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IV.OF

REUBEN T. DURRETT, A.B., LL.B., A.M., LL.D

Prcsidenl of The Kilson Club

FILSON CLUB-PUBLICATIONS No. 23

TRADITIONS

OF THE

Earliest Visits of Foreigners

NORTH AMERICA

The First Formed and First Inhabited of the

Continents

REUBEN T. DURRETT

A. B., LL. B., A.M., LL. D.
President of The Filson Club

• f-Af$"Vv{ !

J L -^j^» J W

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
JOHN P. MORTON 8;; COMPANY

(Incorporated)

PRINTERS TO THE FILSON CLUB
1908

THE FILSON CLUB

-r-

INTRODUCTION

AT the beginning of our Civil War there lived in
Louisville an elderly gentleman by the name of
Griffin, who, though belonging to neither of the
learned professions, had read many books and stored
his excellent memory with much useful information. He
was of Welsh descent, and proud of the long line of Cam-
brians he numbered among his ancestors. I knew him
well, and was fond of talking with him about the many
interesting things that occurred while Louisville was pro-
gressing from a straggling row of log cabins and ponds
along unpaved Main Street, between First and Twelfth,
to the mansions of brick and stone along the many paved
streets now occupied by wealth and fashion.

Knowing that he prided himself upon being of Welsh
descent, I asked him one day what he thought of the
tradition that Madoc, a Welsh prince, had planted a col-
ony of his countrymen in America in the Twelfth cen-
tury. He answered that he had become interested in the
subject when he was young in years; that he had read
all he could secure of what had been printed about it;
that he had also learned some things from tradition which
had not gotten into print, and that this country in early

iv Introduction

times had many traditions on the subject which came
originally from the Indians. He added that he considered
the Madoc tradition as plausible and as worthy of belief
as any of the stories of the pre-Columbian discoveries of
America.

I then asked him if any of the traditions he had heard
were connected with the Falls of the Ohio, and if they
were so related would he much oblige by giving them to
me? He answered that he was not at the Falls of the
Ohio when Louisville was founded, but that he knew some
of the pioneers, such as General Clark, Squire Boone,
James Patten and others -whose lives had been prolonged
to his times. These pioneers had intercourse with friend-
ly Indians, who frequently visited the Falls for the pur-
pose of trade, and from them the following traditions con-
nected with the Falls were obtained.

On the north side of the river, where Jeffersonville
now stands, some skeletons were exhumed in early times
with armor on which had brass plates bearing the Mer-
maid and Harp, which belong to the Welsh coat-of-arms.
On the same side of the river, further down, a piece of
stone supposed to be part of a tombstone was found with
the date 1186 and what seemed to be a name or the ini-
tials of a name so effaced by time as to be illegible. If
that piece of stone was ever a tombstone over a grave,

Introduction v

the party laid beneath it must have been of the Welsh
colony of Madoc, for we have no tradition of any one
but the Welsh at the Falls so early as 1186. In early
times the forest along the river on both sides of the Falls
for some miles presented two kinds of growth. Along the
margin of the river the giant sycamores and other trees
of the primeval forest stood as if they had never been
disturbed, but beyond them was a broad belt of trees of
a different growth, until the belt was passed, when the
original forest growth again appeared. This indicated
that the belt had been deprived of its original forest for
agricultural or other purposes, and that a new forest had
grown up in its stead. He said, however, it was possible
that the most important of these traditions learned from
the Indians concerned a great battle fought at the Falls
of the Ohio between the Red Indians and the White In-
dians, as the Welsh Indians were called. It has been a
long time ago since this battle was fought, but it was
fought here and won by the Red Indians. In the final
struggle the White Indians sought safety on an island
since known as Sandy Island, but nearly all who sought
refuge there were slaughtered. The remnant who escaped
death made their way to the Missouri River, where by
different movements at different times they went up that
river a great distance. They were known to exist there

iv Introduction

ERRATUM.

In the eleventh and twelfth lines from the top, on the fourth
page of the Introduction.strike out the folio wing words andnames-
"Such as General Clark, Squire 'Boone, James Tatten and others"-
which were inserted here by mistake and belong in another place.

Introduction v

vi Introduction

by different parties who came from there and talked
Welsh with the pioneers. Some Welshmen living at the
Falls of the Ohio in pioneer times talked with these White
Indians, and although there was a considerable difference
between the Welsh they spoke and the Welsh spoken by
the Indians, yet they had no great difficulty in under-
standing one another. He further said, concerning this
tradition of a great battle, that there was a tradition
that many skeletons were found on Sandy Island min-
gled promiscuously together as if left there unburied after
a great battle, but that he had examined the island a
number of times without finding a single human bone,
and that if skeletons were ever abundant there they had
disappeared before his time.

Mr. Griffin in the foregoing statement added but little
to the Madoc tradition as it had already appeared in the
text and appendix of the publication under consideration,
but as far as he went he confirmed the statement of oth-
ers. As these traditions are fully set forth in the text
and appendix they will be left there to speak for them-
selves. There are stranger things in Welsh history than
these traditions. The Welsh stand out in history as one
of the most remarkable of peoples. Their patriotism and
endurance and courage have seldom been surpassed by
any nation. The legions of Rome were not able to sub-

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Introduction vii

due them in five hundred years; the Saxons, Angles, Jutes,
and Danes failed to conquer them in another five hundred
years, and the Anglo-Normans, after all the bloody work
of their predecessors, failed to subdue them. They were
not subdued until the reign of Edward the First of Eng-
land, and were then the victims of fraud. When David
and Llewellyn, the last princes chosen by the people,
were gotten rid of by the foulest of means and the prince-
dom of Wales without an acceptable sovereign, King Ed-
ward had an act of Parliament passed attaching Wales
to England. But when he came to the appointing of
a Prince of Wales the Welsh gave him to understand
that they would never submit to a prince of English ap-
pointment unless the prince chosen were a native of Wales,
who spoke the Welsh language and whose life was spot-
less. King Edward, seeing that the Welsh were in earn-
est in their demands for a prince and being anxious for
such a peace in the country as would enable him to in-
vest certain Welsh estates in his English friends, be-
thought him of a fraud to satisfy the Welsh. His wife
Eleanor was soon to become a mother, and he had her
removed from England to Caernarvon Castle in WTales,
where she soon gave birth to a son. King Edward then
summoned the barons and chief men of Wales to meet
him at Ruthin Castle, also in Wales. When they were

viii Introduction

assembled he told them he was now prepared to give
them a prince who was a native of Wales, who could not
speak a word of English, and whose life no one could
stain. He then made his infant son Prince of Wales,
and the firstborn of the English sovereign has ever since
been Prince of Wales. The fraud — which was quite un-
worthy of a King of England — had the effect of subdu-
ing the Welsh after the Romans, the Saxons, the Jutes,
the Danes, and the Normans had failed to conquer them
in a thousand years. They fought against odds among
their protecting mountains, and could neither be con-
quered nor driven from their rugged homes nor made to
submit to a foreign ruler. After twelve centuries of hard
but successful fighting against frightful odds and after
many frauds and deceptions practiced both by themselves
and the English, they at last were captured by a fraud
and deception which it would seem ought not to have
deceived them under the circumstances. They had often
before been deceived by the English to their cost, and
ought not to have given credence to the words and prom-
ises of a king whose words and promises they had often
before found unworthy of belief.

It has been the habit of The Filson Club to illustrate
its publications with a likeness of the author and such
other pictures as were deemed appropriate. When it

Introduction ix

came to selecting illustrations for the twenty-third publi-
cation but little that was deemed appropriate seemed to
be in reach. It was at last determined to illustrate the
Madoc tradition, which is the principal part of the book,
with pictures from Wales, the native land of Madoc and
his colony. In a book entitled "Wales Illustrated"
enough and more than enough beautiful steel engravings
were found to answer the purpose. Many of the originals
of these illustrations were connected with Prince Madoc
by having been in the possession of different members of
his family, which made the pictures particularly appro-
priate. There are but few lands which present such an
array of natural and artificial scenes of beauty and gran-
deur as Wales. The antiquarian will find there castles
and the remains of castles, churches and the remains of
churches, cathedrals and the wrecks of cathedrals, abbeys
and the ruins of abbeys which the Welsh built in different
ages from the ancient Celts to the modern English. The
buildings show the style of architecture used in fortifica-
tions by the Celts, the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes,
and the Anglo-Normans as the centuries advanced from
the First to the Thirteenth, and during these centuries
castles were built on the mountains' heights at almost
every accessible point, until the whole country seemed
to be covered with castles and castellated structures to

x Introduction

secure the inmates from the assaults of those on the out-
side. Abbeys and churches and cathedrals were also erec-
ted in the valleys on which the mountains frowned, at
places enough to indicate that the Welsh had early been
converted to Christianity and that they had kept the
faith through the centuries. The lover of nature will
look in vain to find elsewhere so many striking views
of mountains and valleys, of picturesque villages, of
cataracts and of natural passes between mountain
peaks.

One of the most charming of these illustrations is the
picture of the village of St. Asaph and its cathedral which
dates back to the middle of the Sixth century. In pioneer
times the name of this Welsh village was given to a sta-
tion erected by General Ben Logan in Lincoln County,
Kentucky, in 1775. Logan afterward, in 1781, donated
a part of his land to the District of Kentucky for a court
house and other public buildings, and the town of Stan-
ford was built thereon and took the place of the original
St. Asaph. Who in the wilderness of Kentucky could
have suggested the name of St. Asaph?

Another is the castle of Caernarvon, which is perhaps
the finest castellated structure in Wales. It was chosen
by the King of England as an abode worthy of royalty
when Edward removed his Queen Eleanor there from

Introduction xi

England and she there gave birth to the first English
Prince of Wales. He was born in fraud, made prince
in fraud, and was nothing more than a fraud all his
life.

Another is the castle of Harlech, which was besieged
and taken by Owen Gwynnedd, the father of Prince Ma-
doc, in 1144. The assault was desperate against a for-
tress up to that time deemed impregnable, but Owen
Gwynnedd, a prince of exceptional courage, endurance,
and tact, by perseverance reduced walls that had stood
firm since the days of William Rufus.

These illustrations, with but a single exception, repre-
sent scenes in Wales with which Prince Madoc and his
colony must have been familiar. That exception is a view
of the Falls of the Ohio as they existed in their primeval
state, when Madoc and his Welsh colony are said by
tradition to have been here in the Twelfth century. The
picture was drawn by Thomas Hutchins while viewing
the Falls in 1766, before the white man had felled a tree
or in any way interfered with the work of nature. The
picture drawn by Hutchins, who was a fine engineer and
accomplished artist, shows well beside the Welsh pictures,
and if it had had the advantage of a steel plate, as they
have had, it would have equaled some of them as a
striking landscape.

xii Introduction

A picture might be drawn of the fleet of Prince Madoc
leaving Wales, of the passing through the Sargasso sea,
and of the landing in America, but it would only be a
picture of imagination. So might an artist take from
Southey's poem of Madoc fine word-pictures of the battles
between Madoc 's men and the Mexicans and convert them
into descriptive pictures, but they would also be pictures
which added the doubt of tradition to the illusion of the
imagination. On the contrary, the pictures presented
from Wales — the landscapes, the castles, the churches,
the cathedrals, the abbeys, the cataracts, the villages, etc.,
are all realities drawn by the finest of artists and engraved
on steel by eminent engravers. They are all worthy of
artistic admiration, and we seem while looking at them
to be viewing the originals from which they have been
taken.

All that is known of Prince Madoc and his colony of
Welshmen in America in the Twelfth century is tradition.
No authentic history comes to our relief in telling or hear-
ing the story. All that is claimed of the daring prince
sailing across unknown seas and into an unknown world
may be true and it may be false. But even when all is
apparent tradition there may be some hidden truth worthy
of our further research. The wise Humboldt, when allud-
ing to the Madoc tradition, said " I do not share the scorn

Introduction xiii

•

with which national traditions are so often treated, and
am of the opinion that with more research the discovery
of facts entirely unknown would throw much light upon
many historical problems."

Tradition, however, has but little to do with that part
of the book under consideration which attempts to show
that America was the first formed and the first inhabited
of the continents. All that is claimed on this part of
the subject is the result of scientific research. Tradition
could not well go back to the rising of our globe above
the universal ocean, because there was no one there to
hand the matter down from father to son through the
generations. But geology has examined the structure of
the earth and found the first sedimentary rocks along
the line which separates the United States from Canada,
and claims that here was the first continent begun. There
is no tradition in the facts of this, and none in the con-
clusion drawn from them. All is science, with facts gath-
ered from the rock-ribbed globe and conclusions drawn
from them.

Neither is the assertion that America was the first
of the continents which was inhabited by man dependent
upon tradition. Man could not well have started a tra-
dition about the first of his race and sent it down his
descending line through the centuries. He would have

xiv Introduction

had to employ some such machinery as the Greeks and
Romans had in their numerous gods to account for his
own origin. Immortals might give the information, but
it would be beyond the scope of plain mortals. Again,
science has taught us what we know about the subject.
It has gathered facts from the bones and works of man
found in the caverns and hidden places of the earth, and
from these drawn conclusions as to where and when and
how he "first existed. Science may not be able to prove
its conclusions to the satisfaction of others, but it would
be equally hard to prove the contrary. It would be as
difficult to prove any well-known tradition void of historic
truth as to prove the nebulous origin of our solar system
and the millions of years our planet has been in progres-
sion before reaching its present state, void of scientific
determination. We should not aim to know too much
and to know that all we know is truth. If tradition can
amuse us without injury, if the doubtful story of King
Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table can give us
pleasure, it may be as well not to spend too much time
in learning whether the story is true or false. There are
many such stories that are just as good as if they were
true, and let us have them as they are.

The story of Madoc I would give as I have given it
in this monograph whether I believed it or not. It was

ST. ASAPH VILLAGE

ST. ASAPH CATHEDRAL

Introduction xv

believed by Kentuckians in pioneer times, and that is
reason enough for repeating it in later times. It amused
the patriarchs of our country and gave them many happy
moments as it was told in their log cabins. And not
only this, but it amused many of our cultured pioneers
as they recited it and believed it. We put in books many
things of the truth of which we know no more than we
do about Madoc and his Welsh colony, and if the tradi-
tion is here repeated at this late day as an historic story

it will do no harm.

R. T. DURRETT.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE ATLANTIS TRADITION 2

THE PHCENICIAN TRADITION 7

THE CHINESE TRADITION 11

THE NORSE TRADITION 13

THE IRISH TRADITION 15

THE MADOC TRADITION 17

THE MADOC TRADITION IN EUROPE 19

THE MADOC TRADITION FROM HAKLUIT 20

THE MADOC TRADITION IN WELSH HISTORY 22

THE MADOC TRADITION IN AMERICA INTRODUCED BY JOHN SMITH 28

REVEREND MORGAN JONES' STATEMENT 30

LETTERS FROM REVEREND MORGAN EDWARDS' HISTORY OF

BAPTISTS 34

CAPTAIN ISAAC STEWART'S STATEMENT 35

CHARLES BEATTY'S STATEMENT 38

BENJAMIN SUTTON 's STATEMENT 38

REVEREND JOHN WILLIAMS' INQUIRY INTO THE TRUTH OF THE

MADOC TRADITION 38

LEVI HICKS ' STATEMENT 39

GEORGE BURDER 's WELSH INDIANS 42

GEORGE CATLIN'S WORK ON THE INDIANS 44

BRYANT & GAY'S POPULAR HISTORY 45

THE MADOC TRADITION IN KENTUCKY 46

FILSON'S ACCOUNT OF THE TRADITION 46

OPINIONS OF PROMINENT KENTUCKY PIONEERS AT CLUB

MEETING 48

WHAT FILSON SAYS IN HIS HISTORY OF KENTUCKY 52

LIEUTENANT JOSEPH ROBERT'S STATEMENT 54

MAURICE GRIFFITHS ' STATEMENT 57

xviii Contents

PAGE

THOMAS S. HINDE 's LETTER 62

DESTRUCTION OF WHOLE TRIBES OF INDIANS 65

AMERICA THE OLDEST OF THE CONTINENTS 70

AGASSIZ ON AGE OF AMERICA 74

AMERICA FIRST INHABITED OF THE CONTINENTS 75

JEFFERSON ON FIRST INHABITANTS OF AMERICA 77

RELICS OF QUATERNARY MAN FOUND IN EUROPE 78

RELICS OF TERTIARY MAN FOUND IN AMERICA 79

IMPLEMENTS IN GLACIAL DRIFT OF DELAWARE RIVER 79

RELICS IN AURIFEROUS SANDS OF CALIFORNIA 80

THE BOURBOIS RIVER MASTODON 80

THE MUMMY OF MAMMOTH CAVE, KENTUCKY 81

THE FLORIDA REEF SKELETON 83

THE SKELETON OF THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA 83

THE MOUND BUILDERS 83

BURIAL OF PIONEER WIDOW'S SONS 85

OUR LOVE OF THE ANCIENT NATURAL 86

APPENDIX 91

CATLIN ON EXTINCTION OF THE MANDANS 91

CATLIN ON WELSH COLONY 97

WINDSOR'S HISTORY OF ISLAND OF ATLANTIS 104

BRYANT & GAY'S HISTORY OF MADOC TRADITION 108

BANCROFT ON ATLANTIS AND ABORIGINAL RACES OF AMERICA .. 113

GEORGE CROGHAN TO GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE 117

SPEECH OF CARACTACUS BEFORE CLAUDIUS 120

DESCRIPTION OF THE WELSH BY GIRALDUS 122

THE "UNIVERSAL HISTORY" ON THE MADOC TRADITION 124

THE WELSH A MARITIME PEOPLE 126

JOHN WILLIAMS ON CULTURE OF THE WELSH 129

INFORMATION FROM GENERAL BOWLES 130

WHAT MORGAN JONES KNEW OF THE WELSH INDIANS 132

BINON'S ACCOUNT OF WELSH INDIANS. . 133

Contents

PAGE

SPEECH OF THE EMPEROR MONTEZUMA 135

SELECTIONS FROM THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE 137

UNBELIEVERS IN THE MADOC TRADITION 143

LORD LITTLETON ON THE MADOC TRADITION 144

WILLIAM ROBERTSON ON THE MADOC TRADITION 148

LIST OF THE MEMBERS OF THE FILSON CLUB 151

BRIEF CATALOGUE OF FILSON CLUB PUBLICATIONS 163

INDEX . 173

ILLUSTRATIONS

OPPOSITE PAOB

LIKENESS OF COLONEL R. T. DURRETT Frontispiece

FALLS OF THE OHIO IN STATE OF NATURE vi

ST. ASAPH VILLAGE xiv

ST. ASAPH CATHEDRAL xiv

MOLD VILLAGE 8

HARLECH CASTLE 8

CHIRK CASTLE 16

CORWEN VILLAGE 16

DENBIGH CASTLE 24

DENBIGH VILLAGE 24

PONT Y CYSSYLLTE 32

LLANGOLLEN VILLAGE 32

PASS OF LLANBERIS 40

RHAIADYR-Y-WENOL 40

VIEW NEAR ABER 48

LLYN GWYNANT 48

SNOWDON VILLAGE 56

FALL OF THE OGWEN 56

TREMADOC VILLAGE 64

RHAIADYR Du CATARACT 64

FLINT VILLAGE 72

FLINT CASTLE 72

LLYN OGWEN 80

GWRYCH CASTLE 80

ABERMAW, OR BARMOUTH VILLAGE 96

RHUDDLAN CASTLE 96

BEAUMARIS VILLAGE 104

ENTRANCE TO BEAUMARIS CASTLE. . 104

xxii Illustrations

OPPOSITE PAGE

RUTHIN CASTLE 112

HAWARDEN CASTLE 112

WELSH POOL VILLAGE 120

Powis CASTLE 120

CAERNARVON VILLAGE 128

CAERNARVON CASTLE 128

LLANRWST BRIDGE 136

LLANRWST CHURCH 136

BANGOR VILLAGE 144

BANGOR CATHEDRAL 144

TRADITIONS

OF THE

EARLIEST VISITS OF FOREIGNERS

NORTH AMERICA

THE FIRST FORMED AND FIRST INHABITED
OF THE CONTINENTS

WHEN Kentucky was a part of Virginia there
was a tradition widespread and generally believed
that a Welsh prince by the name of Madoc
planted a colony of his omntrymen in America about
the year 1170. This colony was believed to have been
-located for some time at the Falls of the Ohio, where,
after it grew strong and became offensive to the more
numerous aborigines, it was attacked by overwhelming
numbers and nearly all the members slaughtered. Some
remnants who escaped the tomahawk and scalping-knife
were scattered among the different tribes, and absorbed
by them. In this way, a race known as Welsh Indians
came into existence in different parts of the country,
and kept alive the tradition until a comparatively recent
period, when a considerable body of them, located some
sixteen hundred or more miles up the Missouri River,
were exterminated by the smallpox. This wholesale

2 Traditions of the Rarliest Americans

destruction by pestilence gradually diminished the gen-
erality of the belief in the tradition and deprived it of
many of its advocates. The belief, however, did not
entirely die, and will bear reviving even at this late
date. It has never been fully written up in this coun-
try, and an historic sketch of it can hardly fail to be in-
teresting. It is of kin to the pre-Columbian discoveries
of America, of which quite a number have been credited
and a still greater number rejected. Five of these seem
to be sufficiently divested of myth and absurdity to ap-
proach historic truth, and may be mentioned here as
a kind of introduction to the Welsh tradition which is
the principal subject of this paper, because this Welsh
colony, according to tradition, once resided at the Falls
of the Ohio.

I. THE ATLANTIS TRADITION

Our first authority for the existence of America, and
its habitation by human beings thousands of years be-
fore the discover}' of Columbus, was Plato, the famous
Grecian philosopher. He does not mention America and
its inhabitants in so many words, but when he designates
a large island called Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean op-
posite the Pillars of Hercules, from which the inhabi-
tants passed over to the continent beyond and vice versa,

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 3

the location of the continent is such that we can reason-
ably infer it was America, although it presupposes a knowl-
edge of geography far in advance of the times. This
was about twelve thousand years ago, when our ortho-
dox teachers instructed us there were no human beings
on the earth. Modern ethnologists, however, assure us
that twelve thousand were far too few for the years of
man upon the earth, and different ones give him an ex-
istence here of from twenty to two hundred thousand
or more years. If man was in America twelve thousand
years ago, as Plato says, he was earlier here than any
of the many peoples from which his origin has been erro-
neously claimed, and was therefore the true autochthon
of the land.

