How to Say Till We Meet Again in Native American Choctaw Casino
Skullyville, Oklahoma – Tuesday 23 March 1847
On that leap day, as Major William Armstrong surveyed those who had gathered in the small timber agency where he lived, he must have experienced mixed emotions. For i matter, the meeting had been summoned to raise money for "the relief of the starving poor of Ireland", the birthplace of his own father.
For another, while the crowd included many missionaries and traders, much of the $170 subscribed at 24-hour interval's cease would come from the chiefs of the Choctaw Nation, who were as well nowadays.
Major Armstrong had known these Choctaw men for many long years, having served as the US government's master agent in the region since 1832. He had been with them through the "Trail of Tears", in which perhaps as many as four thousand Choctaw men, women and children perished when they were bullied out of their ancestral homelands and forced to cantankerous the River Mississippi.
The major'due south wife, Nancy, and his older brother Frank had been as nifty as he was to help the Choctaw, simply both died in the wake of the Trail of Tears. And when the 52-year-sometime Armstrong himself succumbed in the summer of 1847, less than three months after the Skullyville meeting for the "white brethren of Ireland", the main of the Choctaw Nation, Colonel David Folsom, would recollect him as "our begetter and our friend".
Oral histories nerveless in the nineteenth century include tantalising suggestions that the ancestors of the Choctaw Nation were hunting for mammoths over 12,000 years ago. Nanih Waiya, an ancient grass-covered earth mound held sacred by the Choctaw, lay at the heart of their ancestral lands in the Mississippi region.
During the eighteenth century they traded with French, British and Spanish alike, simply post-obit the Treaty of Hopewell (1786) they became close allies of the U.s. itself.
When United kingdom went to state of war against the US in 1812, many Choctaw warriors served in the American army of Andrew Jackson, particularly during the burdensome defeat he inflicted on the Creek Indians, Britain'due south erstwhile allies, every bit well equally in the successful rescue operation of 2 hundred Tennessee Riflemen from a British ambush.
David Folsom was among the l or threescore young Choctaw warriors who were still with Jackson's army when he annihilated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.
However, the Choctaw'southward credit with Jackson amounted to little when he became President of the United States fourteen years later. During the 1830s "Old Hickory" Jackson was responsible for transplanting numerous American Indian tribes, including the Choctaw, over the western frontier and appropriating their bequeathed lands for settlement.
Jackson, whose parents were both built-in in Co Antrim, Ireland, had barely been elected to the White House when he persuaded Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act in June 1830, thereby legitimising his ruthless eviction policy.
Much of Jackson's focus was on the fertile lands east of the River Mississippi belonging to five nations, including the Choctaw, known as the "Five Civilized Tribes" by the Anglo-European colonists and settlers of the menstruum. The state of Mississippi had been admitted to the Union in 1817.
Twelve years later Mississippi passed resolutions that declared Choctaw lands "state holding" and "terminated" Choctaw sovereignty, thereby making the Choctaw communities subject to the state's laws and open to possible attack by the militia.
In September 1830 the Choctaw minkos (chiefs) signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, the last of seven such country treaties, by which they ceded virtually 11 meg acres of their bequeathed homeland in nowadays-day Alabama and Mississippi to the US. In render, the Choctaw were to receive fifteen million acres of wilderness across the Mississippi in Indian Territory (present-mean solar day Oklahoma), lands that had already been obtained by a cessional treaty a decade before.
By Christmas, 1831, an estimated vii thousand Choctaw had set off for the Indian Territory, where the US had promised to leave them to their own devices.
In the widely published "Farewell Letter to the American People" (1832) ane of the minkos, George West. Harkins, explained that "nosotros equally Choctaws rather chose to endure and exist gratis, than alive under the degrading influence of laws, where our phonation could not exist heard in their formation."
In December 1831 the French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville chanced to witness "a large troop" of Choctaw men, women and children stumbling out of the woods virtually Memphis, Tennessee, on their way to the Mississippi. He too observed an American agent who, with the aid of a wad of banknotes, managed to induce a steamboat captain to escort the group "lx leagues farther" downriver into Arkansas.
De Tocqueville watched equally the Choctaw "avant-garde mournfully" towards the steamboat. The horses were loaded first; several took fright and plunged into the river, from which they were "pulled out simply with difficulty". Then came the men and women, with their children either attached to their backs or wrapped in blankets. And finally the elderly hobbled on, including a desperately emaciated, semi-naked adult female who, de Tocqueville learned, was reckoned to exist 110 years old.
