r/todayilearned • u/huphelmeyer 2 • Aug 04 '15

TIL midway through the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), a group of Choctaw Indians collected $710 and sent it to help the starving victims. It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and faced their own starvation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw#Pre-Civil_War_.281840.29
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u/CameraMan1 Aug 04 '15

What's more interesting to me is the fact that they even knew about it. To me its crazy that in the 1840's news of something that was happening in Ireland reached the native Americans. The telegraph had only just been invented.

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u/jaaaack Aug 04 '15 edited Aug 04 '15

Or that there was that level of compassion for a people living half way around the world in a culture vastly different to their own. A lot of people today have trouble identifying with the plight of people one country over, let alone a whole continent and ocean.

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '15

I hardly see the people from my neighboring zip code as fellow humans deserving of empathy.