Plato, in his "Timasus" and "Critias," gives the At-
lantis tradition as Solon, the wise man of Greece, learned
it from the Egyptian priests, while visiting their coun-
try in search of knowledge during the later years of his
life. These priests informed Solon that nine thousand
years before that time there was a vast island opposite
the Straits of Gibraltar, in the Atlantic Ocean, and a
number of smaller islands near to it, by which there was
.communication with a continent beyond; that this great
island had a dense population of warlike inhabitants,
ruled by powerful kings, who had subdued some of the

4 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

smaller islands and parts of the continent beyond; that
these kings finally combined their forces for the purpose
of conquering the countries inside the Straits of Gibral-
tar, but were repulsed by the Athenians, and that after-
ward the great island and all its inhabitants were sub-
merged by earthquakes and inundations in the depths of
the ocean.

This island was called Atlantis, and if there ever was
such a body of land between Europe and America, it
might have been easy enough for some of its inhabitants
to have crossed over to America and for the Americans
to have crossed over to Atlantis. There have not been
wanting scientists who believed they had found, in the
modern world, evidence of the existence of this island in
the ancient world. On the southern coast of England
strata of fluviatile deposit two hundred miles long • and
two thousand feet thick had been laid down there by a
large river of fresh water running for a long time. The
England of our day does not afford enough land for such
a river, and even if England once joined France, as geolo-
gists teach, such a river running from France or Ger-
many into England would hardly have had land enough
for its course. If Plato's island, however, existed and
joined the British Islands, it would have afforded terri-
tory for such a river running from the southwest. No

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 5

small river coursing through limited territory could form
such a fluviatile deposit. Nothing short of a volume of
water such as flows in the channel of the Amazon, the
Mississippi, the Ganges, or the Nile could have made
such great deposits in any conceivable length of time.
Scientists, moreover, assure us that some of the islands
now in the Atlantic Ocean, between America and Africa,
indicate that they were once mountains or highlands of
a country sunk beneath the sea, and that a ridge of vol-
canic wrecks along the trend of these islands, on the bot-
tom of the Atlantic Ocean, assures us of a sunken conti-
nent or vast island submerged. An island, extending east
and west from the neighborhood of the Straits of Gibral-
tar to the vicinity of the Gulf of Mexico, with a sufficient
width from north to south, would be large enough for
the Atlantis of Plato and for such a mighty river, and
to leave when submerged such remnants of its former
greatness as the British Isles, the Azores, the Madeiras,
the Canaries, and the Bermudas.

It was about three hundred and fifty years before the
Christian era when the Egyptian priests told Solon that
nine thousand years before that time the Atlantic island
was sunk in the sea; so that from the date of that catas-
trophe to our times about twelve thousand years have
elapsed. This was time sufficient to have so changed

6 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

the geography of the Atlantic Ocean and the surround-
ing continents as to make us moderns unable to deter-
mine whether such an island ever existed.

It may be wiser, however, to accept as founded in
truth what the Egyptian priests told Solon about Atlan-
tis than to dismiss it as a myth. They lived nearer the
time of Atlantis than we do, and may have known more
about it. They stated that they had records in their
temples about the cataclysm which destroyed the island,
and although nine thousand years seem a long time for
such records, modern discoveries of human relics in bur-
ied cities of both hemispheres are yearly taking us back
further and further toward this shadowy past. The
way is yet long to the confines of this remote period,
but while older and older records are constantly being
found on the land, human relics amid seismic wrecks
may also be lifted from the bottom of the sea, which
will help to convince the incredulous that a vast island
between Europe and America was once submerged with
all its people, as stated by the Egyptian priests.

This account of Atlantis by Plato leaves undeter-
mined whether America was originally peopled from At-
lantis or whether Atlantis drew its primal inhabitants
from America. It is as easy to assert or prove the one
as the other; but as Plato has not specifically decided

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 7

the question, I shall not presume a decision. It is suf-
ficient for my purpose that Plato says the Atlantians
subdued parts of the continent which by its location
must have been America, which they could not have
done unless there had been continental inhabitants there
to subdue. The Atlantians would hardly have peopled
the neighboring continent for the sole purpose of its sub-
jugation, and it can not be an unwarranted inference,
therefore, that America was not indebted to Atlantis
for its population.

II. THE PHOENICIAN TRADITION

Diodorus Siculus, who flourished three-quarters of a
century before the Christian era, furnished a somewhat
detailed account of a great island in the Atlantic Ocean
west of Africa. In the second chapter of the fifth book
of his "Historical Library" he says that opposite to Af-
rica lies a very great island in the vast ocean, of many
days' sail from Libia westward, which was unknown
for a long time because of its remote situation; that it
was finally discovered, accidentally, by some Phoenicians
sailing along the west coast of Africa, who were prevent-
ed from landing and driven far to the west by violent
storms; that they found a new country, rich in fauna and
flora and in everything suitable to the wants of man; that

8 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

it was the intention of the Etrurians to plant colonies
there, but they were prevented by the Carthaginians, who
feared too many of their people might emigrate, and,
besides, who wanted to preserve the new country for their
own use as a place of refuge in case of trouble at home.

Now, if the Phoenicians in ancient times discovered
a very great island west of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean,
it could hardly have been one of the Azores, the Ma-
deiras, the Canaries, or the Cape Verdes, because no one
of these groups is large enough or distant enough from
Africa to answer the description. It could not have
been one of the British Islands, because they are specifi-
cally mentioned in the same history. Newfoundland
was too far north and had too severe a climate and was
not large enough for the description. It might have
been the Atlantis of Plato before that island had gone
to the bottom of the sea.

All of Plato's island, however, might not have gone
down. Indeed, it is possible that the Azores, the Ma-
deiras, the Canaries, and even the British Islands, as
parts of the ill-fated island, may have been left above
water when the main island went down amid earthquakes
and inundations. Diodorus might have found his island
in a combination of the unsubmerged remnants of Plato's
great island which were afterward submerged, or the

MOLD VILLAGE

HARLECH CASTLE

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 9

island indicated by him might have been America. He
certainly could not have found such a country and such
a people as he describes in America as it was at the time
of Columbus. We must not forget, however, that there
were people in America for many centuries before the
Red Indians. We call some of them Mound-builders for
want of a better name, and we know precious little about
them. They left mounds of earth and implements of
copper and vessels of pottery and other evidences of a
civilization far above that of the Indians found here at
the Columbian discovery of America. If a European
had been in America some thousands of years ago and
seen one of these old Mound-builders seated upon his
mound smoking his pipe and giving orders to numerous
subjects who were working his fields of maize and tobac-
co, cultivating his gardens and orchards, and having
plenty of the fruits of the earth and the product of the
fields around him, he might have seen something of the
picture Diodorus drew for his island. These Mound-
builders, however, passed away many centuries ago and
left neither a history, a tradition, or a name. They may
have been exterminated by immigrants from the east,
who after a conquest established themselves as the mod-
ern Indians on a lower plane of civilization. The fol-
lowing is what Diodorus says of his island:

io Traditions of the Earliest Americans

"The soil here is very fruitful, a great part whereof
is mountainous, but much likewise champaign, which is
the most sweet and pleasant part of all the rest; for
it is watered with several navigable rivers, beautified
with many gardens of pleasure, planted with divers sorts
of trees, and abundance of orchards, interlaced with cur-
rents of sweet water. The towns are adorned with state-
ly buildings, and banquetting houses up and down, pleas-
antly situated in their gardens and orchards. And here
they recreate themselves in summer-time as in places
accommodated for pleasure and delight.

"The mountainous part of the country is clothed
with many large woods and all manner of fruit trees,
and for the greater delight and diversion of people in
these mottntains they ever and anon open themselves
into pleasant vales, watered with fountains and refresh-
ing springs, and indeed the whole island abounds with
springs of sweet water, whence the inhabitants not only
reap pleasure and delight, but improve in health and
strength of body.

"There you may have game enough in hunting all sorts
of wild beasts, of which there is such plenty that in their
feasts there is nothing wanting either as to pomp or de-
light. The adjoining sea furnished them plentifully with
fish, for the ocean there naturally abounds with all sorts.

Traditions of the Rarliest Americans 1 1

"The air and climate in this island is very mild and
healthful, so that the trees bear fruit (and other things
that are produced there are fresh and beautiful) most
part of the year; so that this island (for the excellency
of it in all respects) seems rather to be the residence of
some of the gods than of man. ' '

In addition to this glowing description of the island,
Diodorus expressly states that the Carthaginians permit-
ted no colonies to be planted there, but reserved the
island for their own habitation if political events should
make it necessary for their abandoning their own home.
If, therefore, the island of Diodorus was America, it was
not indebted to the Etrurians, the Carthaginians, or any
other ancient nation for its inhabitants. It was fully
inhabited when discovered by the Phoenicians, and must
have been inhabited for a long time to have enabled its
people to have arrived at such a stage of civilization and
luxury as is assigned to them.

III. THE CHINESE TRADITION

The third account we have of an early visit to Amer-
ica is that of a Buddhist priest from China, in the Fifth
. century of our era. When the religion of Buddha was
introduced into China the Celestials became propagan-
dists. Their missionaries went from land to land bearing

1 2 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

images of Buddha and preaching his doctrine for the
conversion of souls. A monk by the name of Hoei Schin
made a very long voyage and claimed to have reached
what has been pronounced the American continent, in
the year 499. He called the country Fusang, and it
was claimed to have been explored probably as far south
as Mexico. An account of his discoveries is recorded in
the Year Books of China, and a translation of the im-
portant parts of the narrative is given in Leland's "Fu-
sang, or the Discovery of America." There is no suffi-
cient reason why Hoei Schin might not have made the
journey to America at the close of the Fifth century.
He could have gone from China to the Japanese Islands
and thence sailed to the Kurile Islands, thence to the
Aleutian Islands and thence to the continent of America,
without being out of sight of land long enough to alarm
any experienced or capable sailor. It is quite as likely,
however, if there was a Mongolian discovery of Amer-
ica, that some of those Scythians who inhabited the north-
east of Asia were the pioneers who led the way across
Bering Strait and landed in America, as that another
Mongolian from distant China made the discovery. The
Scythians who dwelt in bleak Siberia went farther to
make war upon distant countries than they would have
to go to cross Bering Strait and become discoverers of

Traditions of the Rarliest Americans 13

America. The resemblance of the American Indian to
the Asiatic races is held by some to establish the theory
that Mongolians did cross from the northeast of Asia to
America, but would it not have been as easy for Amer-
icans to have crossed over to Asia as for Asiatics to have
come to America? Either would have been possible, and
one is as probable as the other. The Asiatic races could
as satisfactorily be traced back to the Americans as the
Americans to the Asiatics. Hoei Schin, however, if he
was a discoverer of America, found America according
to his own account already peopled, and by a people
who must have been here for a long time.

IV. THE NORSE TRADITION

The next in age of the alleged pre-Columbian dis-
coveries was by Norsemen at the close of the Tenth cen-
tury or the beginning of the Eleventh. Iceland is claimed
to have been visited by the Greek geographer Pytheas
several centuries before the Christian era, but little was
known of it until the Norwegians discovered it in 860.
Whatever civilization has done for this cold and barren
island, in fitting it for human habitation, it owes to the
Norsemen, who founded there a republic in the year 874.
It is claimed that Bjarne Herjulson, while searching for
his father, who in his absence had emigrated from Ice-

1 4 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

land to Greenland, was driven by contrary winds as far
south as Nantucket, on the American shore, and in coast-
ing northward in search of Greenland saw Newfoundland
and Nova Scotia before he reached Greenland. The
Norse discovery of the continent of America, however,
is with better evidence attributed to Lief Erickson, in
the year 1000. Nor is there sufficient reason why this
discovery may not have been made by Lief as claimed.
If Norwegian ships could sail from Norway to Iceland
and from Iceland to Greenland, as they admittedly did,
they could surely go from Greenland to America. The
distance from Norway to Iceland is about seven hundred
miles, that from Iceland to Greenland about three hun-
dred miles, and that from Greenland to America about
five hundred miles. The wonder would rather be that
they did not discover America, after discovering Iceland
and Greenland. They were great navigators, and made
voyages to England, France, Italy, Greece, and other
countries far more distant, and there can be no good
reason why they should not have crossed the compara-
tively few miles of water between Greenland and Amer-
ica, as their sagas record they did. Their discovery,
however, amounted to nothing so far as the planting of
a permanent colony is concerned. Neither the round tow-
er of Newport nor the hieroglyphic rock of Dighton, nor

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 15

the armored skeleton of Fall River, has taught us any-
thing more than that if the Norsemen came, they also
went. It would have been as easy for the aboriginal
Americans to discover Greenland and Iceland and Nor-
way as for the vikings of these countries to discover Amer-
ica. The same arguments which apply to the discovery
of the one apply with equal force to the other. The
Norsemen, moreover, fought battles with the natives,
which show that America was already inhabited when
they visited it.

V. THE IRISH TRADITION

Rasmus B. Anderson, in his book entitled "America
Not Discovered by Columbus," published in 1877, be-
sides giving a full account of the Norse discovery of Amer-
ica and partial accounts of other discoveries, also gives
the substance of a saga which credits the Irish with a
colony in America before 1029. They were found there
by some Icelanders who had been to Ireland on a trad-
ing expedition, and were called Irish because "it rather
appeared to them that they spoke Irish." This was
putting the Irish speech of the colonists rather mildly,
but the colonists themselves were not so mild when an
Icelandic ship, in after years, landed among them. They
seized and bound the captain and his crew, with the in-

1 6 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

hospitable intention of putting them all to death. When,
however, they brought the prisoners before their chief,
he released them and bade them get out of the country
and never return. The chief who was thus merciful
was a famous viking named Bjarni Asbrandon, who had
been compelled to leave Iceland on account of his too
free habits with married women. He was expatriated
with the understanding that he was to be gone one year,
but had never been heard of since his departure until
this occasion, after thirty years had elapsed. He had
in some way gotten into this Irish colony, south of the
Norse settlement and supposed to be somewhere between
Chesapeake Bay and Florida. It was known as Great
Ireland or White Man's Land, and it is not impossible
that the Irish should have discovered this part of the
country. They were good navigators in the early cen-
turies, and are known to have gone to the Faroe Islands
and to Iceland. If they could get safely to Iceland and
back again to Ireland they could certainly go to America.
But the same argument applies to the Irish as to the
other alleged discoverers of America. It would have
been as easy for the Americans to discover Ireland by
way of Iceland and the Faroe Islands as for the Irish
to discover America by the same route. When the Irish
colonized or discovered land in America they were taken

CHIRK CASTLE

CORWEN VILLAGE

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 1 7

prisoners by the Americans, and when they were released
(instead of being put to death) they proceeded to de-
populate America, so far as they were concerned, by
going back to Ireland, instead of helping to people it.
America was not, therefore, indebted to Ireland for her
population.

VI. THE MADOC TRADITION

And now, having presented five of the principal tra-
ditions of pre-Columbian discoveries in America, all of
which occurred before the close of the Eleventh century
of the Christian era, I shall take up that of the Welsh
in the Twelfth century. This was one of the most pop-
ular of these traditions, especially in Virginia, Pennsyl-
vania, and Kentucky. It was not only believed by the
common people, but got into the newspapers and maga-
zines and books, and was credited by the learned as well
as by the ignorant. There were a few Welshmen among
the pioneers, and they took pride in making the Welsh
tradition as popular as possible. There was scarcely a
log cabin in which the subject was not discussed by the
family, and in the stations where families were numerous
it furnished the material for many stories which were
told to eager listeners. Madoc was the hero of the hour.
His leaving Wales with ships loaded with his country-

1 8 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

men, and sailing across an unknown sea to inhabit an
unknown land to avoid civil war with his brothers for
the crown of his father, was an act of self-sacrifice which
they deemed worthy of universal admiration. They were
not sure at what point he landed in America, but they
were sure that he did land and that his descendants once
dwelt at the Falls of the Ohio, from which they were
driven by a force too powerful to resist. They believed
that the mounds and earthworks in the Ohio and the
Mississippi valleys had been built by the Welsh for pur-
poses not fully understood by moderns, but nevertheless
erected by them for purposes of their own. They be-
lieved that those strange tombs made by encasing dead
bodies between six flat stones forming the sides and ends
and top and bottom of rough sarcophagi and placing
them side by side and piling them one upon another,
until a kind of pyramid was constructed holding a great
number of their dead, were made by the Welsh. If they
had any doubt about the Madoc colony, all doubts were
removed by an occasional Welsh Indian coming among
them from a distant tribe, for the purpose of trade, and
talking to Welshmen among the pioneers in their own
language.

I propose now to present what I have been able to
learn concerning this Welsh tradition, both in Europe

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 19

and America. I shall quote from the authorities so as
to make somewhat of a documentary narrative, and thus
place the authorities within reach of the general reader,
which is not possible while they are scattered through
rare manuscripts and prints both in this country and
in Europe. With these rare documents before them all
can judge for themselves as to the reliability of the Madoc
tradition.

VII. THE MADOC TRADITION IN EUROPE

The first account of the migration of Prince Madoc
to unknown lands was printed in the voyages of Hakluit,
first published in London in 1582. Hakluit took it from
the writings of Gutton Owen, a Welsh bard who flour-
ished in the latter part of the Fourteenth and early part
of the Fifteenth century, and who in turn had copied
it from the records of the abbeys of Conway in North
Wales and Strata Florida in South Wales. It was the
custom of the Welsh at that time to record important
events in their abbeys, as the Egyptians did in their tem-
ples. The bards, who were the historians of the times,
had free access to these abbeys and copied the records
and repeated or sang them on public occasions. Gutton
Owen was a well-known bard, and of sufficient stand-
ing for King Henry VII to appoint him one of a com-

20 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

mission to search the records of Wales for the genealogy
of Owen Tudor, his grandfather. Hence Hakluit gives
him as authority for the Madoc tradition. This tradition
appears in Hakluit 's "Divers Voyages Touching the
Discovery of America, etc.," first published in 1582,
as follows:

The Madoc Tradition from Hakluit's Voyages-
Volume 3, Page 1

"After the death of Owen Gwynedd, his sonnes fell
at debate who should inherit after him, for the eldest
sonne born in Matrimony Edward or Jorwerth Drwidion
(Drwyndwn) was counted unmeet to govern because of
the maime upon his face, and Howel that took upon him
the rule, was a base sonne, begotten upon an Irish woman.
Therefore, David, another Sonne, gathered all the power he
could and came against Howel, and fighting with him, slew
him and afterwards enjoyed quietly the whole land of North
Wales until his brother Jorwerth 's Sonne came to age.

"Madoc, another of Owen Gwyneth's Sonnes, left
the land in contentions betwixt his brethren and pre-
pared certain ships with men and munition and sought
adventures by seas, sailing west and leaving the coast
of Ireland so farre north, that he came to a land unknown,
where he saw many strange things.

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 2 1

"This land must needs be some parts of the Country,
of which the Spanyards affirm themselves to be the first
Finders since Hanno's Time; whereupon it is manifest
that that country was by Britons discovered long before
Columbus led any Spanyards thither.

"Of the voyage and return of this Madoc, there be
many fables framed, as the common people do use in
distance of place and length of time, rather to augment
than to diminish, but sure it is, there he was. And after
he had returned home, and declared the pleasant and
fruitful countries, that he had seen without inhabitants;
and upon the contrary, for what barren and wild ground
his brothers and nephews did murther one another, he
prepared a number of ships and got with him such Men
and Women as were desirous to live in quietness, and
taking leave of his friends, took his journey thitherwards
again.

"Therefore, it is supposed that he and his people
inhabited part of those countries, for it appeareth by Fran-
cis Lopez de Comara that in Acuzamil, and other places,
the people honoured the Cross. Whereby it may be
gathered that Christians had been there before the com-
ing of the Spanyards but because this people were not
many, they followed the manner of the land which they
came to, and the language they found there.

2 2 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

"This Madoc arriving in that western country, unto
the which he came in the year 1170, left most of his peo-
ple there, and returning back for more of his own nation,
acquaintance and friends to inhabit that fair land and
large country, went thither again with Ten Sailles, as I find
noted by Gutton Owen. I am of the opinion that the land
whereunto he came was some part of the West Indies."