"To get out i's land at that age to seek one's fortune in a foreign land, what misery!" opined de Tocqueville. The Frenchman likewise knew that the promise that the Choctaw would be left lonely on the far side of the Mississippi was a joke; he felt it would be ten years at about earlier the insatiable white human being came looking for more state.
"In the whole scene," continued De Tocqueville , "there was an air of ruin and destruction, something which betrayed a terminal and irrevocable adieu; one couldn't sentinel without feeling 1'south heart wrung. The Indians were tranquil, only sombre and taciturn.
"At that place was one who could speak English and of whom I asked why the Chactas [sic] were leaving their country. 'To be costless,' he answered. – I could never get any other reason out of him … It is a atypical fate that brought us to Memphis to watch the expulsion, i can say the dissolution, of one of the nearly historic and ancient American peoples."
De Tocqueville was right to feel so gloomy. That first migration of the Choctaw proved utterly devastating, coinciding with one of the coldest winters e'er recorded. Countless blizzards, flash floods, pestilent swamps and iced-up rivers combined with a cholera epidemic and malnutrition to kill thousands of the hapless migrants. When they finally reached Piddling Rock a Choctaw minko was quoted in the Arkansas Gazette as describing the trek as a "trail of tears and death". After a journey of 600 miles, the survivors would later settle in what became the state of Oklahoma, the name beingness Choctaw for "red people".
Trail of Tears
Numbers tend to vary wildly, but it is thought that, between 1830 and 1834, almost 12,500 Choctaw embarked on the Trail of Tears, of whom between one,500 and 4,000 died along the way. A farther 6,000 Choctaw chose to remain in Mississippi, where they would experience considerable harassment during the 1830s and 40s from the influx of Anglo-European settlers.
Many connected to commence on the Trail of Tears, with a thousand Choctaw migrants making the journey in 1846 alone, while many more only succumbed to the alternative reality bestowed by an addiction to whiskey.
When 1 reads of the Trail of Tears – or, indeed, of the Great Famine in Ireland – one is generally inclined to think that the scoundrels who allowed these grim events to happen must take been the most villainous blackguards that ever lived.
I assumed that those who orchestrated the "forced relocation" of the Choctaw were the sort of yobbos you see in cowboy films who yelp with delight as they set fire their to tipis. However, history is rarely that simple. Gimmicky correspondence suggests that Frank and William Armstrong – the ii principal authorities figures during the Trail of Tears era – were utterly appalled by what happened to the Choctaw that vicious winter.
Like Andrew Jackson, the Armstrong brothers were of Scots-Irish gaelic stock. Colonel James Armstrong, their begetter, was built-in in 1736 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, and is said to have been a son of the Rev. Gustavus Armstrong. He was known every bit "Trooper" Armstrong from his time with the sixth (Inniskilling) Dragoons, a regiment of the British army largely mustered in Ulster. A contemporary later recalled "his superb figure and cracking concrete strength, likewise as his skill and enterprise."
Trooper Armstrong is thought to accept served in the Seven Years' War, in which the Inniskillings fought with great distinction at the Battles of Minden and Wetter in 1759. He subsequently left the ground forces and immigrated to America shortly after the Revolutionary War. By 1786 he had settled in Abingdon, Virginia, and married Susan Wells, daughter of Charles Wells, founder of Wellsburg, West Virginia.
In July 1791 Trooper Armstrong'due south gentlemanly instruction came to the fore when he served as an "czar elegantiarum" during Governor Blount'southward seven-day council with the Cherokee at White'south Fort (now Knoxville), Tennessee. More than than 1,200 unarmed Cherokee observed the courtly manner in which the Ulsterman presented forty-one chiefs and warriors to the governor, introducing each one by his ancient name.
A decade later Trooper Armstrong moved his family to a 2,500-acre farm on Flat Creek, fifteen miles from Knoxville, where he died in 1813. He was survived by two daughters and v sons. His sons fought in Andrew Jackson's army during the Creek Wars of 1813–14 and again at the Battle of New Orleans.
Such service stood them in proficient stead when Jackson was elected to the White House in 1829. Robert Armstrong, a particular "pet" of Jackson's, became postmaster of Nashville, while William became the town's mayor.
In April 1831 some other brother, Frank, was despatched to the Mississippi to take a census of the Choctaw and to survey their farms before their departure. Built-in in Virginia in 1783, Frank Armstrong is one of those most-miss household names: he reputedly designed a short-barrelled pocket pistol, of large calibre, and so showed the pattern to a gun-maker named Henry Derringer. When Derringer successfully manufactured the weapon, a delighted Armstrong selflessly christened it the "Derringer pistol".
