For some time now, the legend of a prince of northern Wales discovering the North American continent has been circulating. This has prompted a dispute which not only questioned the claims of Columbus, but a political debtate between England and Spain. If it could be proven that Madog in actuality discovered America in 1170 or so, then Spain would have fewer claims to the new lands.
The story goes that Madog's father, a king in Northern Wales, had died and various relatives were vying for the throne. Madog was an accomplished sailor and had been in charge of the province's navy and was courted by both sides. But he didn't seem to have political ambitions in this direction and took ships and crew and sailed westward.
Traditionally, he set sail from Abercerrig in North Wales along with his brother Rhiryd, and took eight ships. Tradition also says that they landed at Mobile Bay in Alabama.
Once the new land was found, Madog returned and told of its find. He then left with colonists and cattle and was never heard from again.
But the idea of a new world and a Welsh colony took root. For centuries people talked about it. Politics changed, and the government of Great Britain took an interest in the tale once Spain had laid claim to the Americas. Early explorers reported 'white Indians' who spoke a language very similar to Welsh and who lived along the Missouri River. Cortez and other Spanish explorers suggested that Madog and his band had gone south to found the kingdom of Mexico. Britain used this as leverage against the Spanish claims.
Another theory suggested that the Welsh traveled up the Mississippi and were finally defeated by the Iriquois on the Ohio River. The remnants of this group then went west and finally settled along the Missouri River, their descendants being identified as the Mandan Indians of North Dakota. The Mandans were almost wiped out in a smallpox epidemic in 1838.
In 1797, a Welsh explorer named John Evans wrote a letter detailing his years-long search for the 'Welsh Indians' along the Missouri. He stated that he had found nothing to support this claim. His letter of July 1797 seemed to debunk the theory.
John Evans was recruited to discover the truth about the Welsh claim to discovery of America. In 1792 he set out and reached Baltimore, where he stayed until the spring of 1793. Alone, he walked west, reaching St. Louis, where he was imprisoned by the Spanish. He was released, and by 1795 was working for the Spanish Missouri Company, which planned to clear a way to the Pacific Ocean.
Evans negotiated with tribes through the area including the Omaha and the Sioux. He was the first to map the Missouri from its confluence with the Mississippi to nearly 2,000 miles above this point. In this capacity, he also met the Mandan.
Circumstances forced him to return to St. Louis in 1797, and he wrote from there that there was no basis for a Welsh claim. Some believe that Evans had become a Spanish agent and had denied the Welsh claim out of politics. In any case, Evans died at the age of 29 in New Orleans, 1799.
Early Welsh poetry and Spanish navigation maps show that these voyages of Madog could have taken place with the technology available in the 1100's. Ocean currents could well have taken the ships around Florida, to land at the bay in what is now Mobile.
The Mandan Indians are affiliated with the Sioux Nation and are on St. Berthold's Reservation in North Dakota. They are considered to be taller and lighter-skinned than the Sioux, and many have blue eyes. The remnants of this tribe reached St. Berthold's in the mid-1800's after the epidemic devastated them.
The Mandan have a tradition which tells of a Lone Man who came to them in a ship, bringing spotted cattle. He also brought tales of an inundation which swept the earth, a story similar to the story of Noah and his Ark. This man also brought building skills and agricultural techinques to the tribe. The last Mandan Scattercorn Priest, who died in 1907, left a scroll of the 33 generations of the Lone Man.
There is a book out by Tony Williams, a 35-year-old schoolteacher from Cenarth in South Wales which goes over this information. He has visited the Mandan on their reservation. He has made some elementary comparisons between the language spoken by the Mandan and Welsh as well as detailed the legend of the Lone Man.
The name of his book is The Forgotten People, published by Gomer Press in 1996. Another source of the legend is Madog: The Making of a Myth by Gwyn A. Williams, Oxford University Press, 1979 (ISBN 019 285 1780).
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