This Madoc tradition next appears in the history
of Wales by Caradoc, translated into English by Llwyd
and published by Powell in 1584. It does not, however,
appear in the original work of Caradoc, whose history
only comes down to the year 1157. Llwyd, the trans-
lator, added to the original text of Caradoc the Madoc
tradition, which he got from the abbeys of Con way and
Strata Florida, as Owen had gotten what was published
by Hakluit. The source of the tradition is therefore
the same in both Hakluit and Powell and the facts sub-
stantially the same. The following is the Welsh tradi-
tion as given in the new edition (London, 1812) of
Powell's Caradoc, pages 194-196:

The Madoc Tradition in Welsh History

" Prince Owen Gwynedd being dead the succession
was of right to descend to his eldest legitimate son, lor-
werth Drwydwn, otherwise called Edward with the Bro-

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 23

ken Nose; but by reason of that blemish upon his face,
he was laid aside as unfit to take upon him the govern-
ment of North Wales. Therefore his younger brothers
began every one to aspire, in hopes of succeeding their
father; but Howel, who was of all the eldest, but base
born begotten of an Irish woman, finding they could not
agree, stept in himself and took upon him the govern-
ment. But David, who was legitimately born could not
brook that a bastard should ascend his father's throne,
and therefore he made all the preparations possible to
pull him down. Howel, on the other hand, was as reso-
lute to maintain his ground, and was not willing so quick-
ly to deliver up, what he had not very long got posses-
sion of ; and so both brothers meeting together in the
field, were resolved to try their title by the point of the
sword. The battle had not lasted long, but Howel was
slain; and then David was unanimously proclaimed and
saluted Prince of North Wales, which principality he en-
joyed without any molestation, till Llewlyn, lorwerth
Drwyn den's son came of age, as will hereafter appear.
But Madoc, another of Owen Gwynedd's sons, finding
how his brothers contended for the principality, and that
his native country was like to be turmoiled in a civil war,
did think it his better prudence to try his fortune abroad;
and therefore leaving North Wales in a very unsettled

24 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

condition, sailed with a small fleet of ships which he had
rigged and manned for that purpose, to the westward;
and leaving Ireland on the north, he came at length to
an unknown country, where most things appeared to him
new and uncustomary, and the manner of the natives
far different from what he had seen in Europe. This
country, says the learned H. Llyod, must of necessity
be some part of that vast tract of ground, of which the
Spaniards, since Hanno's time, boast themselves to be
the first discoverers, and which by order of Cosmography,
seems to be some part of Nova Hispania, or Florida;
where by it is manifested, that this country was discov-
ered by the Britains, long before either Columbus or Amer-
icus Vesputius sailed thither. But concerning Madoc's
voyage to this country, and afterwards his return from
thence, there are many fabulous stories and idle tales in-
vented by the vulgar, who are sure never to diminish
from what they hear, but will add to and increase any
fable as far as their invention will prompt them. How-
ever, says the same author, it is certain that Madoc ar-
rived in this country, and after he had viewed the fer-
tility and pleasantness of it, he thought it expedient to
invite more of his countrymen out of Britain; and there-
fore leaving most of those he had brought with him al-
ready behind, he returned for Wales. Being arrived there,

DENBIGH CASTLE

DENBIGH VILLAGE

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 25

he began to acquaint his friends with what a fair and
extensive land he had met with, void of any inhabitants,
whilst they employed all their skill to supplant one an-
other, only for a ragged portion of rocks and mountains;
and therefore he would persuade them to change their
present state of danger and continual clashings for a
more quiet being of ease and enjoyment. And so having
got a considerable number of Welsh together, he bid
adieu to his native country, and sailed with ten ships
back to them he had left behind. It is therefore to be
supposed, says our author, that Madoc and his people
inhabited part of that country, since called Florida by
reason that it appears from Francis Loves, an author
of no small reputation, that in Acusanus and other places,
the people honoured and worshipped the cross; whence
it may be naturally concluded that Christians had been
there before the coming of the Spaniards; and who these
Christians might be, unless it were this colony of Madoc *s,
it cannot be easily imagined. But by reason that the
Welsh who came over, were not many, they intermixed
in a few years with the natives of the country and
so following their manners and using their language, they
became at length undistinguishable from the barbarians.
But the country which Madoc landed in, is by the
learned Dr. Powell supposed to be part of Mexico for

26 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

which conjecture he lays down these following rea-
sons : — first as it is recorded in the Spanish chronicles
of the conquest of the West Indies the inhabitants and
natives of that country affirm by tradition, that their
rulers descended from a strange nation, which came thith-
er from a strange country; as it was confessed by King
Montezuma, in a speech at his submission to the King
of Castile, before Hernando Cortez, the Spanish general.
And then the British words and names of places used
in that country, even at this day do undoubtedly argue
the same; as when they speak and confabulate together,
they use this British word, Gwarando, which signifies
to hearken, or listen, and a certain bird with a white
head, they call Pengwyn, which signifies the same in
Welsh. But for a more complete confirmation of this,
the island of Corroeso, the cape of Bryton, the river of
Gwyndor, and the white rock of Pengwyn, which are
all British words, do manifestly shew, that it was that
country which Madoc and his people inhabited."

The closing paragraph of the preface to Doctor Pow-
ell's Caradoc (new edition, London, 1812) explains how
the Madoc tradition got into the work of Caradoc after
his death. Caradoc 's history ends with the year 1157,
and Llyod undertook to make such additions as would
bring it down to 1270 and then publish the whole in an

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 27

English translation. Among the additions was the Ma-
doc tradition obtained from the Welsh abbeys through
Gutton Owen. Death, however, overtook Llyod before
he could publish his work, and Doctor Powell becoming
possessed of his manuscript published it with his own
edition in 1584.

In the foregoing extracts from Hakluit and Powell,
which contain the earliest information outside of the
Welsh abbeys on the subject, nothing appears to deter-
mine the country to which Madoc went. He is simply
represented as leaving Ireland to the north and sailing
west until he reached a satisfactory country; then re-
turning to Wales for recruits and sailing back to where
he had landed on the first voyage. What is said by Hak-
luit about the West Indies being the Madoc land and
by Powell about Florida and Mexico being the place,
was simply their opinion after the discovery of Colum-
bus. We now know that if Madoc had continued to sail
westward and did not come in contact with an interven-
ing island he would have been bound to reach some part
of America, but neither Madoc nor his contemporaries
knew this, from the fact that America was then unknown.
These two extracts, short and wanting in detail as they
are, form the historic basis upon which the whole
fabric of the tale of the Welsh discovery in the Twelfth

28 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

century rests. Corroborative evidence had to come from
America. But for this American evidence it may be
doubted whether the Madoc tradition would ever have
gotten beyond a limited circle in the mountains of Wales.
Giraldus, a Welsh author who wrote at the time of the
Madoc expedition, does not mention it, and but for the
rolls of the Welsh abbeys it is possible that the record
of the event would have perished at that time. The
American authorities have given it color and shape and
strength, and I now propose to present such of them
as I have been able to collect. As far as possible they
will be given in their order of time, and extracts made
from them for the benefit of those who may not have
access to the originals.

VIII. THE MADOC TRADITION IN AMERICA

Captain John Smith, the first historian of Virginia,
is entitled to whatever honor may belong to the first
record of the Madoc tradition in America. At the be-
ginning of an enumeration of the discoveries of Amer-
ica in his history, after simply naming the stories of Ar-
thur, Malgo, Brandon, etc., as something he knew nothing
about and doubtless cared less, he gives the Madoc tra-
dition from the Welsh Chronicles as the only discovery
before that of Columbus. It will be found at the begin-

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 29

ning of his enumeration, in his " Generall Historic of
Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles," pub-
lished at London in 1624, page i. It is as follows:

"The Chronicles of Wales report, that Madock, fonne
to Owen Quineth, Prince of Wales, feeing his two breth-
ren at debate who fhould inherit prepared certaine Ships,
with men and munition; and left his Country to feeke
adventures by Sea; leaving Ireland north he fayled weft
till he came to a land unknowne. Returning home and
relating what pleafant and fruitful countries he had feen
without inhabitants and for what barren ground his breth-
ren and kindred did murther one another, he provided a
number of Ships, and got with him fuch men and women
as were defirous to live in quietneffe that arrived with
him in this new land in the yeare 1170; Left many of
his people there and returned for more. But where this
place was no Hiftory can fhow. "

The best American evidence corroborative of this
tradition, however, begins with a statement made by
the Reverend Morgan Jones in 1685. Parson Jones was
a resident of Virginia in 1660, and was sent by Governor
Berkeley as chaplain of an expedition to South Carolina.
Afterward, while residing in New York, he made the
following written statement and delivered it to Doc-
tor Thomas Llwyd of Pennsylvania, from whom, after

30 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

passing through the hands of several other respectable
persons, it reached the Reverend Theophilus Evans,
who had it published in the "Gentleman's Magazine,"
in London, in 1740, page 103. Parson Jones' statement
is as follows:

"These presents may certify all persons whatever,
that in the year 1660 being an inhabitant of Virginia,
and Chaplain to Major General Bennet of Mansoman
county, the said Major Bennet and Sir William Berk-
ley sent two ships to Port Royal, now called South Car-
olina, which is sixty leagues to the southward of Cape
Fair, and I was sent therewith to be their minister. Upon
the 8th of April, we set out from Virginia, and arrived
at the Harbour's Mouth of Port Royal the igth of the
same month, where we waited for the rest of the Fleet
that was to sail from Barbadoes and Bermuda with one
Mr. West, who was to be Deputy Governor of the said
Place. As soon as the Fleet came in, the smallest ves-
sels that were with us sailed up the river to a place called
the Oyster Point. There I continued about 8 months,
all which time being most starved for want of provi-
sions, I and five more travelled through the Wilderness,
till we came to the Tuscorara Country. There the Tus-
corara Indians took us prisoners, because we told them
we were bound for Roanoke. That night they carried

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 31

us to their town, and shut us up close to our no small
dread. The next day they entered into a consultation
about us, which after it was over their interpreter told
us that we must prepare ourselves to die next morning.
Thereupon being very much dejected and speaking to
this effect in the British tongue ' Have I escaped so many
dangers and must I now be knocked on the head like
a Dog,' then presently an Indian came to me, which
afterwards appeared to be a War Captain belonging to
the Sachem of the Doegs (whose original I find needs
be from the Old Britons) and took me up by the middle,
and told me in the British tongue I should not die, and
thereupon went to the Emperor of Tuscorara and agreed
for my ransom, and the men that were with me. They
then welcomed us to their town, and entertained us very
civilly and cordially four months, during which time I
had the opportunity of conversing with them familiarly
in the British language, and did preach to them three
times a week in the same language, and they would confer
with me about anything that was difficult therein; and
at our departure they abundantly supplied us with what-
ever was necessary to our support and well-doing. They
are settled upon Pontiago River, not far from Cape Atros.
This is a brief recital of my travels, among the Doeg
Indians, Morgan Jones, the son of John Jones, of Basaleg,

32 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

near Newport, in the county of Monmouth, I am ready
to conduct any Welshmen, or others to the country.

New York, March loth, 1685-6."
Geography was not as well understood at the date
of this statement by Parson Jones as it is at the pres-
ent, and as it was published fifty-five years after it was
written, and probably without proof-sheets being seen by
the author, it was to be expected that it would contain
errors, especially in the names of persons and places.
He doubtless meant for Mansoman the county of Nanse-
mond, in southeast Virginia; for Cape Fair, Cape Fear;
for Pontiago River, Pamlico River; and for Cape Atros,
Cape Hatteras. The important word, however, in the
statement is Doeg, the name by which he designates the
tribe of Indians who spoke Welsh. I know of but one
tribe of Indians that bore the name of Doeg. They were
located in Maryland, in what is now Prince George Coun-
ty, and entered into a treaty with Lord Baltimore in
1666. They might easily enough, with the proclivity of
their race, have wandered from Maryland through Virgin-
ia to North Carolina or vice versa. If they were origi-
nally called Madocs, after the Welsh prince, the length of
time between the coming of the Welsh to America and
the date of the Baltimore treaty, or the Jones narrative,
would be sufficient to account for the change in name.

I "infill II _•_.

PONT Y CYSSYLLTE

LLANGOLLEN VILLAGE

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 33

But if this statement of Parson Jones be true, it would
be difficult to account for this tribe of Indians in North
Carolina in 1660, speaking the Welsh language, upon
any hypothesis more reasonable than that of their being
descendants of the Madoc colony. Parson Jones did not
seem to know anything about Madoc, or at most
said nothing about him. He does say, however, that he
lived for four months among Indians who called them-
selves Doegs; that he conversed with them, and that he
preached to them in the Welsh language, which they
understood, and that they were located on Pamlico River
at no great distance from Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.
It is a great pity that he did not give a description of
the persons and habits of these Indians and record their
traditions, if any they had, of their origin, et cetera. If
they had only stated why they were called Doegs, they
might have furnished a key to unlock the mystery of their
origin ; for the taking of names is an important act among
Indians, and never occurs without a meaning. It has
been suggested that the Delawares were meant by the
Doegs, but this takes us no nearer to Madoc. Different
writers have thought that the Pawnees and the Padoucas
and the Mandans were descended from the Madoc colony,
but none of these Indians could ever give such an account
of their origin as to point to any certain line of descent.

34 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

In 1770 was published in Philadelphia a work entitled
"Materials towards a History of the American Baptists,"
by Morgan Edwards. In appendix number eight to this
work appears the following letter, dated March i, 1733, and
addressed to the British Missionary Society in London:

"It is not unknown to you that Madoc Gwynedd, a
prince of Wales, did about 500 years ago, sail to the west-
ward with several ships and a great number of his sub-
jects; and was never heard of after. Some relics of the
Welsh tongue being found in old and deserted settlements
about the Mississippi make it probable that he sailed up
that river. And we, being moved with brotherly love
to our countrymen are meditating to go in search of them,
but are discouraged by the distance of the place and un-
certainty of the course we should steer. If you can give
us any information and direction together with some
help to bear the expense we shall find men adventurous
enough to undertake the expedition having no other end
in view than to carry the gospel of peace among our an-
cient brethren; and believing it will be to the enlarge-
ment of the British empire in America and a proof of prior
right to the whole continent should we happily succeed.

"We remain, gentlemen, your loving countrymen,
John Davis Nathaniel Jenkins

David Evans Benj. Griffiths

Rynalt Howel Joseph Eaton."

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 35

Now here are half-a-dozen gentlemen in Philadelphia
who have faith enough in the Madoc tradition to offer
to search for any remnant that may remain of the Welsh
colony, provided the necessary money can be raised to
pay the expense of the expedition. These gentlemen make
no allusion to the statement of Reverend Morgan Jones,
which they possibly had not seen, but simply rely upon
the tradition which was prevalent concerning Madoc. If
a claim to the country by discovery were a part of their
object, as they suggest, it would have been difficult,
even if they had found the Madoc colony, to have
set up a valid claim founded on the right of discovery.
As the French held the country when this search
was proposed, it would have been quite a serious
undertaking to have driven them out, for Wales or any
other country.

Captain Isaac Stewart, an officer of the Provincial
Cavalry of South Carolina, in 1782, made the following
statement, which was published in the second volume of
the "American Museum" for July, 1787, page 92:

" I was taken prisoner about 50 miles to the west-
ward of Fort Pitt, about 18 years ago, by the Indians,
and was carried by them to the Wabash with many more
white men, who were executed with circumstances of
horrid barbarity; it was my good fortune to call forth

36 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

the sympathy of what is called the good woman of the
town who was permitted to redeem me from the flames,
by giving, as my ransom, a horse.

"After remaining two years in bondage amongst the
Indians, a Spaniard came to the nation, having been
sent from Mexico on discoveries. He made application
to the chiefs, for redeeming me and another white man
in the like situation, a native of Wales, named John Da-
vey, which they complied with, and we took our depart-
ure in company with the Spaniard, and travelled to the
westward, crossing the Mississippi near the River Rouge,
or Red River, up which we travelled 700 miles, when we
came to a nation of Indians, remarkably white and whose
hair was of a reddish color, at least mostly so; they lived
on the banks of a small river that empties itself into Red
River, which is called the River Post. In the morning
of the day ' after our arrival among these Indians, the
Welshman informed me that he was determined to re-
main with them, giving as a reason that he understood
their language, it being very little different from the Welsh.
My curiosity was excited very much by this informa-
tion, and I went with my companion to the chief men
of the town, who informed him (in a language I had no
knowledge of, and which had no affinity to that of any
other Indian tongue I ever heard) that their forefathers

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 37

of this nation came from a foreign country, and landed
on the east side of the Mississippi describing particularly
the country now called, West Florida, and that on the
Spaniards taking possession of Mexico, they fled to their
then abode, and as proof of the truth of what he advanced,
he brought forth roles of parchment which were care-
fully tied up in otter skins, on which were large char-
acters, written with blue ink, the characters I did not
understand and the Welshman being unacquainted with
letters, even of his own language, I was not able to know
the meaning of the writing. They are a bold, hardy
intrepid people, very warlike, and the women beautiful
when compared with other Indians."

The Spaniards had recently come into possession of
the country west of the Mississippi by cession from France,
and it was natural enough that they should have explor-
ers in the field examining it. Captain Stewart and his
Spanish companion went a long way south before cross-
ing the Mississippi into this territory, but that seeming
wandering may have been a part of their explorations.
They crossed the Mississippi at Red River and went up
this stream toward its source in Northwestern Texas.
Here they found Indians who were white, and talked
Welsh. This was in the region of the Padoucah tribe
of reputed White Indians, on the Rio Del Norte, who,

38 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

according to General Bowles, an intelligent Irishman liv-
ing among the Cherokees, spoke Welsh. Captain Stewart's
geography, like that of all early explorers, was not
very accurate, but it could hardly have been otherwise
when there was no one to teach geography and make
reliable maps, as in later times.

In 1796, Reverend John Williams, LL. D., published in
London a book entitled "An Inquiry into the Truth of
the Tradition concerning the Discovery of America by
Madog. " This book abounds in valuable information on
the subject of the Madoc colony in America, and from it
the following extracts, beginning at page 41, are taken:

"Mr. Chas. Beatty, a Missionary from New York,
accompanied by a Mr. Duffield, visited some inland parts
of North America in the year 1766. If I rightly under-
stood his journal, he travelled about 400, or 500 miles
to the southeast of New York. During his Tour he met
with several persons who had been among the Indians
from their youth, or who had been taken captives by
them, and lived with them several years. Among others
one Benjamin Sutton, who had visited different Nations,
and had lived many years with them. His account, in
Mr. Beatty 's words, was as follows:

"He (Benjamin Sutton) informed us, when he was
with the Chactaw Nation, or tribe of Indians at the Mis-

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 39

sissippi, he went to an Indian town a very considerable
distance from New Orleans, whose inhabitants were of
a different complexion; not so tawny as those of other
Indians, and who spoke Welsh. He said he saw a book
among them, which he supposed was a Welsh Bible, which
they kept carefully wrapped up in a skin, but they could
not read it; and that he heard some of the Indians af-
terwards in the lower Shawanaugh Town speak Welsh
with one Lewis a Welshman, captive there. This Welsh
tribe now live on the West side of the Mississippi River,
a great way above New Orleans.

" Levi Hicks, as being among the Indians from his
youth, told us he had been, when attending an Embassy
in a town of Indians, on the west side of the Mississippi
River, who talked Welsh (as he was told, for he did not
understand them) and our interpreter Joseph saw some
Indians whom he supposed to be of the same Tribe, who
talked Welsh, for he told us some of the words they said,
which he knew to be Welsh, as he had been acquainted
with some Welsh people."

Following the preceding extract in the book of Mr.
Williams is a lengthy account of a minister of the gos-
pel who was captured by the Indians in Virginia and
condemned to death. Just before he was to be execu-
ted— whether by fire or some other torture is not stated

40 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

—he fell upon his knees and prayed aloud in the Welsh
language. His executioners understood his words, had
his death sentence set aside, and restored him to liberty.
No name or date is given, but the facts stated are so near-
ly identical with those in the narrative of the Reverend
Morgan Jones that there can be no doubt about his be-
ing the minister referred to. The narrative of Mr. Jones
has been previously given in this article, and need not
be repeated here. These two accounts of the same event,
related so distantly apart in both space and time, indi-
cate how widely spread the Madoc tradition was in Amer-
ica. It does not appear that Mr. Sutton had ever seen
the Jones narrative, and yet more than one hundred
years afterward, and more than one thousand miles dis-
tant in the wild West, he substantially repeated from
tradition facts set forth in the Jones narrative. Such
coincident narratives indicate that this tradition was
known all over both savage and civilized America.

" Sutton further informed us that in the Delaware
tribe of Indians he observed their women to follow ex-
actly the custom of the Jewish women, in keeping sep-
arate from the rest seven days at certain times prescribed
in the Mosaic law; that from some old men among them
he had heard the following Traditions: That of old time
their people were divided by a river, and one part tar-

PASS OF LLANBER1S

RHAIADYR-Y-WENOL

Traditions of the Rarliest Americans 41

rying behind, that they knew not for certainty how they
first came to this continent, but account for their coming
into these parts, near where they are now settled. That
a King of their nation where they formerly lived far to
the west, left his Kingdom to his two sons that the one
son making war upon the other, the latter thereupon de-
termined to depart and seek some new Habitation; "that
accordingly he set out accompanied by a number of his
people, and that after wandering to and fro for the space
of 40 years, they at length came to Delaware River, where
they settled 370 years ago. The way, he says, they keep
account of this, is by putting on a black bead of Wam-
pum every year since on a Belt they have for that pur-
pose."

This tradition is evidently a distorted and confused
version of the original account of the Madoc narrative
as related Hakluit's Voyages and Powell's Caradoc. After
passing through Indian tribes for centuries we could
hardly expect it to show less changes than it exhibits,
and yet through all the changes the original is plainly
seen. Madoc is the dissatisfied son who wanders for
forty years, and thus confounds the narrative with the
Israelites in the journey to Palestine through the Red
Sea and the Wilderness. If there were truth in this
Indian version of the tradition, we should be much

42 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

obliged for being informed that Madoc and his colony
landed on the Delaware River three hundred and seventy
years ago.

In this learned work of Mr. Williams, the testimony
of numerous persons who had been among the Welsh
Indians in America is given in the shape of letters and
statements. It also contains a vast number of authori-
ties on the subject which were accessible to the author
at the time it was published. It is in fact an exhaustive
work on the subject.

Following this work of Mr. Williams was a small vol-
ume entitled "The Welsh Indians, or a Collection of Pa-
pers respecting Prince Madoc, by George Burder, Lon-
don, 1797." It contains much of the same matter as
the work of Mr. Williams, but has some articles not
in the Williams work. It can not be said, however,
to add many material facts to the story as already
told, but only adds cumulative evidence. The following
article is copied from Mr. Burder 's work, page 7,
because it gives something of the history of the Madoc
family :

"Owain, Prince of Gwynez, who died in the year 1169
had nineteen children, the names of the Sons were Rho-
dri, Cynoric, Riryd, Meredyz, Edwal, Cynan, Rien, Mael-
gon, Lywelyn, lorwerth, Davyz, Cadwallon, Hywell, Ca-

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 43

dell, Madoc, Einion, and Phylip; of thefe Rhodri, Hywell,
Davyz and Madoc were the most diftinguifhed. Hywell
was a fine poet as appears by his compofition; of which
eight are preferred. His mother was a native of Ireland,
and though not born in wedlock, he was the firft who
afpired to the crown after the death of Owain, which
event no sooner took place but his brother Davyz be-
came his competitor, under the fanction of a legitimate
birth. The confequence was, the country became em-
broiled in a civil war.

"Influenced by difgust at the unnatural diffenfions
among his brothers Madoc, who is reprefented of a very
mild difpofition, refolved upon the matchlef enterprise of
exploring the ocean westward, in fearch of more tran-
quil fcenes. The event was, according to various old doc-
uments, the dif covering of a new world, from which he
effected his return to inform his country of his good for-
tune. The confequence of which was the fitting out of
a fecond expedition, and Madoc with his brother Riryd,
Lord of Clocran, in Ireland, prevailed upon fo many to
accompany them as to fill feven fhips and failing from
the Ifle of Lundy, they took an eternal leave of Wales.
There is a large book of pedigrees ftill extant, written
by Jeuan Brecva who flourished in the age preceding the
time of Columbus. Madoc and Riryd found land far in

44 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

the fea of the weft and there they fettled. Lywarc, the
fon of Lywelyn, feems to have compofed two of his poems
in the time between the firft and the fecond of the two
voyages of Madoc. One of thefe pieces muft be confid-
ered of great importance and curiofity; it is an invoca-
tion, as if he were undergoing the fiery ordeal, to exhon-
erate himfelf from having any knowledge of the fate of
Madoc; the fecond, being a panegyric upon Rhodri an-
other brother, has a remarkable allufion to the fame
event. It is thus translated:

"Two princes, of ftrong pafnon, broke off in wrath,
beloved by the multitude of the earth. One on land, in
Arvon, allaying of ambition, and another, a placid one,
on the bofom of the vaft ocean, in great and immeafur-
able trouble prowling after a profeffion easy to be guard-
ed, eftranged from all for a country."

