Bear's Den: "An Irish & Indian 'Potato Salad' of Brotherhood"”

Boy oh boy, Saint Patty’s Day. It comes around every March 17th. Now you wouldn’t think that Indians and Irish have a bunch in common, but they do. Heck, I married a little Irish imp, and just as the old Irish ditty goes we have a …three-legged table, a chair to match, and a hole in the floor (of our‘teepee’)…for the chickens to scratch. For all practical purposes, the Irish and the American Indian have had a long and close relationship. Yes’sir, and it was going on long before the ‘tatters spoiled, by golly. Yet, it was the famine resulting from the Irish potato blight that solidly ‘mashed’ the American Indian and the Irish into a ‘potatoey salad’; and the “Choctaw's gift to Irish Famine Relief has been the dressing of that side dish.

Ya know there’s German potato salad and Picnic potato salad but, by Jim, there’s also an Irish/Indian variety, too. Some years ago, I met an Irish author and poet named Pat Mullan. Pat’s a very good friend of mine, and he lives in County Galway on the Emerald Isle. Now, I’d always known about the relationship between the Irish and the American Indian. That’s because, from the beginning, there were more Irish who married Indians – man and woman alike – than any other white ethnic group in this land. Uh-huh, the two cultures were that similar in many respects. So, early on in this country’s beginning, there were many such Irish/Indian hook-ups. But old Pat did tell me something new – he told me about the “Choctaw’s Gift to the Irish during the Potato Famine”. Pat wrote a beautiful poem about this entitled “Savages”, and he says that the historic event is still celebrated in Ireland today, even though it’s little known here in the colonies. Yes’um, and it all began… with spoiled spuds.

In case you didn’t know, the potato is a Native American food, eh. Prior to that miscreant Columbus’s arrival, it was only found in the Americas. But, it was soon imported to Europe, and grown as food for many there. Yet, unlike most on that side of the pond, it was the main food source for fully 1/3 of the Irish on the green island. So, when the new form of blight struck the potato crop in Europe, it destroyed harvests and over one million two-legged Irish died. The English government was treating the Irish much the same as the U.S. government was treating the American Indian around that time; they really didn’t care if the Irish died by the thousands. So, by 1845, many were doing just that – starving to death – and many more were immigrating to America. Well, the Indians were already here, and they were well versed in government genocide. The ‘Trail of Tears’ had relocated most of the Woodland Indian nations to Ok-le-hum-ma, which is a Choctaw word meaning “Red People”. It was called “The Indian Territories” by the U.S., and heck, the name kind’a stuck because, for years, the state of Oklahoma had the words “Indian Nations” on their license plates. Then, they switched to just “Native America”. But the connection that mashed the Irish and Indians into a potato salad of friendship for all time… well it happened in 1847.

Last Christmas, I wrote a column about ‘Indian Giving’ that explains the Indian view of generosity shown here. In 1847, the Indians in the Oklahoma Territories were beginning to heal from their ordeal of forced relocation. Of the 21,000 Choctaws who had started on the Trail of Tears, more than half had died from malnutrition, exposure and disease on the forced march. Yep, fresh from their own spell with starvation and expatriation sixteen years earlier, they were pretty sympathetic toward their Irish brethren enduring the same thing. So, they collected money to be sent to the Irish people who were suffering from similar circumstances of loss of land, home and life. Though broke and hard-up themselves, the Choctaw collected donations to the tune of $710 to send to Ireland; they saved a lot of lives across the sea. Now this may not sound like a lot of bread today, but some have equaled this figure to a million bucks in terms of the help it was able to provide the Irish back in 1847.

So, the American Indian, and specifically the Choctaw nation, was able to empathize with the troubles of the Irish and the devastating circumstances in Ireland at the time. Yep, and this event is representative of a kindness and generosity that are values shared by American Indians and Irish alike. Instead of being bitter, the Indians set aside their own pitiful conditions in order to show charity to another group of two-leggeds. The Irish do the same type of thing, eh. You bet’cha, and the Irish have never forgotten it, either. Sure, and that’s why… the American Indian and the Irish are a mix of a potatoey kind of salad; and The Choctaw's Gift to Irish Famine Relief has been the dressing of that side dish. Happy St. Patrick’s Day everybody!

Additional: if you’d like to read Pat’s poem “Savages”, put this link into your computer and go to: http://www.pmullan.com/savages.htm

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David Walks-As-Bear is an Inter-Tribal Elder and Kispoko Shawnee Indian. He works as a private game warden and detective and is a novelist and syndicated newspaper columnist living in Northwest Michigan. Contact him at his home paper The White Lake Beacon: 231-894-5356 or visit his website at: www.Walks-As-Bear.com

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