Madoc, Prince of Wales, American Settler, New World Celt

From Alabama Welsh

History and legend have it that MADOC, a son of King Owain of Gwynedd, is claimed not only to have visited America in 1170, but also that he and his followers assimilated into a tribe on the upper Missouri. This tribe fueled tales of fair-haired Indians, living in round huts and using round coracle-like boats, both of which were common in Wales, but unheard of in America at  the time. They were also said to speak a language similar to Welsh.

Owain Gwynedd, ruler of North Wales in the  twelfth century, had twenty-four children, ten of whom were legitimate.   MADOC, one of the illegitimate sons, was born in a castle at Dolwyddelan, a village  at the head of the Lledr valley between Betws-y-Coed and Blaenau Ffestiniog.       On the death of Owain Gwynedd in December 1169, the brothers fought amongst themselves for the right to rule Gwynedd. MADOC, although being brave and  aventurous, was a man of peace. He and his brother, Riryd (Regyd), left the quay on the Afon (River) Ganol at Aber-Kerrik-Gwynan, on the North Wales Coast (now Rhos-on-Sea) in two ships, the Gorn Gwynant and the Pedr Sant.   They sailed west, leaving the coast of Ireland 'farre north' and landed  in Mobile Bay, in what we now know as Alabama in the United States of America.       

 They liked the country so much that one of the ships returned to Wales to collect  more adventurers.  In 1170AD, ten small ships assembled off Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, which flows between South Wales and Southern England.   He and his ten ships were never heard from again.  It was many years later when the archeological discovery of European style structures in the Southeast, built centuries before Columbus' journey, prompted a review of the Welsh histories of Madoc's voyage.  A series of pre-Columbian, dressed stone fortifications built up the Alabama River were discovered by later settlers.  Three major forts, completely unlike any known Indian structure, were constructed along the route that settlers arriving in Mobile Bay would have taken.  The first fort, erected on top of Lookout Mountain, near Desoto Falls, Alabama was found to be nearly identical in setting, layout and method of construction to Dolwyddelan Castle in Gwynedd, the presumed birth place of Madoc of Wales. 

 Recorded interviews and visits with Native American tribes in the 18th & 19th centuries added more evidence that some white settlers came to the region in the late 12th century.  A letter dated 1810 from Governor John Sevier of Tennessee refers to a time he spent with the Cherokee in 1782, and relates a conversation he had with Oconostota, who had been the ruling chief of the Cherokee nation for nearly sixty years.  Sevier had asked the chief about the people who had left the fortifications in his country.  Oconostota told Sevier that he "heard his grandfather and father say they were a people called Welsh, and that they had crossed the Great Water and landed first near the mouth of the Alabama River near Mobile". 

Encounters with a Native American tribe called "Mandans", provide the most compelling evidence of Welsh association.  A French explorer, LaVerendreye, who visited the Mandan tribe in 1738 described the Mandan as "white men with forts, towns and permanent villages laid out in streets and squares."  There was also reference made to the use of round skin boats which were uniquely like the coracle boats so distinctive in Wales.   It is told their vocabulary shared many common words with the Welsh language.  Unfortunately, like so many other Indian tribes, they did not survive the smallpox epidemic introduced to them by traders in 1837 and the entire tribe became extinct.  There is still much debate and controversy concerning MADOC's adventures in America.

From Brittania.com

1. Welshmen may have settled America before Columbus. It is now well known that Viking explorers reached parts of the eastern seaboard of what is now Canada about the year 1100 and that Norwegian Leif Erikson's Vinland may have been an area that is now part of the United States. What is less known is that a Welshman may not have been too far behind Erikson, bringing settlers with him.

According to Welsh legend, Madog ab Owain Gwynedd was a 12th century prince from Gwynedd who sailed westward with a group of followers seeking lands far away from the constant warfare of his native Wales. According to the story, his eight ships made landfall at what is now called Mobile Bay, Alabama in 1169. Owain's little flagship was the "Gwennan Gorn." Liking what he found, Madog then returned to Wales for additional settlers, who consequently left with the explorer in a small fleet of ships. Sailing westward from Lundy Island in 1171, the courageous little band was never heard from again, at least in Europe.