In 1857, George Catlin published in Philadelphia two
volumes entitled "Letters and Notes on the Manners of
the North American Indians. ' ' Mr. Catlin lived for some
time among the Mandan Indians and studied their his-
tory and peculiarities. In the appendix to his work,
volume 2, page 777, he expressed the opinion that the
Mandans were descendants of the Welsh colony estab-
lished in America by Prince Madoc in the Twelfth cen-
tury. In support of the theory he described some of

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 45

their peculiarities, and gave a list of words which resem-
bled each other and had a similar meaning both in the
Mandan and Welsh. He related also the destruction of
the entire tribe by the smallpox, introduced among them
by British traders, so that if this Welsh colony, unlike
other early discoverers of America, helped to populate
the country, they also perished by one of the epidemics
of the new land. The country, however, was already in-
habited and in no need of any immigrants from a for-
eign land to give it population when the Welsh colony
appeared. What Mr. Catlin said on the subject will be
found in the appendix to this monograph.

In the "Popular History of the United States," by
Bryant and Gay, published in London in 1876, a con-
siderable portion of the fourth chapter of the first volume
is devoted to the Madoc tradition. Other articles from
books, magazines, and papers on this subject might here
be added, but they would contribute no important fact
to the story as already told. They would simply be pres-
entations in different forms of what has already been
stated. What appears in Bryant and Gay's history will
be found in the appendix to this monograph, as will other
articles which would overload the text.

46 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

IX. THE MADOC TRADITION IN KENTUCKY

There is, however, in the State of Kentucky, consider-
able matter relating to the Madoc tradition which will
not be found elsewhere and belongs to this country alone.
This tradition was especially popular in Kentucky, where
the Welsh Indians were believed to have dwelt in early
times and where they were finally exterminated at the
Falls of the Ohio by the Red Indians. The Kentucky
pioneers were full believers in this tradition, and in the
family circle, by the warmth and light of the huge log
fires of the cabins, the story of Prince Madoc was told
on long winter nights to eager listeners who never wear-
ied of it. I now propose to present not only what ap-
pears in the Kentucky newspapers, magazines, and books,
but also some of the traditions which have never before
been published.

John Filson, the author of the first History of Ken-
tucky, published at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1784, was
a native of Pennsylvania, where the Madoc tradition was
well known. He was also the first one in Kentucky to
take the tradition from the oral sphere in which it cir-
culated and dignify it with a place in history. He was
a believer in the tradition, and employed the opportuni-
ties which he had among the pioneers to talk about it

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 47

and gather facts concerning it from those who had met
Indians in different places who spoke the Welsh or an-
cient British language. These Welsh Indians sometimes
came among the Kentucky pioneers for the purpose of
trade, and although Filson may never have met any of
them himself, he took care to learn all he could from
those who had seen and talked with them. He came to
Kentucky early in the pioneer period, perhaps in 1782,
and employed his time in hunting up information for a
history of "Kentucke, " as the new country was then
spelled. He was a very busy man in collecting facts,
and so persistent in his work that he was sometimes an-
noying to the settlers, who were more interested in loca-
ting lands, fighting Indians, and killing game than they
were in historical matter. He was upon the best of
terms with such pioneers as Daniel Boone, Levi Todd,
James Harrod, Christopher Greenup, John Cowan, and
William Kennedy, all of whom he mentions in his
history and records his obligations to them for the
help .they gave him in compiling it. He also published
in his history the indorsement of Daniel Boone, Levi
Todd, and James Harrod, among the most prominent
of the pioneers, that it was a valuable history, pre-
senting a true account of the country. His oppor-
tunities were the best to learn what was known and

48 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

believed about the Madoc tradition, and hence he
recorded in his history that it was universally known
and believed.

When Filson had gotten well under way with his
"History of Kentucke" he made a visit to Louisville
for the purpose of collecting information about the Welsh
Indians, who it was believed once resided at the Falls
of the Ohio! There was then a club in Louisville made
up of such prominent citizens as General George Rogers
Clark, Colonel James F. Moore, William Johnston, Doc-
tor Alexander Skinner, Captain James Patten, Major
John Harrison, John Sanders, and others. The club some-
times met in the quarters of General Clark, in the fort
at the Falls of the Ohio, and sometimes at the "Keep"
of John Sanders, near the northeast corner of the present
Main and Third streets. The main object of the club
was to secure the earliest information about the Indians
and the progress of the Revolutionary War. When on
the eve of one of its meetings it was learned that Cap-
tain Abraham Chaplain was the guest of General Clark,
and that John Filson the historian was stopping with
Captain James Patten for the purpose of securing infor-
mation about the Madoc colony, it was decided to invite
them to the club meeting, which on this occasion was
to be held in the " Keep ' ' of John Sanders. This " Keep, ' '

VIEW NEAR ABER

LLYN GWYNANT

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 49

as it was called, was a large flatboat which had been con-
verted by Sanders into a warehouse, in which he received
the peltry of the country and gave receipts therefor,
which were to be paid when the articles were sold. These
receipts passed by delivery and circulated as money.
They were therefore popular in the country, and the
warehouse of Sanders, which he called his "Keep," was
a kind of bank which was very useful.

When the members of the club and their guests had
assembled and the news pertaining to the war and the
Indians had been received and discussed, it was resolved
that each person present, who might feel so inclined,
should have the opportunity to state what he knew con-
cerning the Madoc tradition, for the benefit of the his-
torian who was their guest. There was in the statements
made at this meeting, as in previous narratives made
by others, some little confusion on account of the use of
the names White Indians and Welsh Indians. They prob-
ably both meant the same thing in the use made of them
by the early settlers of the country. From James Har-
rison, a son of Major John Harrison, one of the speakers,
the following account of the proceeding was obtained:

General Clark spoke first, and confined himself to
what he had learned from a chief of the Kaskaskia In-
dians concerning a large and curiously shaped earthwork

5° Traditions of the Earliest Americans

on the Kaskaskia River, which the chief, who was of
lighter complexion than most Indians, said was the house
of his ancestors. Colonel Moore spoke next, and related
what he had learned from an old Indian about a long
war of extermination between the Red Indians and the
White Indians. The final battle, he said, between them
was fought at the Falls of the Ohio, where nearly the
whole of the White Indians were driven upon an island
and slaughtered. General Clark, on hearing this state-
ment by Colonel Moore, confirmed it by stating that he
had heard the same thing from Tobacco, a chief of the
Piankeshaws. Major Harrison next spoke, and told about
an extensive graveyard on the north side of the Ohio,
opposite the Falls, where thousands of human bones were
buried in such confusion as to indicate that the dead
were left there after a battle, and that the silt from inun-
dations of the Ohio had covered them as the battle had
left them. Sanders spoke next and said that in his inter-
course with different tribes of Indians he had met sev-
eral of light complexion, gray eyes, and sandy hair, but
had never talked with them in the Welsh language, if
they spoke it, because he did not understand it himself.
The last White Indian he ever saw was in a hunt on the
Wabash River. A White Indian had joined a party of
Red Indians, as Sanders had, for a hunt. While sep-

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 5 1

arated from the rest of the party the White Indian had
come upon a panther and wounded it. The infuriated
animal turned upon him and literally tore him to pieces
before any assistance could reach him. Doctor Skinner
came next, and called attention to the large mound at
the northeast corner of Main and Fifth streets in Lou-
isville, and the larger one on the northwest corner of
Sixth and Walnut streets. He said that the Red In-
dians never made mounds of this kind, and if they were
artificial, as he believed they were, they might have been
erected by the Welsh or White Indians for some purpose
unknown to the people of this age. He had heard that
there were Welsh Indians in this country long ago, but
he had never seen one.

The guests were then called upon for any remarks
they wished to make upon the subject. Captain Chap-
lain said he was familiar with most of the traditions that
had been related by the speakers before him and could
testify as to their popularity, but as he was not in the
habit of speaking he hoped he would be allowed to re-
main a listener. He was excused and Filson was the
last to speak. His speech was longer than all the others
put together. He began with the Madoc tradition, at
the death of the king of North Wales, and gave details
of the civil war between the sons of the king for the sue-

52 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

cession; of the determination of Madoc, one of the sons,
to get out of the country and escape the horrors of a civil
war, and of his securing and preparing ships to take
him and his friends to some foreign land. He went so
much into detail and consumed so much time that he
never got his emigrants beyond the shores of Wales, where
he had them in ships and about to sail, when he discov-
ered that his hearers were paying no attention, and all
of them except Doctor Skinner seemed to be asleep. He
sat down and spoke of his mortification to Doctor Skin-
ner, who consoled him with the remark that his hearers
might not be asleep, but spellbound by his eloquence.

Filson, in his "History of Kentucke, " gave a lengthy
and kindly account of the Indians, but they were not
kind to him in turn. While he was going through the
woods from the Miami River to where Cincinnati now
stands, to establish a city by the name of Losantiville,
he disappeared and was never heard of more. None of
his remains were ever found, and he was supposed to
have been murdered by the Indians. In his account of
the Indians in his "History of Kentucke," original edi-
tion of 1784, the following concerning the Madoc tradition
appears on pages 95 and 96:

"In the year 1170 Madoc, son of Owen Gwynedd,
prince of Wales, dissatisfied with the situation of affairs

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 53

at home left his country, as related by the Welsh his-
torians, in quest of new settlements and leaving Ireland
to the north proceeded west till he discovered a fertile
country where leaving a colony he returned and persua-
ding many of his countrymen to join him put to sea with
10 ships and was never more heard of.

"This account has several times drawn the attention
of the world but as no vestiges of them had then been
found it was concluded, perhaps too rashly to be
a fable or at least that no remains of the colony
existed. Of late years, however, the western settlers
have received frequent accounts of a nation inhabiting
at a great distance up the Missouri, in manners and
appearance resembling the other Indians but speaking
Welsh and retaining some ceremonies of the Christian
worship and at length this is universally believed to
be a fact.

"Captain Abraham Chaplain of Kentucky, a gentleman
whose veracity may be entirely depended upon, assured
the author that in the late war, being with his company
in garrison at Kaskasky, some Indians came there and
speaking in the Welsh dialect were perfectly understood
and conversed with by two Welshmen in his company
and that they informed them of the situation of their
nation as mentioned above."

54 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

In the "Public Advertiser," a newspaper published in
Louisville, Kentucky, by Shadrach Penn, early in the
last century, appeared an interview between Lieutenant
Joseph Roberts and an Indian in Washington City. Lieu-
tenant Joseph Roberts was a Welshman born and reared
in North Wales, and capable of judging of the kind of
Welsh the Indian spoke. The following is his account of
this interview as it appeared in the "Public Advertiser,"
May 15, 1819:

"In the year 1801 being at the City of Washington
in America, I happened to be at a hotel, smoking a cigar
according to the custom of the country and there was
a young lad, a native of Wales, a waitor in the house
and because he had displeased me by bringing me a glass
of brandy and water, warm instead of cold, I said to him
jocosely in Welsh, 'I'll give thee a good beating.'

"There happened to be at the time in the room one
of the secondary Indian chiefs who on my pronouncing
those words, rose in a great hurry stretching forth his
hand, at the same time asking me in the ancient British
tongue — 'Is that thy language?' I answered him in
the affirmative shaking hands at the same time, and the
chief said that was likewise his language and the language
of his father and mother and of his nation. I said to
him so it is the language of my father and mother and

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 55

also my country. Upon this the Indian began to inquire
from whence I came and I replied from Wales, but he
had never heard of such a place. I explained that Wales
was a principality in the kingdom called England. He
had heard of England and of the English, but never of
such a place as Wales.

" I asked him if there were any traditions amongst
them whence their ancestors had come? He said there
were and that they had come from a far distant country,
very far in the east and from over the great waters. I
conversed with him in Welsh and English; he knew bet-
ter Welsh than I did and I asked him how they had come
to retain their language so well from mixing with other
Indians. He answered that they had a law or estab-
lished custom in their nation forbidding any to teach
their children another language until they had attained
the age of 12 years and after that they were at liberty
to learn any language they pleased. I asked him if he
would like to go to England and Wales; he replied that
he had not the least inclination to leave his native coun-
try and that he would sooner live in a wigwam than in
a palace. He had ornamented his naked arms with brace-
lets, on his head were placed ostrich feathers.

" I was astonished and greatly amazed when I heard
such a man who had painted his face of yellowish red

56 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

and of such an appearance speaking the ancient British
language as fluently as if he had been born and brought
up in the vicinity of Snowden. His head was shaved
excepting around the crown of his head and there it was
very long and plaited and it was on the crown of his head
he had placed the ostrich feathers which I mentioned
before to ornament himself.

"The situation of those Indians is about 800 miles
southwest of Philadelphia, according to his statement
and they are called Asguaws or Asguaw nation.

"The chief courted my society astonishingly, seeing
that we were descended from the same people. He used
to call upon me almost every day and take me to the
woods to show me the virtues of the various herbs which
grew there; for neither he nor his kindred were acquaint-
ed with compound medicine.

JOSEPH ROBERTS."

This statement of Lieutenant Roberts is one of the
best of all the contributions to the literature of the Ma-
doc colony of Welshmen among the North American In-
dians. The Indian with whom Lieutenant Roberts con-
versed spoke the ancient British or Welsh language flu-
ently, gave a good reason for this language being so long
retained by his people in America, and indicated that
Wales, a country unknown to him, was the land from

SNOWDON VILLAGE

FALL OF THE OGWEN

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 57

which his nation had come, by speaking its ancient lan-
guage and locating it far to the east, beyond the great
waters. I can recall nothing said by any other Welsh-
speaking Indian which throws more light on the Madoc
colony or that contributed as much in such few words
to the plausibility of the tradition. If there be no truth
in the tradition, then there is an astonishing amount of
untruth in the numerous accounts of it. It is almost
impossible to believe that so many witnesses as have
testified in this case should have been plain liars about
a matter in which they seem to have had no personal
interest.

In 1804 the Honorable Harry Toulmin, who was Sec-
retary of State under Governor Garrard, of Kentucky,
wrote a letter to the editor of the "Palladium," a weekly
newspaper published at Frankfort, Kentucky, in which
he sets forth what had been learned from one Maurice
Griffiths concerning the Welsh Indians. Griffiths was born
in Wales, and while a mere lad emigrated to Virginia.
While residing on the Roanoke River in Virginia he was
taken prisoner by the Shawnees, about the year 1764,
and conducted to their towns. After remaining with
these Indians some two or three years he joined a party
of five young braves, to go on a hunting and exploring
expedition up the Missouri River. After ascending the

58 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

Missouri for many days, amid great difficulties, they
came to a nation of Indians who were white or of a light
complexion, and spoke the Welsh language. Mr. Grif-
fiths made his statement to John Chiles, a respectable
citizen of Woodford County, who in turn related it to
Mr. Toulmin, who reduced it to writing and gave it to
the "Palladium" for publication. It appeared in the
"Palladium" on the i2th of December, 1804. Mr. Grif-
fiths is endorsed by Mr. Chiles as a gentleman of stand-
ing and veracity and Mr. Chiles is endorsed by Mr. Toul-
min as a citizen worthy of all confidence and credit. Mr.
Toulmin needs no endorsement. He was President of
Transylvania University, Secretary of State, Judge of
the United States District Court, and author of an early
history of Kentucky, as well as several valuable law-books.
He was a minister of the gospel, of the Unitarian faith,
and stood high as a Christian statesman, judge, literary
man of broad culture and strict integrity. His letter to
the "Palladium" is too long for insertion, and the fol-
lowing extracts are taken from it:

"After passing the mountains they entered a fine,
fertile tract of land, which having traveled through for
several days, they accidentally met with three white men
in the Indian dress. Griffiths immediately understood
their language, as it was pure Welsh, though they occa-

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 59

sionally made use of a few words with which he was not
acquainted. However, as it happened to be the turn
of one of his Shawnee companions to act as spokesman,
or interpreter, he preserved a profound silence, and never
gave them any intimation that he understood the lan-
guage of their new companions.

"After proceeding with them four or five days' jour-
ney, they came to the village of these white men, where
they found that the whole nation were of the same color,
having all the European complexion. The three men
took them through their village for about the space of
fifteen miles, when they came to a second council house,
at which an assembly of the king and chief men of the ,

nation was immediately held. The council lasted three
days, and as the strangers were not supposed to be ac-
quainted with their language, they were suffered to be
present at their deliberations. The great question before
the council was, what conduct should be observed toward
the strangers. From their firearms, their knives, and
their tomahawks, it was concluded that they were a war-
like people. It was conceived that if they were sent
to look out for a country for their nation, that if they
were suffered to return they might expect a body of pow-
erful invaders, but that if these six men were put to death
nothing would be known of their country, and they would

60 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

still enjoy their possessions in security. It was finally
determined that they should be put to death. Griffiths
then thought that it was time for him to speak. He
addressed the council in the Welsh language: he in-
formed them that they had not been sent by any nation;
that they were actuated merely by private curiosity;
that they had no hostile intentions; that it was their
wish to trace the Missouri to its source, and that they
would return to their country satisfied with the discov-
ery they had made, without any wish to disturb the re-
pose of their new acquaintances. An instant astonish-
ment glowed in the countenances not only of the council,
but of his Shawnee companions, who clearly saw that
he was understood by the people of the country. Full
confidence was at once given to his declarations; the
king advanced and gave him his hand. They abandoned
the design of putting him and his companions to death,
and from that moment treated them with the utmost
friendship. Griffiths and the Shawnees continued eight
months in the nation, but were deterred from prosecu-
ting their researches up the Missouri by the advice of the
people of the country, who informed them that they had
gone twelve months' journey up the river, but found it
as large there as it was in their own country. As to the
history of this people he could learn nothing satisfactory.

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 61

The only account they could give was that their fore-
fathers had come up the river from a very distant coun-
try. They had no books, no records, no writings. They
intermixed with no other people by marriage; there was
not a dark-skinned man in the nation. Their numbers
were very considerable. There was a continued range of
settlements on the river for fifty miles, and there were
within this space three large water courses which fell
into the Missouri, on the banks of each of which likewise
they were settled. He supposed there must be fifty
thousand men in the nation capable of bearing arms.
Their clothing was skins, well dressed. Their houses
were made of upright posts and the bark of trees.
The only implements they had to cut them with were
stone tomahawks. They had no iron; their arms were
bows and arrows. They had some silver, which had
been hammered with stones into coarse ornaments, but
it did not appear to be pure. They had neither horses,
cattle, sheep, hogs, nor any domestic or tame animals.
They lived by hunting. He said nothing about their
religion. "

In 1842, Thomas S. Hinde, an antiquarian of more
than local reputation, in answer to inquiries made by
John S. Williams, editor of the "American Pioneer,"
gave some valuable information touching the Madoc

62 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

tradition. Mr. Hinde spent many years in investigating
the antiquities of the West, and was of no little help to
the Reverend John P. Campbell in the vast amount of
information he gathered upon this subject. He was au-
thority upon all questions touching the antiquities of
Kentucky and the Western States. In answering the
queries of Mr. Williams, he wrote a letter which appeared
in the "Pioneer," volume i, page 373, and from which
the following extract is taken:

"Mount Carmel, 111., May 30, 1824.
"Mr. J. S. Williams.
"Dear Sir:

"Your letter of the lyth, to Major Armstrong,
was placed in my hands some days ago. The brief re-
marks and hints given you are correct. I have a vast
quantity of western matter, collected in notes gathered
from various sources, mostly from persons who knew the
facts. These notes reach back to remote periods. It
is a fact that the Welsh under Owen ap Zuinch, in the
1 2th century found their way to the Mississippi and as
far up the Ohio as the Falls of that River at Louisville
where they were cut off by the Indians; others ascended
the Missouri, were either captured, or settled with and
sunk into Indian habits. Proof i: In 1799, six sol-
diers' skeletons were dug up near Jeffersonville, each

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 63

skeleton had a breast-plate of brass, cast with the Welsh
coat-of-arms, the Mermaid and Harp with a Latin in-
scription, in substance, " virtuous deeds meet their just
reward." One of these plates was left by Captain Jon-
athan Taylor, with the late Mr. Hubbard Taylor, of Clarke
county, and when called for by me in 1814 for the late
Dr. John P. Campbell of Chillicothe, Ohio, who was pre-
paring notes of the antiquities of the west, by a letter
from Mr. Hubbard Taylor, Jr. (a relative of mine), now
living, I was informed that the breast plate had been
taken to Virginia by a gentleman of that state, I sup-
posed as a matter of curiosity. Proff and. The late
Mr. Mclntosh, who first settled near this and had been
for fifty or sixty years prior to his death, in 1831 or 2
a western Indian trader, was in Fort Kaskaskia, prior
to its being taken by General George Rogers Clarke in
1778 and heard as he informed me himself, a Welshman
and an Indian from far up the Missouri, speaking and
conversing in the Welsh language. It was stated by
Gilbert Imlay, in his history of the West, that it was
Captain Abraham Chaplain, of Union county, Kentucky,
that heard this conversation in Welsh. Dr. Campbell
visiting Chaplain found it was not him, afterwards the
fact was stated by Mclntosh, from whom I obtained
other facts as to western matters. Some hunter, many

64 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

years ago, informed me of a tomb-stone being found in
the southern part of Indiana, with initials of a name,
and 1 1 86 engraved upon it. The Mohawk Indians had
a tradition among them respecting the Welsh, and of
their having been cut off by the Indians at the Falls of
the Ohio. The late Col. Joseph Hamilton Davis who
had for many years sought for information on this
subject, mentions this fact, and of the Welshman's
bones being found buried on Corn Island so that
Southey, the king's laureat, had some foundation for his
Welsh poem."

