What were the logistics involved? I'm unfamiliar with mid-1800's banking practices/capabilities, and considering the plight of Native Americans at the time, it seems incredulous to me that such a thing took place. I assume that the Choctaw people learned of the famine through newspapers. Upon deciding to assist, how was the money raised? Did Native Americans typically utilize United States money/banks at that point in history? How was the donation transferred to the Irish people? TIL leaves me with more questions than answers today : )
Donations from the United States for relief of the Irish during the Great Hunger were usually collected at meetings organized by local “relief committees” throughout the country. It would be at these meetings that people arrived with cash or goods and pooled them together. Then, organizers of the meetings would forward the donations on to the General Relief Committee in New York. The committee in New York published a report of their accounts, so you can see that they received money in various ways, including personal checks (probably written by local committee organizers who collected cash), and often just cash in an envelope. The New York committee would immediately take any money received and buy food with it, which was pooled with the other food and goods that arrived from throughout the US, and put on ships headed to Dublin. In Dublin, the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends in Dublin was responsible for actual distribution of relief goods.
The famous $170 donation from the Choctaws was collected at a relief meeting on March 23, 1847 at the Choctaw agency near Fort Smith in Arkansas. The newspaper accounts of the meeting say that “all subscribed, agents, missionaries, traders and Indians, a considerable portion of which fund was made up by the latter.” So, the meeting was full of all of the various groups of people who lived in and around Fort Smith, but observers agreed it was the Choctaw in particular that made significant donations. Major William Armstrong, who chaired the relief meeting at Fort Smith, sent to money to the New York committee, who received it and logged in on May 21, noting “A large portion of this sum was contributed by our red brethren of the Choctaw nation.” It’s not exactly clear what form the money arrived in, but I’d bet it was in the form of a check, as Armstrong was an Indian agent and, at least when doing government business, agents transferred money using checks/drafts rather than cash.
Interestingly, this model of local relief committees drawing on donations from small localities and then pooling together resources wasn't new in the United States. In the 1820s Americans did the same thing, but on a much smaller scale, for relief of Greek Christians fighting against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence. They would do the same after the Irish famine, too, organizing to relieve suffering settlers during the Bleeding Kansas era, and so on.
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