000. The Sultan sent the £1,000 but also secretly sent 3 ships full of food. The English tried to block the ships, but the food arrived at Drogheda harbour and was left there by Ottoman sailors. Back to Article
- Fittingly, as part of a successful campaign to raise funds for Somailian famine relief. Back to Article
- 10,523,130 acres (42,585.6 km2), the last of their heriditary Mississipian lands. Approximately 4,000–6,000 Choctaws remained in Mississippi in 1831 after the initial removal efforts, but one remaining Choctaw described their situation in 1849: “we have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died.” Between 1738 and 1861, the Choctaw people would cede some 26,851,407 acres to European and later American settlers, principally under the threat of bloodshed. Back to Article
- Alabama-(MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians), Louisiana-(Jena Band of Choctaw Indians; United Houma Nation; Choctaw-Apache of Ebarb; Bayou Lacombe Choctaw; Clifton Choctaw), Texas-(Mount Tabor Indian Community), Mississippi-(Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians), and Oklahoma-(Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma). Other population centers include California, Oregon, Dallas, Houston and Chicago. Back to Article
- That is not to lay responsibility for how they were treated on everyone’s door but the Irish. Andrew Jackson, the American President responsible for this – and other – ‘Trail of Tears’ was himself second generation Irish and had in fact fought alongside the Choctaw against the British in the cause of American independence. Something that would not doubt have cast him in the mould of the blackest betrayer to the dislocated Choctaw. There should also be no doubt in anyone’s mind that among the troops ready to descend upon any Indian tribe that did not co-operate would have been many Irish emigrants. The Irish had always been attractive recruits for foreign armies, and some 120,000 Irishmen fought in the American Civil War alone, just thirty years later. One was Carlow-born Captain Myles Keogh. Promoted to major for his Civil War gallantry, Keogh would later join General George Custer’s 7th Cavalry and die fighting in the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. Back to Article
- Ironically named Grande y Felicísima Armada, the “Great and Most Fortunate Navy”. It consisted of 22 galleons and 108 armed merchant vessels. Interestingly, they were still technically outnumbered by the English, who were reinforced by the Dutch. While the Spanish lost 2 ships in battle with some 800 men, around 65 ships were sunk or wrecked due to storm – most of these on the Irish Atlantic coast (the Spanish also being unaware of the effect of the Gulf Stream on their navigation) – leaving some 20,000 men dead. The Armada carried a large number of horses and mules for the invasion force. While popular myth has it that the Connemara pony is descended from war-horses washed ashore, most, if not all, of these animals were put over the side in the North Sea as it was considered that there was insufficient water for the journey home. An English ship later saw the mass of animals swimming in the sea. Back to Article
- The Penal Laws were introduced into Ireland in the year 1695. A horse worth more than £5 was theoretically good for military use and therefore the English were determined to keep them out of Irish hands. Likewise the Spanish recognised the reasons behind their victory over the natives (horses and guns) and were determined to keep their advantages. The Spanish horses were the best in the world at the time, a mix of Barb, Arabian and Andalusian blood. It was therefore the escaped, wild horses, the mesteño or ‘Mustangs’ that became the first horses to fall into the possession of the native peoples. When the Southwest Pueblo tribes revolted in 1680 they also seized the Spaniards’ horses and began trading them to other tribes. The familiarisation of the native peoples to the horse continued in general throughout the 18th century, just before or concurrent to the gradual repeal of the Penal Laws in Ireland in the period between the 1770′s and the 1820′s. Back to Article
- American Livestock Breeds Conservancy states that the Colonial Spanish horse is a group of closely related breeds that descend from horses brought by Spanish explorers and colonists to the Americas beginning in the 1500s. The horse goes by a number of names including Spanish Mustang, Spanish Barb, or their strain name. Regardless of the name, they share conformational features that distinguish them from other riding breeds. They are small, standing 13.2 to 15 hands (54-60″) at the withers and weighing 700-900 pounds. The horses are generally short coupled and deep bodied, but narrow from the front so that the front legs join the chest in the shape of an “A” rather than the shape of a “U” that is seen in the stock horse breeds. The croup is sloping and the tail is set low. The horses have broad foreheads and narrow faces, and the profiles may be either straight or convex. Spanish horses are athletic and useful for a variety of riding disciplines, among them ranch work, endurance competitions, and pleasure riding. They have an unusually long stride, and many of them are gaited. They are renowned for their even temperament. Back to Article
Well done. thanks to all the subalterns of the world who make love possible.
Cool post. Didn’t know half that stuff!
Thanks Sean – appreciated! Though it’s not too hard write a good post with such an interesting subject matter :)