This statement of Mr. Hinde in the above extract,
that six skeletons in the Welsh armor were exhumed
near the Falls of the Ohio in 1799, does not strike the
reader as a truth too evident for doubt, and reminds
one of the skeleton in armor found near Fall River in
1831. If the Fall River skeleton was any proof of the
Norse colony on Fall River, in the Eleventh century,
the other six skeletons should be accepted as six times
as much proof of the Welsh colony at the Falls of the
Ohio in the Twelfth century. But instead of the six
skeletons of the Falls of the Ohio having the strongest
proof, the single skeleton of Fall River got the start
by the help of scientists. The celebrated chemist Ber-
zelius analyzed the metal upon the Fall River skeleton

TREMADOC VILLAGE

RHAIADYR DU CATARACT

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 65

and found it to be identical in composition with the
metal known to have been used on Norse armor in the
Tenth century. After this analysis, some antiquarians
took the liberty to conclude that the Fall River skeleton
was that of an Icelander, and claimed that this Iceland-
er might have been Thorsvald Erickson, who was killed
by the Skraellings in America about the beginning of
the Eleventh century. The Falls of the Ohio skeletons
could not compete with such assuming as this. A chem-
ist should have analyzed them, and if he had done so
and found their metal to be the same as that used by
the Welsh in the Twelfth century then it might have
been in order, according to the imagining in the Fall
River case, to have pronounced one of the skeletons
that of Prince Madoc and the others those of his five
principal men, if their names could have been found,
who were slain in the great battle of Sand Island be-
tween the White and the Red Indians, in which the
White Indians were the vanquished and the Red In-
dians the victors.

X. DESTRUCTION OF WHOLE TRIBES OF AMERICAN INDIANS

The truth of the Madoc tradition has been questioned
by some, because they claim that no Indian tribe in Amer-
ica could be readily traced back to a colony of Welsh

66 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

planted here by Madoc. This view is in direct opposi-
tion to the testimony of dozens of respectable witnesses
who stated that they had seen and talked with Indians
in different localities who spoke the ancient British or
Welsh language, and indicated that their ancestors had
come from a far distant land beyond the great waters.
But even if there are now no Welsh Indians in America,
it does not follow that they were not here at a previous
date. Whole tribes of Indians have been swept from
the face of the earth by war, pestilence, and famine be-
fore and since the discovery of Columbus.

Drake, in his "Aboriginal Races of North America,"
enumerated nearly five hundred tribes, a large percentage
of which were extinct when the list was made out
and known only by the name they bore in former days.
The Iroquois Indians, after getting possession of fire-
arms in the Seventeenth century, carried death and
desolation to many neighboring tribes. Among the
nations destroyed by them were the Eries, who gave
their name to one of the great lakes in this country.
War between different tribes has been constant from
time immemorial, and some tribes have always been
destroying others. There is no telling at this date how
many tribes have been utterly destroyed in one way
or another.

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 67

Smallpox has been a great destroyer of different tribes
of Indians. This disease, until it was brought among
them by the whites, was unknown to them, and they
were utterly incapable of controlling it. Catlin, in his
"North American Indians," mentions the destroying of
the Mandans by smallpox as late as the summer of 1838.
They were confined within their villages by the hostile
Sioux, when a boat from St. Louis landed traders with
the smallpox among them. Not being able to get out
and scatter in the country on account of the besieging
enemy, they died in their quarters, not by individuals,
but by families. Deaths were so fast and so numerous
that no attempts were made to bury, and the dead lay
in heaps to putrify in every wigwam. Out of the whole
nation only about thirty were left alive, and these sought
self-destruction by rushing upon the besieging enemy
and thus securing death. The whole nation perished in
a few days, and passed forever from the number of liv-
ing tribes.

It must be stated also, however bitter may be
the acknowledgment, that civilization has been a
great destroyer of the Indians. The white man, with
civilization in one hand and the whisky bottle in
the other, has caused the death of more savages
than he has civilized. He has also introduced among

68 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

them a loathsome disease more revolting than the
smallpox, which contests the death rate with the
other destroyers.

It is therefore well known to us that whole tribes
have perished and left only a name behind. That the
Madocs were one of these extinguished tribes we have
some Indian traditions in evidence. An old Indian told
Colonel James F. Moore, of Kentucky, that long ago a
war of extermination was waged between the Red In-
dians and the Indians of a lighter complexion in Ken-
tucky, and that the last great battle between them was
fought at the Falls of the Ohio, where the light-colored
Indians were driven upon Sand Island as the last hope
of escape, and there all were slaughtered by their pur-
suers. It was the opinion of George Catlin, who spent
years among the Indians and a good part of the time
among the Mandans, that these Mandans were direct
descendants from the Madoc colony. He reached this
conclusion after living with this tribe and studying their
habits and learning their traditions. With this opinion
of Catlin and what was said by the old Indian to Colonel
Moore and the statements of the many witnesses hereto-
fore mentioned in this article, all of whom had seen Welsh
Indians in America and talked with them in the Welsh
language, it would hardly seem just to doubt the truth

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 69

of the Madoc tradition for no better reason than that
there is now no existing tribe of Welsh Indians in this
country.

The principal pre-Columbian discoveries of America
have now been presented, and not one of them found
America uninhabited. Madoc, the Welsh prince, in his
discovery in the Twelfth century is said in Llwyd's trans-
lation of Caradoc's history of Wales to have found the
continent without inhabitants, but this is a typographi-
cal error. It was probably intended to be stated that
the country did not have "many" inhabitants, instead
of "not any" inhabitants. The text bears this inter-
pretation, from the fact that it states a few lines above
that Madoc found the natives different from what he had
seen in Europe. It is possible, however, that Madoc
may have landed at some point where there were no in-
habitants in sight, as there might have been many such
places in a country as vast as America. While a single
spot reached by Madoc may have been void of inhabi-
tants, the rest of the country might have been more or
less populated. He doubtless, however, found the new
country inhabited, as it is so stated elsewhere in the
text.

70 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

XI. AMERICA THE OLDEST OF THE CONTINENTS

After the discovery by Columbus in the latter part
of the Fifteenth century, it was customary to speak of
the eastern hemisphere as the Old World, and the west-
ern as the New. No one seemed to care how long the
western hemisphere may have existed before this discov-
ery. The discovery was new, and therefore the country
was deemed new also. After the discovery by Columbus
made it known, many alleged discoverers, before un-
heard of, came into existence from different nations.
Besides the six discoveries set forth in this article, there
were Arabians, and Italians, and Dutch, and Poles, Japan-
ese, Jews, and others who laid claim to this honor. None
of these, however, could make out a satisfactory claim
to its discovery, and it may not have been possible to
satisfy all doubts in any one case. We knew that the
eastern hemisphere existed and had existed for thousands
of years, but, disregarding the claims of some of the
ancients, we did not certainly know of the western
world until it was discovered by Columbus, and as the
discovery was new, the country discovered was called
new also.

We have no certain way of arriving at the age of con-
tinents or of determining the relative age of any one of

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 7 1

them, especially if the age is to be calculated in years.
Geologists get over the difficulty of estimating in years
by the use of such terms as eras, ages, periods, epochs,
etc. They will tell you what geological age a thing be-
longs to by the fossils imbedded in it, but when they
undertake to tell the year in which anything existed, it
is by estimation only. Professor Shaler estimated that
the North American continent had existed between one
hundred and four hundred millions of years since it was
prepared for life — since plants and animals began to be
developed and live upon it. To say nothing of four hun-
dred million years, one hundred millions present a
period of which the human mind can have no rational
conception. We could form quite as just a conception of
four hundred million as of one hundred million. Both
terms suggest an incomprehensible duration of time.
It probably makes no difference, therefore, whether we
designate this period as four hundred million or one
hundred million or one million, or even a less number
of years. There is no danger of an error being dis-
covered in the addition, because there has been no fixed
unit to start from in estimating the existence of a
continent in years, and possibly can be none.

If, however, it has been between one hundred million
and four hundred million of years since animals and plants

72 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

began life in America, how long did America exist before
it was fit for the life of man? If the theory of the nebu-
lous origin of the earth be correct, quite as long a period
may have been necessary for the central nebulous mass
out of which our solar system was evolved to break up
into sections, and for these sections to whirl around in
space until they were consolidated into worlds. Our
planet probably acted in common with others until cool-
ing formed a crust sufficiently strong for an ocean bed
over its internal fires, and rains to descend from an at-
mosphere which held them in suspension, until they cov-
ered the crust with the waters of a universal ocean. Then
it began to act for itself by eroding this crust and con-
tracting from further cooling until it pressed the sides
of sections of the crust upon one another and crushed
and pushed them upward in the confusion of a crum-
pled, peaked, and valleyed mountain range. Such were
the first mountains of the earth, and they formed the
nucleus of the North American continent along the line
which separates the United States from Canada. It is
known as the Laurentian range, and is made up of the
first metamorphosed sedimentary rocks that were formed.
It extended from the Atlantic Ocean on the east along
the trend of the St. Lawrence River and the lakes west-
ward beyond the Mississippi River nearly to the subse-

FLINT VILLAGE

FLINT CASTLE

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 73

quently erected Rocky Mountains, a distance of some
two thousand miles in length and three hundred miles
in width. This continent may have been outlined be-
neath the universal ocean long before its upheaval, but
this was its first appearance above the water, and it was
before any one of the other continents made its appear-
ance above the sea. As it first appeared, America was
a mass of metamorphic rocks contorted and crumpled
and twisted and jumbled into a shape which had nothing
of the appearance of suitableness for plant or animal
life. It would require much time after this bleak and
barren assemblage of rocks got above the water for them
to expand into a continent and assume a fit form for
the habitation of man. It had to go through the long
years of the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Triassic,
Jurassic, Cretaceous, and possibly into the Tertiary
period before it could be ready for human life. It,
however, got the start of other continents, and there
is no good reason for supposing that it did not con-
tinue in the lead until it became the habitation of the
original man. There is reason, therefore, for believing
that the existence of the earth from its nebulous stage
to the beginning of the Azoic age was as long as from
its beginning in the Azoic to the Psychozoic age. And
if this be so, another fearful period of from one

74 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

hundred to four hundred millions of years would have
to be added to the entire duration of the earth. Such
figures, however, are about as reliable as counting the
sands of the seashore without seeing them.

It has recently, however, been contended by some of
the most eminent of geologists that North America was
the first of the continents. In the Canadian geological
surveys the earliest sedimentary rocks were found in the
Laurentian Mountains, and as no older rocks have been
found anywhere, America was pronounced the first-
born of the continents. Louis Agassiz, in speaking of
America as the oldest of the continents, grew eloquent
and expressed himself in his "Geological Sketches,"
volume i, page i, and paragraph i, in the following
language :

" First born among the continents, though so much
later in culture and civilization than some of more re-
cent birth, America, so far as her physical history is con-
cerned, has been falsely denominated the New World.
Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers
the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all
the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only
by islands rising here and there above the sea, America
already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova
Scotia to the far west."

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 75

XII. AMERICA THE FIRST INHABITED OF THE
CONTINENTS

It was the belief of the wise Thomas Jefferson that
America was the first seat of the human race, and that
the eastern hemisphere was peopled from the western.
A letter written by him to President Stiles of Yale Col-
lege, in 1786, while he represented the United States at
the Court of France, was published in the "American
Museum" for November, 1787, page 492. From this let-
ter the following extract is taken, clearly stating Mr.
Jefferson's belief that the first inhabitants of Asia, who
so much resembled the American aborigines, went from
America to Asia instead of coming from Asia to America:

" I return you my thanks for the communications
relative to the weftern country. When we reflect how
long we have inhabited thofe parts of America, which lie
between the Alleghany and the ocean — that no monument
has ever been found in them, which indicated the ufe of
iron among its aboriginal inhabitants — that they were as
far advanced in arts, at leaft as the inhabitants on the
other fide of the Alleghany a good degree of infidelity
may be excufed as to the new difcoveries which fuppofe
regular fortifications of brick work to have been in ufe
among the Indians on the waters of the Ohio. Intrench-

7 6 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

ments of earth they might indeed make, but brick is
more difficult. The art of making it may have preceded
the ufe of iron; but it would fuppofe a greater degree
of induftry than men in the hunter ftate ufually poffefs.
I should like to know whether General Parfons himfelf
faw actual bricks among the remains of fortifications. I
fuppofe the fettlement of our continent is of the moft
remote antiquity; the similitude between its inhabitants
and thofe of the eastern parts of Afia, render it probable
that ours are defcended from them, or they from ours.
The latter is my opinion, founded on this fingle fact.
Among the red inhabitants of Afia there are but few lan-
guages radically different; but among our Indians, the
number of languages is infinite, which are fo radically
different as to exhibit at prefent no appearance of their
having been derived from a common fource. The time
neceffary for the generation of fo many languages muft
be immenfe."

Mr. Jefferson gave the best reason he could for his
belief that the first inhabitants went from America to
Asia instead of coming from Asia to America. Since his
time, however, scientific research, in its wonderful prog-
ress, has developed other reasons for the truth of this
theory. Scientists have exhumed, in America, the skele-
tons of past geological ages and the remains of dead

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 77

human beings which gave evidence of as early existence
here as any yet found outside of America. Had Mr.
Jefferson lived to this time he might have been foremost
among the scientists whose investigations look to solv-
ing the problem of the oldest continent and the first
human beings on the globe.

The Red Indians were the oldest inhabitants of Amer-
ica known to white men, though there were here, doubt-
less, older beings who antedated them by many centuries
and had many traditions as to their origin, but none
sufficiently divested of myth and absurdity to lead to a
rational conclusion as to the first country inhabited by
them or the beginning of its occupation. They had some
vague traditions of a very long-ago people who were in-
habitants of this country before them, but nothing suf-
ficiently definite for reliable information as to the char-
acter or the time of this people. Some tribes believed
that their ancestors had sprung from the ground in this
country, and that they and their descendants had never
lived in any other land. Others believed that their an-
cestors had come from a distant land, but they could
give no intelligent account as to where that distant land
might be or when they left it and came to this. The
traditions of the wigwam throw no satisfactory light on
the dark problem as to which of the continents was first

7 8 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

inhabited by man. All information on this subject that
is worth knowing has come from another source, and
that source is not from the living of the present or of
the unknown past. As we must look into the rock-built
graveyards of buried fossilized animals to learn their
history, so we must exhume the relics and skeletons of
dead and forgotten human beings to learn where and
how they began life on the earth, and on this con-
tinent.

The implements and bones of primitive man have
been found in the caves and in the river-drift of Europe
mingled with the bones of extinct animals which inhab-
ited the earth during the Quaternary age. In the drift
of the upper terrace of the river Somme, in France, have
been found flint implements which had been chipped
into shape by man, associated with the bones of such
extinct Quaternary animals as the mammoth, the rhinoc-
eros and the cave lion. In a cave at Men tone, near Nice,
the skeleton of a man was found with paleolithic imple-
ments near him and the bones of extinct Quaternary
animals about him. The bones had been preserved by a
covering of stalagmite, and the teeth of the reindeer—
which had probably been used as ornaments — showed the
holes with which they had been pierced. In a cave on
the river Vizere was found a piece of bone shaped by man

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 79

on which there was a rude drawing of the mammoth
whose tusk had furnished the plate on which the picture
was etched. Such findings as these in the undisturbed
dust of the cave or the drift of the river clearly indicate
that man was there in the Quaternary age, and possibly
contending with those extinct animals for the caves as
a habitation. The cases cited are among the oldest evi-
dences of man yet found in the eastern hemisphere and
there is no need of citing others, though many exist not
only in France, but in Belgium, in England, in Norway,
and in other countries. As early, however, as they in-
dicate the presence of man in the eastern hemisphere,
there have been findings of his relics and his bones in
America which show his presence here as early, if not
earlier. Evidences of man in America during the Qua-
ternary age, which some geologists estimate as two hun-
dred thousand years ago, while others make the time
much longer, have been found in the sands and gravels
drifted by glacial currents and in localities with sur-
roundings possibly indicating the Tertiary age.

In the glacial drift on a bluff in the valley of the Del-
aware River, near Trenton, New Jersey, have been found
rudely chipped argillite implements which scientists have
pronounced paleolithic. They were found imbedded in
the sands and gravel, which clearly indicated that they

8o Traditions of the Earliest Americans

had reposed undisturbed ever since they had been de-
posited there by the glacial flood which deposited the
sands and pebbles around them. The hard stone of which
they had been made could not have been worn or chipped
into the shape they bore by any force except that of the
hand of man, and hence it is inferred that man was there
when the current of the melting ice of the early glacial
period bore them there. This would take man back
thousands of years beyond the Quaternary age to his
possible existence in America in the Tertiary age.

In the auriferous gravels of an old river bed in Cala-
veras County, California, was found at the bottom of a
mining shaft, one hundred and fifty feet below the sur-
face, the skull of a human being. Over it had been de-
posited four successive beds of gold-bearing drift and five
streams of lava from volcanoes long since extinct. The
gold-bearing gravels in which it was found belonged to
the Tertiary age, and man is therefore assumed to have
been in California during that age.

On the Bourbois River, in Missouri, the skeleton of
a mastodon was found buried in such a position and with
such surroundings as to indicate that the animal had
been rendered helpless by being mired, and in that con-
dition killed by human beings. Arrow-heads were found
about and around it, and wood ashes indicated that fire

LLYN OGWEN

GWRYCH CASTLE

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 8 1

had helped in its destruction. As no animal but man
is known to have used fire, it was assumed that the
monster had been killed by a fire when the paleolithic
weapons had failed.

Many other instances of the relics of man found in
the glacial drift might be cited, but the above three are
enough to show that he was in America as early as he
was in the eastern hemisphere and perhaps earlier, and
that America did not need immigrants from the east or
from any other terrestrial source to begin her population.
America possibly had citizens to spare while the eastern
hemisphere was void of inhabitants.

Besides the three cases before cited, which carried
the inhabitants of America back beyond the Quaternary
and into the Tertiary age, there are examples of man's
very early appearance upon the American continent, in
which the time is sometimes given in years.

In the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky a mummy was
to be seen, early in the last century, about the age of
which no reliable conjecture was formed, from the fact
that it was said to have been removed from an adjacent
cave without noting with sufficient particularity the orig-
inal position it occupied. As it appeared in the Mam-
moth Cave, it was sitting in an excavation about four
feet square and three feet deep. The skeleton — that of

82 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

a female — was perfectly preserved, with the flesh and
skin dried upon it. It was clad first in the skin of a deer
and over this was a mantle made of the inner bark of
the linden tree. The hair was cut short and was of a
dark red color. The woman was above the average size
and was neither black nor red, but of a light complexion.
By her side was a large reticule or sack, made of the in-
ner bark of the linden tree. In this ample portmanteau
were the following articles: one cap of woven or knit
bark; seven head-dresses made of the quills of birds, so
put together that when placed upon the head the quilled
ends would bind the head while the feathered ends would
expand like an umbrella and make a showy head-dress;
hundreds of seeds of a dark color strung together like
beads; a number of the red hoofs of the fawn, strung
together into a necklace ; the claw of an eagle, with a string
through it so it could be worn as a pendant; the jaw of
a bear, seemingly designed to be worn also as a pendant;
the skins of two rattlesnakes, with fourteen rattles still
upon one of them; a quantity of coloring matter done up
in leaves; a small bunch of threads or strings made of
the sinews of the deer; a number of needles made of bone,
and two whistles of cane. How long she was an occu-
pant of the cave we have no means of determining or
even of rationally estimating, but if the cave was two

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 83

million years old, as stated by Professor Shaler, she might
be allowed a few thousand of these years for her enjoy-
ment of the darkness and solitude of her subterranean
abode.

The skeleton of a man found in a Florida reef was
pronounced by Agassiz to be ten thousand years old.

While excavating for the gas-works in New Orleans
a human skeleton was found in the delta of the Missis-
sippi below four successive forests and pronounced by
Doctor Fowler to have been there fifteen thousand years.

That mysterious people who antedated the Red Indian
and covered the Mississippi Valley with mounds, circum-
vallations, temples, and fortifications, and scattered every-
where stone axes, flint arrow-heads, pottery, pipes, and
ornaments of copper and clay, may have been the autoch-
thons of America. Some of their mounds — and especially
those immense piles at Cahokia and Grave Creek — remind
us of the mass heaped over the body of Alyattes near
Sardis, but unlike that monarch's mound, believed to
have existed twenty-five hundred years, they furnish no
key to the time at which they were reared. Trees have
been found growing upon some of them whose anmuations
showed them to be eight hundred years old, but this
determined nothing as to the real age of the mounds. The
trees that measured eight hundred years may have been

84 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

preceded by others and those again by others of equal
or greater age, and so on until thousands of years were
exhausted in the indeterminate calculation. Some of these
trees may have antedated the giant redwoods of Cali-
fornia or the fossil forests of Yellowstone Park, but we
have nothing to guide us in arriving at a just conclusion
as to their age.

In the midst of these perplexities, we can have no
reason to doubt that the Power which is said to have
created man in Asia might have created him elsewhere,
and placed him in habitable quarters in America before
any part of the eastern hemisphere was ready for his
occupancy. The first formed rocks which have yet been
seen upon the globe, and the earliest forms of life yet
discovered, and the oldest human relics which have yet
been found, were in America. If, therefore, man first
lived and died and laid down his bones in the western
world before he died and laid them down in the eastern
hemisphere, why should we look for his origin in the East
instead of the West? Why not claim him where we first
find his remains, instead of troubling ourselves about the
time of his coming and the place whence he came? The
Orientals have not been able in thousands of years to
fix the latitude and longitude of the Garden of Eden,
where the human race is claimed to have first begun

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 85

existence, and as the question is still open the Occi-
dentals may reasonably claim America as the first land
above the ocean and the first inhabited by man, until
the proof is made clear of an earlier inhabited continent.
When the two sons of a pioneer widow of Kentucky
were slain by the Indians and their dead bodies brought
home for interment, she was asked if she had any choice as
to the location of the graves. She said that she wanted
space left next to her husband for her own grave, and
her eldest son laid next to where she was to lie; that he
was her firstborn, and was entitled to burial next to her
who had given him life. And so Americans should feel
toward their country. If America was the first-born and
first-inhabited of the continents, she is entitled to the
place of honor in the construction .and the peopling of
the globe. Other continents like the American may have
had contemporaneous foundations laid down in the an-
cient seas that enveloped the infant world. America,
however, was the first built up, and the first to show
dry land above the universal ocean. A length of time
that defies all computation was necessary for each of the
continents to rise from its submerged position and pass
through the Azoic, the Silurian, the Devonian, the Car-
boniferous and the Reptilian ages to the age of Man, the
most exalted of all animals; but when man was crea-

86 Traditions of the Earliest Americans

ted and to be placed upon the earth, the continent that
first rose above the water and showed the first dry land
was presumably the first ready for his occupancy. He
was doubtless a frightful barbarian, as he first appeared
naked in summer and skin-wrapped in winter, living in
caverns and feeding upon the spontaneous fruits of the
earth and on such of the wild animals as he could subdue.
He had no member like the paw of the cave bear to seize
his food and fight his battles, but he had a hand which
could fashion the adamantine rocks and make them
more effective than the great claws and huge teeth and
mighty strength of other animals. He soon rose above
the formidable beasts around him and made them subject
to his will, because he had a mind which reasoned and
added each new item of knowledge to the store already
gathered, while the other animals never advanced beyond
that with which they started.

