Midway through the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), a group of Choctaw collected $170 ($ in current dollar terms) and sent it to help starving Irish men, women and children. "It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and they had faced starvation… It was an amazing gesture. By today's standards, it might be a million dollars," wrote Judy Allen in 1992, editor of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's newspaper, "Bishinik". To mark the 150th anniversary, eight Irish people came to the US to retrace the Trail of Tears to raise money for Somalian relief. (Following publication of Angie Debo's "The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic", various articles corrected the cited amount of this donation, saying it was $170 ($).)