Welsh tradition has it that the adventurers settled in the Mississippi Valley, befriending the natives, whom they showed how to build stone forts. Some of these mysterious forts and stone walls can still found in the area. Some sources describe the Welsh explorers as moving northward through Alabama and battling the Iroquois in Ohio, with a remnant moving westward where they were discovered at the time of the Revolutionary War as the light-skinned, bearded Mandan Indians of North Dakota. The Mandans were decimated by smallpox in 1838, but many scholars have supposedly found much of their language and customs, as similar to those of Wales. For example, they used a small round boat made of buffalo hides (the bull boat) stretched over a willow frame. This is almost identical to the Welsh coracle.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Welsh interest in the New World was stirred by the writings of scholar John Dee (1527-1608), a London Welshman. A key figure in the expansion of Britain overseas, Dee publicized the traditions involving Prince Madog's supposed discovery of the New World. Elizabeth's court officials then diligently promoted attempts to find the Northwest Passage to India as justification for their war against the empire of Spain and proof of the legitimacy of their involvement in the Americas. Dee claimed that King Arthur had ruled over large territories in the Atlantic and that Madog's voyage had confirmed the Welsh title to this empire. The popular theory went that, as successor to the Welsh princes, including Madog, Queen Elizabeth was the rightful sovereign of the Atlantic Empire!

After the American Revolution, in which a lieutenant from Flintshire, North Wales, serving with the British Army in Ohio claimed to have conversed in Welsh with an Indian chief, fresh interest in the Madog legend was rekindled in Britain. It was helped along with the 1790 publication of an account by historian John Williams and further embellished by the indefatigable myth-maker and inventor of "ancient traditions" Iolo Morgannwg (Edward Jones) as anxious as ever to further the romances of the Celts. Another noted Welsh scholar, Sir William, Jones gave a dramatic address to the London Welsh in 1792. He announced the discovery of America by Prince Madog and praised the so-called Welsh Indians, calling them "a free and distinct people, who had preserved their liberty, language and some traces of their religion to this very day."

Thus in 1792, Welsh explorer John Thomas Evans (from Waunfawr) was encouraged to search for these "Welsh Indians." After landing in Baltimore in 1792, he traveled on foot to St. Louis where the Spanish governor imprisoned him as a British spy. Evans was later released and worked for the Spanish Missouri Company in their efforts to open the way to the Pacific. Led first by the Scottish adventurer and trader James MacKay, Evans later branched out to wander on his journeys alone, traveling over 2,000 miles exploring the Missouri Valley. His maps of the hitherto unknown territories were a great help to the later expeditions of Lewis and Clark (Meriwether Lewis himself was of Welsh descent; his native guide Sacajawea had been raised in a Mandan village) which put so much of the American West on the map.

Evans did not find the missing tribe, which Welsh people called the Madogwys, after the prince. Though he lived with the Mandans for a whole winter, he was not able to find any Welsh influence among them. Yet, despite Evans's letter to the London Cymmrodorion Society in 1797 that denied the existence of the Welsh Mandans, the legend persisted in Britain, even finding its way into English literature. In Robert Southey's long poem Madoc (1805), the poet develops the theme that Madog may have been the white leader from the east who brought an American tribe south into Mexico.

Others dismissed the fanciful story. In 1858, a prize-winning essay was submitted to the Llangollen Eisteddfod by antiquary and literary critic Thomas Stephens who completely refuted the Madog myth. However, it remained far too good a legend, and far too engrained in their consciousness for Welshmen to dismiss it as mere fantasy (even the adjudicators at Llangollen withheld the award for fear of upsetting the "believers"). In any case, argued the judges, Evans had been working for the Spanish government in its own claims to the Mississippi region and thus could not have been too eager or in a position to enhance British claims to the area.

American artist George Catlin claimed to have found the Welsh-speaking Mandans, even depicting some of them before their decimation by smallpox. Thus, despite the failure of Evans and others to find a Welsh-speaking Indian tribe in the American hinterland, a "Madog fever" developed that became a powerful incentive for emigration to the New World. One of its leading advocates was the Baptist minister Morgan John Rhys (who founded Welsh settlements in Beulah and Cambria, Pennsylvania in 1798). As far as the legend itself affected the people of Wales, whatever the facts behind it, it became and has steadfastly remained one of the most enduring sources of national pride.

A latter-day Evans was Welshman Tony Williams, who recently visited the few remaining Mandans on their reservation in North Dakota. Part of the Sioux Nation, the Mandans are reputed to be taller and fairer of skin than their brothers and some even had blue eyes. Williams's reported that some Mandan creation myths speak of the Lone Man and the last Mandan Scattercorn priest whom, in 1917, provided details of 33 generations of descendants. The Lone Man apparently came from across the sea bringing with him "multi-colored cattle" and introducing building and planting skills. Williams's findings are published in "The Forgotten People" (Gomer Press, 1996). They are bound to rekindle the old Madoc controversy. Perhaps the legend may indeed contain elements of truth about the arrival of the Welsh in the New World long before the voyages of Columbus.

Note: Madog and Madoc are variant spellings of the same name.