There is deeply implanted in our nature a love of the
distant past, and the nearer it approaches the confines of
the dark unknown the more we are enamored of it. We
like old things, and the older they are the better we like
them. Americans should be proud to claim theirs as the
first of the continents to rise above the waves of the uni-
versal ocean and the first to furnish an abiding-place for
the human race. This may be likened by some to those

Traditions of the Earliest Americans 87

genealogical enthusiasts who would trace their descent
from Adam, but such extravagance can hardly eradicate
the sentiment. They are proud to look back to the hum-
ble beginning of barbarian man upon this continent, and
to follow his progress through incalculable ages to the
splendors of the present and the possibilities of the future.
America, long deprived of the honor of her proper place
among the continents by being called the New World,
has at last been pronounced by geologists the first to ex-
ist, and the analogical inference is reasonable that she
was the first to be inhabited. Americans expect of scien-
tists that they will continue to study the rock-leaved vol-
umes of the world and to search among the undestroyed
remains of primeval man until it is clearly determined
that as America is the oldest of the continents, she was
also the first to be inhabited by man.

APPENDIX

EXTINCTION OF THE MANDANS

[Catlin's North American Indians, Volume 2, Panes 777-781]

From the accounts brought to New York in the fall
of 1838, by Messrs. M'Kensie, Mitchell, and others, from
the upper Missouri, and with whom I conversed on the
subject, it seems that in the summer of that year the
small-pox was accidentally introduced amongst the Man-
dans, by the Fur Traders; and that in the course of two
months they all perished, except some thirty or forty,
who were taken as slaves by the Riccarees; an enemy
living two hundred miles below them, and who moved up
and took possession of their village soon after their ca-
lamity, taking up their residence in it, it being a better
village than their own; and from the lips of one of the
Traders who had more recently arrived from there, I had
the following account of the remaining few, in whose de-
struction was the final termination of this interesting and
once numerous tribe.

The Riccarees, he said, had taken possession of the vil-
lage after the disease had subsided, and after living some
months in it, were attacked by a party of their enemies,
the Sioux, and whilst fighting desperately in resistance, in
which the Mandan prisoners had taken an active part, the
latter had concerted a plan for their own destruction,
which was effected by their simultaneously running through
the piquets on to the prairie, calling out to the Sioux (both
men and women) to kill them, " that they were Riccaree

92 Appendix

dogs, that their friends were all dead, and that they did
not wish to live, ' ' that they here wielded their weapons as
desperately as they could, to excite the fury of their enemy,
and that they were thus cut to pieces and destroyed.

The accounts given by two or three white men, who
were amongst the Mandans during the ravages of this
frightful disease, are most appalling and actually too heart-
rending and disgusting to be recorded. The disease was
introduced into the country by the Fur Company's steam-
er from St. Louis; which had two or three of their crew
sick with the disease when it approached the upper Mis-
souri, and imprudently stopped to trade at the Mandan
village, which was on the banks of the river, where the
chiefs and others were allowed to come on board, by which
means the disease got ashore.

I am constrained to believe that the gentlemen in
charge of the steamer did not believe it to be the small-
pox; for if they had known it to be such, I cannot
conceive of such imprudence as regarded their own
interests in the country, as well as the fate of these
poor people, by allowing their boat to advance into
the country under such circumstances.

It seems that the Mandans were surrounded by sev-
eral war-parties of their most powerful enemies, the Sioux,
at that unlucky time, and they could not therefore dis-
perse upon the plains, by which many of them could have
been saved; and they were necessarily inclosed within the
piquets of their villages, where the disease in a few days
became so very malignant that death ensued in a few
hours after its attacks; and so slight were their hopes
when they were attacked, that nearly half of them de-
stroyed themselves with their knives, with their guns,

Appendix 93

and by dashing their brains out by leaping headforemost
from a thirty -foot ledge of rocks in front of their village.
The first symptom of the disease was a rapid swelling of
the body, and so very virulent had it become, that very
many died in two or three hours after their attack, and
that in many cases without the appearance of the disease
upon the skin. Utter dismay seemed to possess all classes
and all ages, and they gave themselves up in despair, as
entirely lost. There was but one continual crying and
howling and praying to the Great Spirit, for his protec-
tion during the nights and days, and there being but few
living, and those in too appalling despair, nobody thought
of burying the dead, whose bodies, whole families together,
were left in horrid and loathsome piles in their own
wigwams, with a few buffalo robes, etc., thrown over them,
there to decay and to be devoured by their own dogs. That
such a proportion of their community as that above men-
tioned, should have perished in so short a time, seems yet
to the reader, an unaccountable thing; but in addition to
the causes just mentioned, it must be borne in mind that
this frightful disease is everywhere far more fatal amongst
the native than in civilized population, which may be
owing to some extraordinary constitutional susceptibility ;
or, I think more probably, to the exposed lives they lead,
leading more directly to fatal consequences. In this, as in
most of their diseases, they ignorantly and imprudently
plunge into the coldest water, whilst in the highest state
of fever, and often die before they have power to get out.
Some have attributed the unexampled fatality of this
disease amongst the Indians to the fact of their living en-
tirely on animal food; but so important a subject for in-
vestigation I must leave for sounder judgments than mine

94 Appendix

to decide. They are a people whose constitutions and
habits of life enable them most certainly to meet most of
its ills with less dread, and with decidedly greater success,
than they are met in civilized communities; and I would
not dare to decide that their simple meat diet was the cause
of their fatal exposure to one frightful disease, when I am
decidedly of opinion that it has been the cause of their
exemption and protection from another, almost equally
destructive, and, like the former, of civilized introduction.

During the season of the ravages of the Asiatic chol-
era, which swept over the greater part of the western
country, and the Indian frontier, I was a traveller
through those regions, and was able to witness its effects;
and I learned from what I saw, as well as from what I
have heard in other parts since that time, that it
travelled to and over the frontiers, carrying dismay and
death amongst the tribes on the borders in many cases,
so far as they had adopted the civilized modes of life,
with its dissipations, using vegetable food and salt; but
wherever it came to the tribes living exclusively on
meat, and that without the use of salt, its progress
was suddenly stopped. I mention this as a subject
which I looked upon as important to science, and there-
fore one on which I made many careful inquiries; and so
far as I have learned along that part of the frontier over
which I have since passed, I have to my satisfaction ascer-
tained that such became the utmost limits of this fatal
disease in its travels to the west, unless where it might
have followed some of the routes of the Fur Traders, who,
of course, have introduced the modes of civilized life.

From the trader who was present at the destruction
of the Mandans I had many most wonderful incidents of

Appendix 95

this dreadful scene, but I dread to recite them. Amongst
them, however, there is one that I must briefly describe,
relative to the death of that noble gentleman of whom
I have already said so much, and to whom I became so
much attached, Mah-to-toh-pa, or "The Four Bears."
This fine fellow sat in his wigwam and watched every
one of his family die about him, his wives and little chil-
dren, after he had recovered from the disease himself;
when he walked out, around the village, and wept over
the final destruction of his tribe, his braves and warriors,
whose sinewy arms alone could he depend on for a con-
tinuance of their existence, all laid low; when he came
back to his lodge, where he covered his whole family in
a pile, with a number of robes, and wrapping another
around himself, went out upon a hill at a little distance
where he laid several days, despite all the solicitations of
the Traders, resolved to starve himself to death. He re-
mained there till the sixth day when he had just strength
enough to creep back to the village, when he entered the
horrid gloom of his own wigwam, and laying his body
alongside of the group of his family, drew his robe over
him and died on the ninth day of his fatal abstinence.

So have perished the friendly and hospitable Mandans,
from the best accounts I could get; and although it may
be possible that some few individuals may yet be remain-
ing, I think it is not probable; and one thing is certain,
even if such be the case, that, as a nation, the Mandans
are extinct, having no longer an existence.

There is yet a melancholy part of the tale to be told,
relating to the ravages of this frightful disease in that
country on the same occasion, as it spread to other con-
tiguous tribes, to the Minatarees, the Knisteneaux, the

96 Appendix

Blackfeet, the Cheyennes, the Crows; amongst whom twen-
ty-five thousand perished in the course of four or five
months, which most appalling facts I got from Major Pil-
cher, now Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis,
from Mr. M'Kenzie and others.

It may be naturally asked here, by the reader, wheth-
er the Government of the United States have taken any
measures to prevent the ravages of this fatal disease
amongst these exposed tribes; to which I answer, that
repeated efforts have been made, and so far generally,
as the tribes have ever had the disease (or at all events,
within the recollections of those who are now living in
the tribes) the Government agents have succeeded in in-
troducing vaccination as a protection; but amongst those
tribes in their wild state, and where they have not suffered
with the disease, very little success has been met with
in the attempt to protect them on account of their su-
perstitions, which generally resisted all attempts to intro-
duce vaccination. Whilst I was on the Upper Missouri,
several surgeons were sent into the country with the In-
dian agents, where I several times saw the attempts made
without success. They have perfect confidence in the skill
of their own physicians, until the disease had made one
slaughter in their tribe, and then having seen white men
amongst them protected by it, they are disposed to receive
it, before which they cannot believe that so minute a
puncture in the arm is going to protect them from so
fatal a disease; and as they see white men so earnestly
urging it, they decide that it must be some new mode or
trick of pale faces, by which they are to gain some new
advantage over them, and they stubbornly and success-
fully resist it.

ABERMAW, OR BAKMOUTH VILLAGE

RHUDDLAN CASTLE

Appendix 97

[Catlin's North American Indians, Volume 2, Paices 781-786]

THE WELSH COLONY,

Which I barely spoke of in page 319, which sailed under
the direction of Prince Madoc, or Madawe, from North
Wales, in the latter part of the Twelfth century in ten
ships, according to numerous and accredited authors, and
never returned to their own country, have been supposed
to have landed somewhere on the coast of North or South
America; and from the best authorities (which I will sup-
pose everybody had read rather than quote them at this
time) I believe it has been pretty clearly proved that
they landed either on the coast of Florida or about the
mouth of the Mississippi, and according to the history and
poetry of their country, settled somewhere in the interior
of North America, where they are yet remaining, inter-
mixed with some of the savage tribes.

In my letter just referred to, I barely suggested, that
the Mandans whom I found with so many peculiarities
in looks and customs, which I have already described,
might possibly be the remains of this lost colony amal-
gamated with a tribe, or part of a tribe of natives which
would account for the unusual appearances of this tribe
of Indians and also for the changed character and cus-
toms of the Welsh colonists, provided these be the re-
mains of them.

Since those notes were written as will have been seen
by my subsequent letters, I have descended the Missouri
river from the Mandan village, to St. Louis, a distance
of eighteen hundred miles, and have taken pains to

98 Appendix

examine its shores; and from the repeated remains of the
ancient location of the Mandans, which I met with on
the banks of that river, I am fully convinced that I have
traced them down nearly to the mouth of the Ohio River,
and from exactly similar appearances, which I recollect
to have seen several years since in several places in the
interior of the state of Ohio, I am fully convinced that
they have formerly occupied that part of the country,
and have, from some cause or other, been put in motion,
and continued to make their repeated moves until they
arrived at the place of their residence at the time of their
extinction, on the Upper Missouri.

These ancient fortifications, which are very numer-
ous in that vicinity, some of which inclose a great many
acres, and being built on the banks of the rivers, with
walls in some places twenty or thirty feet in height, with
covered ways to the water, evince a knowledge of the
science of fortifications, apparently not a century behind
that of the present day, were evidently never built by
any nation of savages in America, and present to us in-
contestable proof of the former existence of a people very
far advanced in the arts of civilization, who have, from
some cause or other, disappeared, and left these imperish-
able proofs of their former existence.

Now, I am inclined to believe that the ten ships of
Madoc, or a part of them at least, entered the Mississippi
River at the Balize, and made their way up the Missis-
sippi, or that they landed somewhere on the Florida coast,
and that their brave and persevering colonists made their
way through the interior to a position on the Ohio River,
where they cultivated their fields, and established in one
of the finest countries on earth, a flourishing colony; but

Appendix 99

were at length set upon by the savages, whom, perhaps,
they provoked to warfare, being trespassers on their
hunting-grounds, and by whom, in overpowering hordes,
they were besieged, until it was necessary to erect there
fortifications for their defense, into which they were at
last driven by a confederacy of tribes, and there held
till their ammunition and provisions gave out, and
they in the end had all perished except perhaps that
portion of them who might have formed alliance by
marriage with the Indians, and their off-spring, who
would have been half-breeds, and of course attached to
the Indians ' side ; whose lives have been spared in the
general massacre; and at length, being despised, as all
half-breeds of enemies are, have gathered themselves into
a band, and severing from their parent tribe, have moved
off, and increased in numbers and strength, as they have
advanced up the Missouri river to the place where they
have been known for many years by the name of
Mandans, a corruption or abbreviation, perhaps, of
" Madawgwys, " the name applied by the Welsh to the
followers of Madawc.

If this be a startling theory for the world, they will
be the more sure to read the following brief reasons which
I bring in support of my opinion; and if they do not sup-
port me, they will at least be worth knowing, and may,
at the same time, be the means of eliciting further and
more successful inquiry.

As I have said on page 415 and in other places, the
marks of the Mandan villages are known by the excava-
tions of two feet or more in depth and thirty or forty
feet in diameter, of a circular form, made in the ground
for the foundations of their wigwams, which leave a de-

ioo Appendix

cided remain for centuries, and one that is easily detected
the moment that it is met with. After leaving the Man-
dan village, I found the marks of their former residence
about sixty miles below where they were then living, and
from which they removed (from their own account) about
sixty or eighty years since; and from the appearance of
the number of their lodges, I should think, that at that
recent date there must have been three times the num-
ber that were living when I was amongst them. Near
the mouth of the big Shienne river, two hundred miles
below their last location, I found still more ancient re-
mains, and in as many as six or seven other places between
that and the mouth of the Ohio, and each one, as I vis-
ited them, appearing more and more ancient, convincing
me that these people, wherever they might have come
from, have gradually made their moves up the banks of
the Missouri, to the place where I visited them.

For the most part of this distance, they have been
in the heart of the great Sioux country, and being looked
upon by the Sioux as trespassers, have been continually
warred upon by this numerous tribe, who have endeav-
ored to extinguish them, as they have been endeavoring
to do ever since our first acquaintance with them; but
who being always fortified by a strong piquet or stock-
ade, have successfully withstood the assaults of their en-
emies, and preserved the remnant of their tribe. Through
this sort of gauntlet they have run, in passing through
the countries of these warlike and hostile tribes.

It may be objected to this, perhaps, that the Ricca-
rees and the Minatarees build their wigwams in the same
way, but this proves nothing for the Minatarees are Crows,
from the northwest; and by their own showing fled to

Appendix 101

the Mandans for protection, and forming their villages
by the side of them, built their wigwams in the same
manner.

The Riccarees have been a very small tribe, far in-
ferior to the Mandans, and by the traditions of the Man-
dans, as well as from the evidence of the first explorers,
Lewis and Clark, and others, have lived, until quite late-
ly, on terms of intimacy with the Mandans, whose vil-
lages they have successively occupied as the Mandans
have moved and vacated them, as they are now doing,
since disease has swept the whole of the Mandans away.

Whether my derivation of the word Mandan from
Madawgwys be correct or not, I will pass it over to the
world at present merely as presumptive proof, for want
of better, which perhaps, this inquiry may elicit; and at
the same time, I offer the Welsh word Mandon (the wood-
roof, a species of madder used as a red dye) as the name
that might possibly have been applied by the Welsh
neighbors to these people on account of their very ingeni-
ous mode of giving the beautiful red and other dyes to
the porcupine quills with which they garnish their dresses.
In their own language they called themselves See-pohs-
ke-nu-mah-kee (the people of the pheasants) which was
probably the name of the primitive stock, before they
were mixed with any other people; and to have got such
a name, it is natural to suppose that they must have come
from a country where pheasants existed, which cannot
be found short of reaching the timbered country at the
base of the Rocky mountains, some six or eight hundred
miles west of the Mandans, or the forests of Indiana and
Ohio, some hundreds of miles to the south and east of
where they last lived.

Appendix

The above facts, together with the one which they
repeatedly related to me, and which I have before alluded
to, that they had often been to the hill of the Red Pipe
Stone, and that they once lived near it, carry conclusive
evidence, I think, that they formerly occupied a country
much farther to the south; and that they have repeated-
ly changed their locations, until they reached the spot
of their last residence, where they have met with their
final misfortune. And as evidence in support of my opin-
ion that they came from the banks of the Ohio, and have
brought with them some of the customs of the civilized
people who erected those ancient fortifications, I am able
to say, that the numerous specimens of pottery which
have been taken from the graves and tumuli about those
ancient works, (many of which may be seen now, in the
Cincinnati Museum, and some of which, my own dona-
tions, and which have so much surprised the inquiring
world) were to be seen in great numbers in the use of
the Mandans; and scarcely a day in the summer, when
the visitor to their village would not see the women at
work with their hands and fingers, moulding them from
black clay, into vases, cups, pitchers, and pots, and
baking them in their little kilns in the sides of the hill, or
under the bank of the river.

In addition to this art, which I am sure belongs to
no other tribe on the continent, these people have
also, as a secret with themselves, the extraordinary
art of manufacturing a very beautiful and lasting kind
of blue glass beads, which they wear on their necks
in great quantities, and decidedly value them above
all others that are brought amongst them by the Fur
Traders.

Appendix 103

This secret is not only one that the Traders did not
introduce amongst them, but one that they cannot learn
from them; and at the same time, beyond a doubt, an
art that has been introduced amongst them by some civ-
ilized people, as it is as yet unknown to other Indian
tribes in that vicinity or elsewhere. Of this interesting
fact, Lewis and Clark have given an account thirty-three
years ago, at a time when no Traders or other white peo-
ple had been amongst the Mandans, to have taught them
so curious an art.

The Mandan canoes which are altogether different from
those of all other tribes, are exactly the Welsh caracle,
made of raw hides, the skins of buffaloes, stretched un-
derneath a frame made of willow or other boughs and
shaped nearly round, like a tub; which the woman car-
ries on her head from her wigwam to the water's edge,
and having stepped into it, stands in front, and propels
it by dipping her paddle forward and drawing it to her
instead of paddling by the side.

How far these extraordinary facts may go in the esti-
mation of the reader, with numerous others I have men-
tioned in volume i, whilst speaking of Mandans, of their
various complexions, colors of hair, and blue and grey
eyes, towards establishing my opinion as a sound theory,
I cannot say; but this much I can safely aver, that at
the moment I first saw these people, I was so struck with
the peculiarity of their appearance, that I was under the
instant conviction that they were an amalgam of a na-
tive with some civilized race; and from what I have seen
of them, and of the remains on the Missouri and Ohio
rivers, I feel fully convinced that these people have emi-
grated from the latter stream; and that they have, in

104 Appendix

the manner that I have already stated, with many of
their customs, been preserved from the almost total de-
struction of the bold colonists of Madawe, who, I believe,
settled upon and occupied for a century or so, the rich
and fertile banks of the Ohio.

THE ISLAND OF ATLANTIS

[Windsor's Narrative and Critical History of the United States, Volume 1. Pages 15-21]

The story of Atlantis, by its own interest and the
skill of its author, has made by far the deepest impres-
sion. Plato, having given in the Republic a picture of
the ideal political organization, the state, sketched in the
Timseus the history of creation, and the origin and
development of mankind; in the Critias he apparently
intended to exhibit the action of two types of political
bodies involved in a life and death contest. The latter
dialogue was unfinished, but its purport had been
sketched in the opening of Timasus. Critias there relates
" a strange tale but certainly true as Solon declared,
which had come down in his family from his ancestor
Dropidas, a near relative of Solon. When Solon was in
Egypt he fell into talk with an aged priest of Sais,
who said to him : ' Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all
children, — there is not one old man in Greece. You
have no traditions, and know of but one deluge,
whereas there have been many destructions of mankind,
both by flood, and fire. Egypt alone has escaped
them, and in Egypt alone is ancient history recorded;
you are ignorant of your own past. For long before

BEAUMARIS VILLAGE

ENTRANCE TO BEAUMARIS CASTLE

Appendix 105

Deucalion, nine thousand years ago, there was an
Athens founded, like Sais, by Athena; a city rich in pow-
er and wisdom, famed for mighty deeds, the greatest of
which was this. At that time there lay opposite the col-
umns of Hercules, in the Atlantic, which was then navi-
gable, an island larger than Libya and Asia together,
from which sailors could pass to other islands, and so to
the continent. The sea in front of the straits is indeed
but a small harbor; that which lay beyond the island,
however, is worthy of the name, and the land which sur-
rounds that greater sea may be truly called the continent.
In this island of Atlantis had grown up a mighty power,
whose kings were descended from Poseidon, and had ex-
tended their sway over many islands and over a portion
of the great continent; even Libya up to the gates of
Egypt and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia, submitted to their
sway. Ever harder they pressed upon the other nations
of the known world seeking the subjugation of the whole.
Then O Solon, did the strength of your republic become
clear to all men, by reason of her courage and force. Fore-
most in the arts of war, she met the invader at the head
of Greece; abandoned by her allies she triumphed alone
over the western foe; delivering from the yoke all the
nations within the columns. But afterwards came a day
and night of great floods and earthquakes; the earth en-
gulfed all the Athenians who were capable of bearing arms,
and Atlantis disappeared, swallowed by the waves; hence
it is that this sea is no longer navigable from the vast
mud-shoals formed by the vanished island. ' This talk so
impressed Solon that he meditated an epic on the subject,
but on his return, stress of public business prevented his
design. In the Critias the empire and chief city of

io6 Appendix

Atlantis is described with wealth of detail, and the descent
of the royal family from Atlas, son of Poseidon, and a
nymph of the island, is set forth. In the midst of a coun-
cil upon Olympus, where Zeus, in true epic style, was
revealing to the gods his designs concerning the approach-
ing war, the dialogue breaks off."