Many years after the Choctaw master David Folsom would tell of how he had known Frank since 1810 and of how he had surveyed the Choctaw lands "faithfully and to the entire satisfaction of all concerned". On 7 September 1831, the day on which he completed the demography, Frank was appointed agent to the Choctaw in Indian Territory.
As such, he was to prepare for the inflow of all those Choctaw who would shortly exist spilling beyond that mighty, rolling, yellow river to institute a new life. He set in motion the construction of a wagon route from Fort Smith to Red River. Built by The states soldiers, the Military Road, equally it became known, was fraught with complications, requiring numerous causeways across the boggy marshes.
Respect for Native Americans
Meanwhile, in July 1832, Frank's younger blood brother William was assigned the job of looking afterward the remaining Choctaw on the due east side of the Mississippi.
Although the Armstrongs had served under the hard-nosed Jackson, they had inherited their father'southward honourable demeanour as well as his respect for the Native Americans and the pioneer's conclusion to improve someone's lot. Nevertheless, entrusted with the thankless task of overseeing the mass exodus, they were both badly hampered by a lack of money and resource.
By April 1833 it was reckoned that the majority of Choctaw had crossed the river, and Frank Armstrong secured $10,000 to build a council house for the Nation, as well as houses for the chiefs of the 3 districts and a church in each district, which were to double every bit school houses until actual schools could be completed.
These schools were ready at the request of the Choctaw chiefs, and nigh were paid for out of the money the Choctaw had obtained in exchange for land cessions. As a event, it could be argued that the Choctaw Nation had the first publicly funded school organisation in the United states.
Frank seems to have been on good terms with the Choctaw, only it was a tough slog for anybody. When the crops failed in the dire bound of 1834 he tried to become hold of as many bushels of corn as he could to relieve the starving Choctaw, as well as commissioning looms and spinning wheels.
His diplomacy was greatly prized past the government, and past 1835 he was picked to negotiate a treaty with the Comanche and other "wandering tribes" west of Missouri and Arkansas. He also erected a new logwood head office, known as the Agency Building, some fifteen miles west of Fort Smith. The settlement that grew up around the edifice became known every bit Skullyville.
However, Frank was struck down by an unidentified disease and died, aged fifty-two, on half-dozen August 1835. One wonders whether he passed away tormented by the promises he'd been unable to keep to the Choctaw, embittered by the government's almost full failure to run into his demands during the grim trek to Indian Territory. Either fashion, he died and was buried at Fort Coffee in Le Flore Canton, Oklahoma.
At the time of his death twelve logwood schoolhouses were either finished or nearing completion. Books had been bought and "steady, sober, married" candidates were being interviewed every bit potential teachers. Three months afterwards Frank died his wife delivered a posthumous son, Frank, Jr, who would afterwards earn the stardom of beingness the merely Amalgamated general to start the Civil War fighting for the Matrimony.
After Frank'south decease his brother William succeeded him as Superintendent for Indian Affairs for the Western Territory. He moved beyond the Mississippi and occupied the Agency Edifice, where he was based for the side by side twelve years. As Principal Folsom put it, William "came among us with his family", but a few months later on his wife, Nancy, died. "My friends, but few of yous knew the loss we sustained in the decease of Mrs Armstrong," said the primary. "She was an excellent woman. The sympathies of her heart flowed out to the Choctaws – to the poor Choctaw women."
Meanwhile, William had to contend with considerable discord within the Choctaw Nation itself, brought almost past the appalling sorrow of the previous years. His diplomatic skills ensured that he was also securely embroiled in negotiating the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation to the Indian Territory from their lands in Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama and the Carolinas.
Like Frank, William spent much of his fourth dimension helping to create a semblance of a society for the Choctaw in their new location, with a detail emphasis on education. He had a good bargain of success in this regard, and a study in the Missionary Herald of early on 1847 applauded the "great efforts" being fabricated "by the leading men to establish schools, and a strong want is manifested past the people to avail themselves of the benefits of schools."
Among these buildings was a boys' school founded in 1844, known as the Armstrong Academy, which was eventually destroyed by fire in 1921.
On 23 March 1847 William Armstrong chaired the meeting at the Agency Building in Skullyville at which the $170 was raised for Irish famine relief. Information technology is assumed that the Choctaw contributed because they felt immense empathy for the Irish gaelic situation, having experienced such like pain during the Trail of Tears a little over a decade before. The coin was and so forwarded to Charles Goffland, Treasurer of the Memphis Irish gaelic Relief Committee.