Such is the talk of Atlantis. Read in Plato, the na-
ture and meaning of the narrative seem clear, but the
commentators, ancient and modern, have made wild work.
The voyage of Odysseus has grown marvelously in extent
since he abandoned the sea; lo has found the pens of
the learned more potent goads than Hera's gadfly; but
the travels of Atlantis have been even more extraordinary.
No region has been so remote, no land so opposed by
location, extent, or history to the words of Plato, but
that some acute investigator has found in it the origin
of the lost island. It has been identified with Africa,
with Spitzbergen, with Palestine. The learned Latreille
convinced himself that Persia best fulfilled the conditions
of the problem; the more than learned Rudbeck ardent-
ly supported the claims of Sweden through three folios.
In such a search America could not be overlooked. Go-
mara, Guillaume de Postel, Wytfliet, are among those
who have believed that this continent was Atlantis; San-
son in 1669, and Vaugondy in 1762, ventured to issue a
map, upon which the division of that island among the
sons of Neptune was applied to America, and the out-
skirts of the lost continent were extended to New Zea-
land. Such work, of course, needs no serious consider-
ation. Plato is our authority, and Plato declares that
Atlantis lay not far west from Spain, and that it disap-
peared some 8,000 years before his day. An inquiry into

Appendix 107

the truth or meaning of the record as it stands is quite
justifiable, and has been several times undertaken, with
divergent results. Some, notably Paul Gaffarel and Igna-
tius Donnelly, are convinced that Plato merely adapted
to his purpose a story which Solon had actually brought
from Egypt and which was in all essentials true. Corrob-
oration of the existence of such an island in the Atlantic
is found, according to these writers, in the physical con-
formation of the Atlantic basin, and in marked resemblance
between the flora, fauna, civilization and language of the
old and new worlds, which demand for their explanation
the prehistoric existence of just such a bridge as Atlantis
would have supplied. The Atlantic islands are the loft-
iest peaks and plateaus of the submerged islands. In
the widely spread deluge myths Mr. Donnelly finds strong
confirmation of the final cataclysm. He places in Atlantis
that primitive culture which M. Bailly sought in the high-
lands of Asia, and President Warren refers to the North
Pole. Space fails for a proper examination of the matter
but these ingenious arguments remain somewhat top-
heavy when all is said. The argument from ethnological
resemblance is of all arguments the weakest in the hands
of advocates. It is of value only when wielded by men
of judicial temperament who can weigh differences against
likenesses, and allow for the narrow range of nature's
moulds. The existence of the ocean plateaus revealed by
the soundings of the "Dolphin" and the "Challenger"
prove nothing as to their having been once raised above
the waves; the most of the Atlantic islands are sharply
cut off from them. Even granting the pre-historic migra-
tions of plants and animals between Europe and America,
as we grant it between America and Asia, it does not

io8 Appendix

follow that it took place across mid-ocean, and it would
still be a long step from the botanic "bridge" and ele-
vated "ridge" to the island empire of Plato. In short,
the conservative view advocated by Longinus, that the
story was designed by Plato as a literary ornament and
a philosophic illustration, is no less probable to-day than
when it was suggested in the schools of Alexandria. At-
lantis is a literary myth, belonging with Utopia, the New
Atlantis, and the Orbis alter et idem of Bishop Hall.

THE TRADITION OF PRINCE MADOC OF WALES IN AMERICA

ABOUT 1170

[Bryant and Gay's History of the United States, Volume 1, Pages 66-70]

The tradition that America was discovered about the
year 1170 by a Welsh prince named Madog, or Madoc, is
still more circumstantial and attempts to support it by
later evidence have been made from time to time for the
last two hundred years. Even so cautious and judicial a
critic as Humboldt says in allusion to it: "I do not share
the scorn with which national traditions are too often
treated and am of the opinion that with more research
the discovery of facts, entirely unknown, would throw
much light on many historical problems."

Certainly we are not to forget the distinction between a
tradition and an invention; it is impossible to establish
the one, and, as a lie can never be made the truth, it is
not worth repeating; but the other is an honest relation,
accepted as such by those who first repeated it, and which
may yet be sustained by evidence. This tradition rela-

Appendix 109

ting to Madoc had, no doubt, some actual basis of truth,
however much it may have been misapprehended; the
evidence adduced from time to time in support of it has
been believed by many, and is curious and entertaining;
the tradition itself in its original baldness has found a place
in historical narrative for three hundred years; for each
and all of these reasons it demands brief consideration.
The story was first related in Caradoc's "History of
Wales" published by Mr. David Powell, in 1584. Cara-
doc's history, however, came down only to 1157, and
Humphrey Llwyd (Llyod) who translated it, added the
later story of Madoc. Llyod received it from Guttun
Owen, a bard who about the year 1480, copied the regis-
ters of current events which, as late as the year 1270,
were kept in the abbeys of Conway, North Wales, and
Strat Flur, South Wales, and compared together every
three years by the bards belonging to the two houses.
Another bard, Cynfrig ab Gronow, referred to the tradi-
tion of western discovery by Madoc about the same time
with Owen; and another allusion to it is claimed in the
following lines, literally translated, written three years
earlier by Sir Meredyth ab Rhy:

"On a Happy Hour, I, on the water
Of manners mild, the Huntsman will be,
Madog bold of pleasing Countenance,
Of the true Lineage of Owen Gwyned.
I coveted not Land, my ambition was,
Not great wealth, but the seas."

This may certainly be accepted as conclusive evidence,
at least, that the mild-mannered and good-looking prince
was fond of the sea; but it is difficult to find anything
else in it that can be supposed to refer to the discovery

no Appendix

of America. The only real authorities may properly be
considered as reduced to two— the bards Guttun Owen
and Cynfrig ab Gronow.

The story is briefly this: When Owen Gwynnedd,
Prince of North Wales, was gathered to his fathers, a
strife arose among his sons as to who should reign in his
stead. The eldest legitimate son, Edward, was put aside
as unfit to govern "because of the maime upon his face,"
he was known as "Edward with the broken-nose," and
the government was seized by Howel who was illegiti-
mate, "a base son begotten of an Irish woman." But
the next brother, David, refusing allegiance to this Howel,
and civil war followed. At length the usurper was killed
in battle, and the rightful heritage established, David
holding the reins of government as regent till the son of
Edward, eldest brother, was of age. In this contention,
Madoc took no part, but endeavored to escape from it;
which inasmuch as it was a struggle for the lineal suc-
cession of his family, was not much to his credit. Leav-
ing his brothers (about 1170) to fight it out among them,
he got together a fleet and put to sea in search of adven-
tures. He sailed westward, leaving Ireland to the North,
which it may be remarked, is nearly the only thing he
could do in sailing from Wales, unless he laid his course
northward through the Irish Sea. But at length he came
to an unknown country, where the natives differed from
any people he had ever seen before, and all things were
strange and new. Seeing that this land was pleasant
and fertile, he put on shore and left behind most of those
in his ships and returned to Wales.

Coming among his friends again, after so eventful a
voyage, he told them of the fair and extensive region he

Appendix 1 1 1

had found; there, he assured them, they could live in peace
and plenty, instead of cutting each other's throats for
the possession of a rugged district of rocks and moun-
tains. The advantages he offered were so obvious, or his
eloquence so persuasive that enough determined to go
with him to fill ten ships. There is no account of their
ever having returned to Wales; but on the contrary, it
is said "they followed the manners of the land they came
to, and used the language they found there, "—a state-
ment which, if true, not only proves that they did not
return, but that some intercourse was preserved with
their native land. Their numbers, nevertheless, must have
been sufficient to have formed a considerable colony, and
if, as the narrative asserts, the new country "was void
of inhabitants ' ' (meaning probably that it was only sparse-
ly peopled) it is difficult to believe that they could have
become so entirely assimilated to the savages as to lose
their own customs and their own tongue.

Moreover, if such were the fact, it destroys all other
evidence which was supposed to be subsequently found,
of the existence of such a colony. That supposed evi-
dence is, that a tribe of Indians of light complexion and
speaking the old British language, was found within the
present limits of the United States in the seventeenth
century, and the traces of such a people were still evident
at a quite recent period.

The earliest testimony on this point is a letter to Dr.
Thomas Llyod of Pennsylvania, and by him transmitted
to his brother, Mr. C. H. S. Llyod in Wales. The letter
purported to have been written by the Rev. Morgan Jones
and was dated New York, March 10, 1685-6, more than
half a century before its publication in the Magazine.

I 12

Appendix

The Rev. Mr. Jones declares that in the year 1660, twen-
ty-five years before the date of the letter, he was sent
as chaplain of an expedition from Virginia to Port Royal,
South Carolina, where he remained eight months. Suffer-
ing much from want of food, he and five others at the
end of that time started to return to Virginia by land.
On the way they were taken prisoners by an Indian tribe,
the Tuscaroras, and condemned to die. On hearing this
sentence, Mr. Jones, being much dejected, exclaimed, in
the British (i. e. Welsh) tongue, "Have I escaped so
many dangers, and must I now be knocked on the head
like a dog?" Immediately he was seized around the waist
by a War Captain, belonging to the Doegs, and assured
in the same language that he should not die. He was
immediately taken to the "Emperor of the Tuscaroras"
and with his five companions, ransomed. The Providen-
tial Doeg took them to his own village, where they were
kindly welcomed and hospitably entertained. For four
months, Mr. Jones remained among these Indians, often
conversing with them, and preaching to them three times
a week in the British tongue. The conclusion is that
these Indians were descendants of the Welsh colonists
under Madoc.

RUTHIN CASTLE

HAWARDEN CASTLE

Appendix 1 1 3

THE ISLAND OF ATLANTIS AND THE ABORIGINES
OF AMERICA

[Bancroft's Native Races, Volume 5, Pages 125-132]

Foremost among those who have held and advocated
this opinion stands the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg.
This distinguished Americaniste goes farther than his fel-
lows, however, in that he attempts to prove that all civi-
lization originated in America, or the Occident, instead
of in the Orient, as has always been supposed. This the-
ory he endeavors to substantiate not so much by the
Old World traditions as by those of the New World, us-
ing as his principal authority an anonymous manuscript
written in the Nahua language; which he entitles the Co-
dex Chimalpopoca. This work purports to be on the face
of it a " History of the Kingdoms of Calhuacan and Mex-
ico" and as such it served Brasseur as almost his sole
authority for the Toltec period of his Historie des nations
Civilisees. At that time the learned Abbe regarded the
Atlantis theory, at least so far as it referred to any part
of America, as an absurd conjecture resting upon no au-
thentic basis. In a later work, however, he more than
retracts this assertion; from a skeptic he is suddenly
transformed into a most devout and enthusiastic believer,
and attempts to prove by a most elaborate course of
reasoning that that which he before doubted is indubi-
tably true. The cause of this sudden change was a strange
one. As by constant study, he became more profoundly
learned in the literature of ancient America, the Abbe
discovered that he had entirely misinterpreted the Codex

1 14 Appendix

Chamalpopoca. The annals recorded so plainly upon the
face of the mystic pages were intended only for the un-
derstanding of the vulgar; the stories of the kings, the
history of the kingdoms, were allegorical and not to be
considered literally, deep below the surface lay the true
historic record — hidden from all save the priests and the
wise men of the West — of the mighty cataclysm which
submerged the cradle of all civilization. Excepting a
dozen, perhaps of the kings who preceded Montezuma,
it is not a history of men, but of American nature, that
must be sought for in the Mexican manuscripts and paint-
ings. The Toltecs, so long regarded as an ancient civi-
lized race, destroyed in the Eleventh century by their
enemies, are really telluric forces, agents of subterranean
fire, the veritable smiths of Orcus and of Lemnos, of which
Tollan was the symbol, the true masters of civilization
and art, who by the mighty convulsions which they caused
communicated to men a knowledge of minerals.

I know of no man better qualified than was Brasseur
de Bourbourg to penetrate the obscurity of American
primitive history. His familiarity with the Nahua and
Central American languages, his indefatigable industry
and general erudition, rendered him eminently fit for such
a task, and every word written by such a man on such
a subject is entitled to respectful consideration. Never-
theless, there is reason to believe that the Abbe was often
rapt away from the truth by excess of enthusiasm, and
the reader of his wild and fanciful speculations cannot
but regret that he has not the opportunity or ability to
intelligently criticise by comparison the French savant's
interpretation of the original documents. At all events,
it is certain that he honestly believed in the truth of his

Appendix 1 1 5

own discovery, for when he admitted that, in the light
of his better knowledge, the Toltec history, as recorded
in the Codex Chimalpopoca, was an allegory, that no
such people as the Toltecs ever existed, in fact, — and
thereby rendered valueless his own history of the Toltec
period, he made a sacrifice of labor, unique, I think, in
the annals of literature.

Brasseur 's theory supposes that the continent of Amer-
ica occupied originally the Gulf of Mexico and the Car-
ribean Sea, and extended in the form of a peninsula so
far across the Atlantic that the Canary Islands may have
formed part of it. All this extended portion of the con-
tinent was many ages ago engulfed by a tremendous con-
vulsion of nature, of which traditions and written records
have been preserved by many American peoples. Yuca-
tan, Honduras, and Guatemala were also submerged, but
the continent subsequently rose sufficiently to rescue them
from the ocean. The testimony of many modern men of
science tends to show that there existed at one time a
vast extent of dry land between Europe and America.

4t $ 4* 4 $ 4 $

It only remains now to speak of the theory which as-
cribes an autochthonic origin to the Americans. The time
is not long past when such a supposition would have
been regarded as impious, and even at this day its advo-
cates may expect discouragement if not rebuke from cer-
tain quarters. It is nevertheless an opinion worthy of
the gravest consideration, and one which, if we may
judge by the recent results of scientific investigation, may
eventually prove to be scientifically correct. In the pre-
ceding pages, it will have been remarked that no theory of
a foreign origin has been proven, or even fairly sustained.

n6 Appendix

The particulars in which the Americans are shown to
resemble any given people of the Old World are insignifi-
cant in number and importance when compared with the
particulars in which they do not resemble that people.
As I have remarked elsewhere, it is not impossible
that stray ships of many nations have at various times
and in various places been cast upon the American coast,
or even that adventurous spirits, who were familiar with
the old-time stories of a western land, may have design-
edly sailed westward until they reached America, and
have never returned to tell the tale. The result of such
desultory visits would be exactly what has been noticed,
but erroneously attributed to immigration en masse. The
strangers, were their lives spared, would settle among the
people, and impart their ideas and knowledge to them.
The knowledge would not take any very definite shape
or have any very decided effect, for the reason that the
sailors and adventurers who would be likely to land in
America under such circumstances would not be thorough-
ly versed in the arts or sciences; still they would know
many things that were unknown to their captors, or hosts,
and would doubtless be able to suggest many improve-
ments. This, then would account for many Old World
ideas and customs that have been detected here and there
in America, while at the same time the difficulty which
arises from the fact that the resemblances, though strik-
ing are yet very few, would be satisfactorily avoided.
The foreigners, if adopted by the people they fell among,
would of course marry women of the country and beget
children, but it cannot be expected that the physical pe-
culiarities so transmitted would be perceptible after a gen-
eration or two of re-marrying with the aboriginal stock.

Appendix 1 1 7

At the same time, I think it just as probable that the
analogies referred to are mere coincidences, such as might
be found among any civilized or semi-civilized people of
the earth. It may be argued that the various American
tribes and nations differ so materially from each other as
to render it extremely improbable that they are derived
from one original stock, but, however this may be, the
difference can scarcely be greater than that which appar-
ently exists between many of the Aryan branches.

Hence it is that many not unreasonably assume that
the Americans are autochthons until there is some good
ground for believing them to be of exotic origin. To ex-
press belief, however, in a theory incapable of proof ap-
pears to me idle. Indeed, such belief is not belief; it is
merely acquiescing in or accepting a hypothesis or tradi-
tion until the contrary is proved. No one at the present
day can tell the origin of the Americans; they may have
come from any one, or from all the hypothetical sources
enumerated in the foregoing pages, and here the question
must rest until we have more light upon the subject.

LETTER OF GEORGE CHROCHAN TO GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE

[Border's Welch Indians in America, Pages 11-13]

Winchefter, Auguft 24, 1753.
May It Please Your Honor:

Laft year I underftood, by Col. Lomax, that your
Honour would be glad to have fome information of a na-
tion of people fettled to the weft on a large river that
runs to the Pacific Ocean, commonly called the Welch

n8 Appendix

Indians. As I had an opportunity of gathering fome ac-
count of thofe people I make bold, at the inftance of Col.
Creffup, to fend you the following accounts. As I for-
merly had an opportunity of being acquainted with fev-
eral French Traders, and particularly with one that was
bred up from his infancy amongft the Weftern Indians,
on the weft side of the lake Erie, he informed me, that
the firft intelligence the French had of them was by fome
Indians fettled at the back of New Spain; who, in their
way home, happened to lofe themfelves, and fell down
on this fettlement of people which they took to be French,
by their talking very quick; fo, on their return to Canada,
they informed the Governor, that there was a large fettle-
ment of French on a river that ran to the fun's fetting;
that they were no Indians, although they lived within
themfelves as Indians; for they could not perceive that
they traded with any people or had any trade to fea, for
they had no boats or fhips as they could fee and though
they had guns amongft them, yet they were fo old, and
fo much out of order, that they made no ufe of them,
but hunted with their bows and arrows for the fupport
of their families.

On this account, the Governor of Canada determined
to fend a party to difcover whether they were French
or not, and had 300 men raifed for that purpofe. But
when they were ready to go, the Indians would not go
with them, but told the Governor that if he fent but a
few men, they would go and fhew them the country; on
which the Governor fent three young priefts, who dreffed
themfelves in Indian dreffes and went with thofe Indians
to the place where thefe people were fettled, and found
them to be Welch. They brought fome old Welch Bibles

Appendix 1 1 9

to fatisfy the Governor that they were there, and they
told the Governor that thefe people had a great averfion
to the French; for they found by them, that they had
been at firft fettled at the mouth of the river Miffiffippi,
but had been almoft cut off by the French there. So
that a fmall remnant of them efcaped back to where they
were then fettled, but had fince become a numerous peo-
ple. The Governor of Canada, on this account, deter-
mined to raife an army of French Indians to go and cut
them off ; but as the French have been embarraffed in war
with feveral other nations nearer home, I believe they
have laid that project afide. The man who furnifhed me
with this account told me, that the meffengers, who went
to make this difcovery, were gone fixteen months before
they returned to Canada, fo that thofe people muft live
at a great diftance from thence due weft. This is the
moft particular account I ever could get of thofe people
as yet. I am,

Your Honour's

Moft Obedient Humble Servant
(Signed) GEORGE CHROCHAN.

N. B. Governor Dinwiddie agreed with three or
four of the back traders to go in quest of the Welch
Indians, and promifed to give them 500 for that purpofe;
but he was recalled before they could fet out on that
expedition.

1 20 Appendix

VII
SPEECH OF CARACTACUS BEFORE THE EMPEROR CLAUDIUS

[Annals of Tacitus, Book 12, Chapter 36-37]

Caractacus himself sought the protection of C. artisman-
dua queen of the Brigantes, but as is generally the case,
adversity can find no sure refuge; he was delivered up
in chains to the conquerors, in the ninth year after the
commencement of the war in Britain. Whence his renown
overpassing the limits of the isles, spread over the neigh-
boring provinces, and became celebrated even in Italy,
where all longed to behold the man who, for so many
years, had defied the Roman arms; not even at Rome
was the name of Caractacus unassociated with fame; and
the emperor while exalting his own glory, added to that
of the vanquished. For the people were summoned to
see him, as a rare spectacle; and the praetorian bands
stood under arms in the field before their camp. Then
first the servants and followers of the British king moved
in procession, and the trappings and collars, and all he
had taken in wars with his neighbors, were borne along;
next came his brothers, his wife and daughter; and last
himself, attracting the gaze of all. All the rest descended
to humiliating supplications under the impulse of fear;
but Caractacus, who seemed not to solicit compassion
either by dejected looks or pitiful expressions, as soon as
he was placed before the imperial tribunal, thus spoke:

" If my moderation in prosperity had been as great as
my lineage was noble and my successes brilliant, I should
have entered this city as a friend, rather than as a cap-
tive; nor would you then have disdained to receive a

WELSH POOL VILLAGE

POWIS CASTLE

Appendix 1 2 1

prince descended from illustrious ancestors, and the ruler
of many nations, into terms of alliance. My present lot,
as it is to me ignominious and degrading, so it is a mat-
ter of glory and triumph to you. I had men and arms,
horses and riches; where is the wonder if I was unwilling
to part with them? If you Romans aim at extending
your dominion over all mankind, it does not follow that
all men should take the yoke upon them. Had I at once
been delivered into your hands a prisoner at discretion,
neither had my lot nor your glory been thus signal. If
you inflict punishment upon me, the affair will sink into
oblivion; but if you preserve my life, I shall form an im-
perishable record of your clemency."

Claudius upon this pardoned him, with his wife and
his brothers. The prisoners released from their chains,
did homage to Agrippa also, who at a short distance oc-
cupied another throne, in full view of the assembly with
the same expressions of praise and gratitude as they had
employed to the emperor. A spectacle this, strange and
unauthorized by the customs of our ancestors, for a wo-
man to preside over the Roman ensigns. She herself,
claimed to be a partner in the empire which her ances-
tors had acquired.