About remarkable contribution
Of all the thousands of chivalrous bodies and individuals who contributed to the General Irish Relief Commission of the City of New York in 1847, "the Choctaw tribe of Indians in the far West" were regarded as the most remarkable. The committee's chairman was the 65-year-old Myndert Van Schaick, a veteran New York politician and former Land Senator.
On 22 May 1847 he wrote to Joseph Bewley and Jonathan Pim, joint secretaries of the Quaker-inspired Central Relief Committee in Republic of ireland, stating that American contributions had thus far raised about $145,000, and expressing his satisfaction that the showtime vessels laden with "bread stuffs", habiliment and other provisions had already arrived in Ireland. Another ship was beingness loaded as he wrote.
Van Schaick then drew specific attending to a sum of $ii,747, which had been collected by James Reyburn, president of the Friendly Sons of St Patrick, from donors in Mississippi and Tennessee. Van Schaick observed that, "out of $170 of that sum, the largest office was contributed by the children of the forest, our ruby brethren of the Choctaw nation. Even those distant men have felt the force of Christian example, and accept given their cheerful aid in this good cause, though they are separated from yous by many miles of land and an body of water's breadth."
The $170 raised in Skullyville was non the only money raised by the Choctaw. More than 150 miles south, the citizens of Doaksville, the largest town in Indian Territory, gathered to consider "the benefit of the starving Irish" in early May 1847.
The coming together was chaired by Joseph R. Berthelet, a public-spirited soul who would go on to found the Milwaukee Cement Company. A total of $153 was "immediately subscribed", prompting Charles de Morse, editor of the Northern Standard of Texas, to remark: "Considering how far in the wilderness Doaksville is situated, its small population, the fact that aught but unprompted sympathy for distress elicited their assistance, and its very peachy distance from the scene of the famine and from all active efforts in its behalf … we consider it very creditable to the citizens of that piffling identify."
The Arkansas Intelligencer published a rather more than self-congratulatory tribute on 8 May: "What an agreeable reflection it must requite to the Christian and the philanthropist, to witness this evidence of civilization and Christian spirit existing amidst our ruddy neighbors. They are repaying the Christian world a consideration for bringing them out from the benighted ignorance and heathen atrocity. Not simply by contributing a few dollars, but by affording bear witness that the labors of the Christian missionary have non been in vain."
Curiously there is no tape of the Doaksville contribution in the accounts of the General Irish Relief Committee. Nonetheless, the Choctaw money that did reach Ireland was gratefully received by the Order of Friends, who referred to it as "the vox of benevolence from the western wilderness of the western hemisphere".
Major William Armstrong died at Doaksville, aged fifty-three, on 12 June 1847. His remains were brought to Nashville for burial. A month after his expiry the Nashville Whig published Chief Folsom's remarkable appreciation in which he commended William, "our father and our friend", for being and then "deeply interested" in the well-being of the Choctaw. "He was conscientious to practice everything he could to make our wives and little ones comfortable. He saw united states of america settled in our homes."
Assistance to the Irish people notwithstanding, the Choctaw of Mississippi were still in torment in 1849. They described how they "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 past such treatment some of our all-time men have died."
The Choctaw'due south generosity to the Irish was vaguely remembered during a terrible drought in 1860, which killed almost all their crops and left them on the verge of dearth. Elias Rector, the Southern Superintendent of Indian Affairs, issued a reminder of their generosity in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Diplomacy in Washington.
"As we aided in sending nutrient to starving Ireland, so we should preserve from destruction and misery these faithful allies and dependents."
In 1992 a group of twenty-two Irish gaelic men and women walked the 600-mile Trail of Tears, raising $ane,000 for every dollar given by the Choctaw in 1847. The coin went to relieve suffering in famine-stricken Somalia. Seven years later on Gary White Deer, a member of the Choctaw Nation, reciprocated when he visited Canton Mayo and led the annual Famine Walk from Doolough to Louisburgh.
Mary Robinson, the old President of Republic of ireland, is an honorary Choctaw main, and a plaque acknowledging the Choctaw contribution is mounted in the Mansion Firm in Dublin.
On March 12th, 2018, the Irish gaelic Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is due to meet with leaders of the Choctaw in Durant, Oklahoma, to give thanks them for the succour that their ancestors provided.
This story is extracted from Turtle Bunbury'south book "1847: A Chronicle of Genius, Generosity & Savagery", published by Gill in 2016. The acclaimed volume is available via Amazon. www.turtlebunbury.com
Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/what-the-irish-did-for-and-to-the-choctaw-tribe-1.3423873
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