122

Appendix

VIII

DESCRIPTION OF THE WELSH ACCORDING TO THE
HISTORIAN GIRALDUS

[Knight's Popular History of England, Volume 1, Pages 278-9]

Light and active, hardy rather than strong, the nation
universally is trained to arms. Flesh is consumed by the
people more than bread with milk, cheese and butter.
With this pastoral character, having little agriculture, they
are always ready for war; and they have neither com-
merce nor manufactures. They fish with the little wicker
boats which they carry to their rivers. Lightly armed
with small breastplates, helmets and shields, they attack
their mailed foes with lance and arrow. <They have some
cavalry, but the marshy nature of the soil compels the
greater number to fight on foot. Abstemious both in
food and drink, frugal and capable of bearing great pri-
vations, they watch their enemies through the cold and
stormy nights, always bent upon defence or plunder.
Their hospitality is universal; for the houses of all are
common to all. The conversation of the young women,
and the music of the harp, give a charm to their humble
fare; and no jealousy interferes with the freedom with
which a stranger is welcomed by the females of the house-
hold. When the evening meal is finished, a bed of rushes
is placed in the side of the room, and all without dis-
tinction lie down to sleep. The men and women cut
their hair close round to the ears and eyes; and the men
shave all their beard except their whiskers. Of their
white teeth, they are particularly careful. They are of
an acute intellect, and excel in whatever studies they pur-

Appendix 123

sue. They have three musical instruments, the harp, the
pipe, and the crowd; and their performances are executed
with such celerity and delicacy of modulation, that they
produce a perfect consonance from the rapidity of seem-
ingly discordant touches. Their bards, in their rhymed
songs, and their orators, in their set speeches, make use
of alliteration in preference to all other ornament. In
their musical concerts they do not sing in unison, but in
many different parts; and it is unusual to hear a simple
melody well sung. The heads of families think it is their
duty to amuse their guests by their facetiousness. The
highest, as well as the lowest of the people, have a re-
markable boldness and confidence in speaking and answer-
ing; and their natural warmth of temper is distinguished
from the English coldness of disposition. They have
many soothsayers among them. Noble birth, and gener-
ous descent, they esteem above all things. Even the
common people retain genealogy. They revenge with ve-
hemence any injuiies which may tend to the disgrace of
their blood, whether an ancient or a recent affront. They
are universally devout, and they show a greater respect
than other nations to churches and ecclesiastical persons,
and especially revere relics of saints. Giraldus, having de-
scribed at much length the particulars which redound to
the credit of the British nation (for so he calls the Welch)
then proceeds to those things which pass the line of en-
comium. The people, he says, are inconstant, and regard-
less of any covenant. They commit acts of plunder, not
only against foreigners, and hostile nations, but against
their own countrymen. Bold in their warlike onsets,
they cannot bear a repulse, and trust to flight for safety;
but defeated one day, they are ready to resume the

124 Appendix

conflict on the next. Their ancient national custom of di-
viding property amongst all the brothers of a house leads
to perpetual contests for possessions, and frequent fratri-
cides. They constantly intermarry within the forbidden
degrees, uniting themselves to their own people, presum-
ing on their own superiority of blood and family; and
they rarely marry without previous cohabitation. Their
churches have almost as many parties and parsons as
there are principal men in the parish; the sons after the
decease of the father, succeed to the ecclesiastical bene-
fices, not by election, but by assumed hereditary right.
Finally, in setting forth how this people is to be subdued,
and preserved to the English crown, Giraldus says that,
from the pride and obstinacy of their dispositions, they
will not, like other nations, subject themselves to the
dominion of one lord and king. How long a time it was
before that subjection was even imperfectly accomplished,
will be seen as we proceed in our narrative.

THE TRADITION OF THE WELSH IN AMERICA IN THE

TWELFTH CENTURY SOMETHING MORE

THAN MERE CONJECTURE

[The Universal History, Volume 20, Pages 193-4]

That the Welch contributed towards the peopling of
America, is intimated by fome good authors; and ought
to be confidered as a notion fupporting more than bare
conjectures. Powell, in his hiftory of Wales, informs us,
that a war happening in that country for the fucceffion,
upon the death of their prince Owen Guinneth, A. D.

Appendix 125

1170, and a baftard having carried it from his lawful
fons, one of the latter, named Madoc, put to sea for new
difcoveries; and sailing weft from Spain, he difcovered a
new world of wonderful beauty and fertility. But finding
this uninhabited, upon his return, he carried thither a
great number of people from Wales. To this delightful
country he made three voyages, according to Hakluyt.
The places he difcovered feem to be Virginia, New Eng-
land, and the adjacent countries. In confirmation of
this, Peter Martyr fays, that the natives of Virginia and
Guatimala, celebrated the memory of one Madoc, as a
great and ancient hero; and hence it came to pafs, that
modern travelers have found feveral old Britifh words
among the inhabitants of North America. The fame
author mentions the words Matoc-Zunga and Mat-Inga,
as being in ufe among the Guatimallians, in which there
is a plain allufion to Madoc, and that with the d softened
into t, according to the Welch manner of pronunciation.
Nay, Bifhop Nicolfon feems to believe, that the Welch
language makes a confiderable part of feveral of the Amer-
ican tongues. According to a famous Britifh antiquary,
the Spaniards borrowed their double L (LL) from the
people of Mexico, who received it from the Welch, and
the Dutch brought a bird with a white head from the
Streights of Magellan called by the natives Penguin ; which
word, in the old British, fignifies White-head, and there-
fore feems originally to have come from Wales. This
muft be allowed an additional argument, to omit others
that occur, in favor of Madoc 's three American expedi-
tions.

ia6 Appendix

REVEREND JOHN WILLIAMS, LL. D.

John Williams, an eminent dissenting minister and
scholar, was born in Wales in 1726 and died in 1798. He
was the author of several learned works, and among them
"An Inquiry into the Truth of the Tradition concerning
the Difcovery of America by Prince Madoc about the
Year 1170," which was published in London in 1791.
The next year, 1792, he published a second work entitled
"Further Observations" on the same subject. I have
had occasion to refer to Doctor Williams in the text, and
deeming him the best authority in favor of the Welsh
tradition and entitled to further notice, I shall make the
following additional extracts from both of his works:

THE WELSH A MARITIME PEOPLE

[From The Inquiry, etc.. Pages 59-62]

The reafon for which he (Caefar) invaded this ifland
was, as he fays, becaufe the Britons affifted the Gauls by
Land and Sea. Their Naval Power must have been very
confiderable, when Vincula dare Oceano, and Britannos
fubjugare, were convertible Terms. Had not the Britifh
Naval Power been then formidable, this would not have
been faid.

Their maritime force, it is true, was much weakened
by Caefar; yet in no long time it feems to have been con-
fiderably reftored, as appears from the conduct of later
Emperors. Had their navy, as hath been afferted by
fome writers, confifted only of fmall fifhing Boats, now

Appendix 127

in the Principality called Coracles, they could not have
afforded fuch affiftance to the Gauls, as to bring upon
them the Roman power. As to unfkilfulnefs, it doth not
appear from Hiftory, that this, with truth, could be faid
of them.

I know not upon what authority, it is faid by his Lord-
fhip that the Britons were lefs expert Mariners than any
other in Europe, for they feem to have had connections
in the way of Commerce with very diftant nations, before
Julius Csefar; indeed a very confiderable and extenfive
trade with Phoenicians, and others.

For thefe reafons, I am inclined to believe that the
Naval power of the Britons was confiderable before the
coming of the Romans. As to fucceeding Times, when
the Britons were driven into Wales, a Country with an
extenfive Sea Coaft, they had little to fubfift upon, but
a fcanty Agriculture, and rich Fifheries; fo that very great
Numbers of them were compelled by neceffity to purfue
a Seafaring Life.

The ftrongeft objection to the Truth of this event,
which is urged by his Lordfhip and by others, is the great
Improbability that fuch a voyage could be performed
without the affiftance of the Mariner's Compafs, not then
dif covered. This difcovery was made about the year
1300; others fay, by Behaim above mentioned, about 100
Years later. In anfwer to this Objection, it may be
obferved that previoufly to Madog's Voyage, we read
of feveral others, which appear to me fully as im-
probable. It is generally underftood that the Phoenicians,
Grecians, &c., were acquainted with, and failed to
Britain, and other countries, for Tin and Lead, and
unto the Baltic Sea for Amber; voyages which feem as

128 Appendix

difficult as that of Madog's and a longer Navigation.
It was hardly poffible for the Britons not to learn how
to navigate Ships, when they faw how it was done by
others.

The return of our Prince to North Wales, and back
again to his colony, is the moft difficult to be accounted
for, in the whole story. However, I apprehend, that this
is not altogether impoffible.

Let it be obferved that the fpace of Time in which
thefe voyages of Madog's were performed is no where
mentioned. They might have taken up twenty years or
more. Madog, on his return to Wales, might have failed
Northward by the American Coaft, till he came to a fit-
uation where the light of the sun at noon was the fame,
at the Seafon, as it was in his Native country, and then
failing Eaftward (the Polar Star, long before obferved
would prevent his failing on a wrong point) he might
fafely return to Britain. The experiences he derived from
his firft Voyage would enable him to join his Companions
whom he had left behind.

That there are ftrong currents in the Atlantic Ocean
is well known. On his return to North Wales, Madog
might fall into that current, which it is faid, runs from
the Weft Indian Iflands Northward to Cape Sable in
Nova Scotia, where interrupted by the land, it runs
Eaftward towards Britain.

There is a Tradition that a Captain of a Ship dined
at Bofton, in New England, on a Sunday, and on the
following Sunday dined at his own Houfe in Penzance,
Cornwall. This is by no means impoffible, for with
favourable Winds and ftrong currents, a ship may run
above 14 miles in an Hour.

CAERNARVON VILLAGE

CAERNARVON CASTLE

Appendix 129

The late celebrated Dr. Benjamin Franklin of Phila-
delphia, in a letter to a friend well known in the literary
world, which I heard read, faid that he was fully con-
vinced that there was fuch a current from Weft to Eaft,
and that he did not think the Captain's remarkable
expedition impoffible, nor even, altogether, improbable.

CULTURE OF THE EARLY WELSH

[From The Enquiry, etc., Pages 78-80]

From the earlieft accounts we have of the ancient
Britons they feem to have been the beft informed, and
moft enlightened of all the northern Nations in Europe.
The fpeech of Caractacus addreffed to the Emperor Clau-
dius, and preferved by Tacitus, is a proof that good nat-
ural Senfe and Literature, fuch as it was in that age, in
fome meafure, flourifhed in Britain.

We have alfo in Caefar feveral paffages favourable to
Britifh learning; I fee no reafon, therefore, why Britifh
Writers fhould be treated with contempt.

The Scotch writers, efpecially of late years, have
ftrained every nerve to eftablish the reputation of their
ancient Authors. Offian and Fingal are oftentatioufly
held out, as inftances of fuperior merit and excellence;
but the poor Britons are treated with difdain; as having
no merit for imagination, or original Compofition.

Taliefsyn, a Welfh bard, who, as already obferved,
flourifhed about the middle of the 6th century, and who
by way of eminence was called Pen Beirrd y Gorllewin,
"Head of the Weftern bards," fome of whofe works are

1 30 Appendix

come down to us; particularly, an ode, in Welch tranf-
lated into Latin fapphic Verfe, by David Jones, Vicar of
Llanfair, Duffryn Clwyd, Denbighfhire ; in 1580, Owen
Cyfeiliog, and Gwalchmai in the i2th century; and many
others, at different periods of diftinguifhed merit, have
appeared in Wales, some of whom have plainly alluded
to Madogs' Adventures. For the Names, Times, and the
Works of these bards, I refer to Mr. Evans' specimens
of the ancient Welch bards, 1764. To Sir Thomas Her-
bert's Travels and to Mr. Warrington's Hiftory of Wales,
p. 307, Edit. 1788.

XII

INFORMATION IMPARTED BY GENERAL BOWLES,
A CHEROKEE CHIEF

From Further Observations, etc., Pages 3-5

My worthy and ingenious friends, Mr. William Owen
and Mr. Edward Williams, for feveral months paft, have
fent various particulars to the editor of the Gentleman's
Magazine, relative to the Welch Indians.

Mr. Owen had two interviews with General Bowles
and a Mr. Price the Cherokee chiefs, who lately left Lon-
don; an account of which he obligingly communicated to
me.

When Mr. Owen told the General the occafion of his
waiting upon him that it was to enquire whether he knew
anything of a tribe of Welch Indians he replied that he
well did, and that they are called, "the Padoucas, or
White Indians." (Mr. Owen, previous to his interview
with Mr. Bowles, thought that the Padoucas were the
Welsh tribe.) They are called "The White Indians" on

Appendix 1 3 1

account of their complexions. When a map was laid be-
fore him, on which that name was infcribed, he faid,
thefe are the people, and shewed the limits of their coun-
try. He faid that in general they were called the White
Padoucas, but thofe who live in the northern parts of
their country, are called the "Black Padoucas." On be-
ing afked the reafon, he replied "becaufe they are a mix-
ture of the White Padoucas, and other Indians ; and there-
fore are of a darker complexion. The White Padoucas
are as you are (Mr. Owens is a Welchman) having fome
of them fandy , fome red, and fome black hair. ' ' He alfo
faid that they are very numerous, and one of the moft
warlike people on that Continent. When he was informed
of the time and circumftances of Madog's Navigation, he
faid "They muft have been as early as that period, oth-
erwife they could not have increafed to be fo numerous
a people." The General faid that he had travelled their
fouthern boundaries from one fide to the other, but that
he had never entered into their country. He was of opin-
ion that they firft came to the Floridas, or about the
mouths of the Miffiffippi ; and finding that a low and rather
a bad country, they pufhed forward by degrees till they
came to, and fettled in the country where they now live
in, it being a high and hilly country, but as fertile and
delightful a fpot as any in the world.

When he was afked the reafon, why he thought them
to be Welfh he replied, "A Welchman was with me at
home for fome time, who had been a Prifoner among
the Spaniards, and worked in the Mines of Mexico; and
by fome means, he contrived to efcape, got into the wilds,
and made his way acrofs the Continent, and eventually
paffed through the midft of the Padoucas, and at once

i32 Appendix

found himfelf with a people with whom he could converfe
and he ftaid there fome time." Amongft other particu-
lars he told me, "that they had feveral books, which
were moft religioufly preferved in fkins, and were con-
fidered by them as myfteries. Thefe they believed gave
an account from whence they came. Thefe people told
the Welchman that they had not feen a White man like
themf elves, who was a stranger, for a long time." This
was the fubftance of General Bowies' information.

XIII
WHAT MORGAN JONES KNEW OF THE WELSH INDIANS

[From Further Observations, etc., Pages 10-11]

Mr. Jones alfo fays that about the Year 1750, his
father and family went to Penfylvania, where he met
with feveral Perfons whom he knew in Wales; one in par-
ticular, with whom he had been intimate. This perfon
had formerly lived in Penfylvania, but then lived in North
Carolina. Upon his return to Penfylvania, the following
year, to fettle his affairs they met a fecond fate. Mr.
Jones' friend told him that he was then very fure there
were Welfh Indians; and gave for reafon, that his Houfe,
in North Carolina, was fituated on the great Indian Road
to Charleftown, where he often lodged parties of them.
In one of thefe parties, an Indian hearing the family
fpeaking Welch began to jump and caper as if he had
been out of his fences. Being afked what was the matter
with him, he replied, "I know an Indian Nation who
fpeak that language, and have learnt a little of it my-
felf, by living among them"; and when examined, he was

Appendix 133

found to have fome knowledge of it. When afked where
they lived, he faid, "a great way beyond the Miffiffippi."
Being promifed a handfome reward he faid that he would
endeavor to bring fome of them to that part of the Coun-
try but Mr. Jones foon afterwards returning to England,
he never heard any more of the Indian.

XIV

MR. BINON'S ACCOUNT OF THE WELSH INDIANS

[From Further Observations, etc., Pages 11-13]

In the Gentleman's Magazine for July laft, page 612,
Mr. Edward Williams fays that about twenty years ago
he became acquainted with a Mr. Binon of Coyty in the
county of Galmorgan, who had been abfent from his na-
tive country about thirty years (in a letter I received
from him fince, he fays that on further confideration he
thinks it muft have been feveral years longer) . Mr. Bi-
non faid that he had been an Indian trader from Phila-
delphia, for feveral Years; that about the year 1750 he
and five or fix more penetrated much farther than ufual
to the weftward of the Miffiffippi and found a Nation of
Indians, who fpoke the Welfh tongue. They had Iron
among them, lived in ftone built villages, and were bet-
ter clothed than the other tribes. There were alfo ruin-
ous buildings among them; one appeared like an Old
Welch castle; another like a ruined church, etc. They
f hewed Mr. Binon a book, in Manufcript, which they care-
fully kept, believing it to contain the myfteries of Re-
ligion. They told Mr. Binon that it was not very long
fince a Man had been among them who underftood it.

1 34 Appendix

This Man (whom they efteemed a prophet) told them
that a people would fome time vifit them, and explain
to them the myfteries in their book, which would make
them completely happy. When they were informed, that
Mr. Binon could not read it, they appeared very much
concerned. They conducted him and his companions for
many days thro' vaft Deferts, and plentifully fupplied
them with provifions which the woods afforded, until they
had brought them to a place they well knew; and at part-
ing, they wept bitterly, and urgently entreated Mr. Binon
to fend a perfon to them who could interpret their book.
On his return to Philadelphia, he related the ftory, and
was informed that the inhabitants of the Welfh tract
(in Penfylvania) had fome knowledge of them, and that
fome Welfhmen had been among them."

A Gentleman in company with Meffrs. Binon and Wil-
liams at that time, in a letter to me confirms the above
account. He fays that Mr. Binon declared that thefe
Indians worfhipped their book as God, but could not read
it. They alfo faid that thirty or forty of them fome-
times vifited the Ancient Britons fettled on the Welfh
Track in Pennfylvania. This circumftance, by the way,
will help us to account for the interviews, which it is faid
have taken place between thefe Indians and the Europe-
ans at different times. When Mr. Binon faid that he
came from Wales, they replied, " It was from thence that
our Anceftors came, but we do not know in what part
of the world Wales is."

Appendix 1 35

THE SPEECH OF MONTEZUMA TO HIS PEOPLE

[From Further Observations, etc., Pages 31-35]

In a letter to the Right Hon. William Pitt, figned
Columbus, inferted in the Public Advertifer, September
23rd, 1790, there are feveral very interefting facts and
obfervations on this fubject.

We are there told that Sebastian Cabot, about the
year 1495, two years after the firft voyage of Columbus,
difcovered Florida and Mexico and that he found on the
different parts of the Coaft, the defcendants of the firft
Britifh difcoverers, who fettled at Mexico about the year
1170. In the records of the Mexican Emperors, are fet
down the arrival and fettlement of their great Progen-
itors, whom the unfortunate Montezuma defcribes in 1520,
in a fpeech made to his fubjects, after he had been taken
prifoner by that monfter of cruelty, Cortez:

"Kinfmen, Friends, Countrymen and Subjects: You
know I have been eighteen years your sovereign and your
natural king, as my illuftrious predeceffors and fathers
were before me, and all the defcendants of my race, fince
we came from a far diftant Northern Nation, whofe tongue
and manners we yet have partly prefer ved. I have been
to you a father, Guardian, and a loving Prince, while you
have been to me faithful fubjects, and obedient fervants.

"Let it be held in your remembrance, that you have
a claim to a noble descent, becaufe you have fprung from
a race of Freemen and Heroes, who fcorned to deprive
the native Mexicans of their ancient liberties, but added
to their rational Freedom, principles which do honour to
human nature. Our divines have inftructed you of our

1 36 Appendix

natural defcent from a people the moft renowned upon
earth for liberty and valour, becaufe of all nations they
were, as our firft parents told us, the only unfubdued
people upon the earth, by that warlike nation, whofe tyr-
anny and ambition affumed the conqueft of the world;
but neverthelefs, our great fore-fathers checked their am-
bition and fixed limits to their conquefts, altho' but the
inhabitants of a fmall ifland, and but few in number, com-
pared to the ravagers of the earth, who attempted in vain
to conquer our great, glorious and free forefathers, &c. ' '

The author of the above account told me, that he had
feen Montezuma's fpeech, in a Spanifh manuscript, in
the year 1748, when he arrived at Mexico, and that moft
probably, it is f till- extant.

I would here juft obferve that as the ancient Romans
were the Conquerors alluded to, we may naturally fufpect
that Julius Caefar's attempt on Britain, was rather un-
fuccefsful, or at least not fo brilliant as he cautioufly en-
deavors to reprefent it.

The above fpirited fpeech plainly fhows that the Mex-
icans in 1520 looked upon themf elves as the defcendants
of Freemen and Heroes, the only unfubdued people upon
Earth, who fet limits to the Roman conqueft though
only the inhabitants of a fmall ifland in the north, and in
comparifon, few in number; and who taught them prin-
ciples, which did honour to human nature, probably the
principles of Chriftianity, which though miferably dis-
figured in 1170, yet were greatly fuperior to thofe of an
enlightened favage people.

The above defcription remarkably and exactly anfwers
to the Character, Manners and Principles of the Ancient
Britons.

LLANRWST BRIDGE

LLANRWST CHURCH

Appendix 137

XVI
THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE OF LONDON

This magazine was the first to lay before the world
one of the most important papers concerning the tradition
of the Welsh under Prince Madoc in America in the Twelfth
century. In the year 1740 it published in Volume 10,
page 103, the letter of Reverend Morgan Jones of Vir-
ginia, who had lived with the Welsh Indians in North
Carolina and talked with them and preached to them in
the Welsh language. In after years it published many
important articles on the same subject, and hence the
following have been selected for insertion here.

William Owen's Account of the Welsh Indians
[Gentleman's Magazine, 1791, Volume 1, Page 329]

In the year 1170, Madawg, a younger fon of Owen
Gwynedd, prince of North Wales, obferving a continued
ftrife among his brethren for a fcanty inheritance of bar-
ren rocks, determined to try his fortune in fearch of a
more peaceful country. He accordingly fitted out two
fhips, and failed weftward, and difcovered the fouthern
fhores of North America, as the event has proved. Leav-
ing part of his followers there, he was enabled providen-
tially to return to Europe; and on reprefenting to his
countrymen what had happened, fo many of them were
induced to fhare in his enterprize, that in his fecond emi-
gration, he failed nearly in the fame direction, with ten
fhips, completely filled, but without being fo fortunate
as to fall in with them he had left behind in his

138 Appendix

firft voyage. There are good grounds to affert that Ma-
dawg, in this fecond voyage, fell in with the coaft of the
Carolinas; for the firft difcovery of the defcendants of
that emigration was made by the Rev. Mr. Morgan Jones,
in 1685, who found them, or at leaft a part of them, up
Pontigo river. In confequence of the European colonies
fpreading over that country, or for fome other caufes,
they removed up the country to Kentucky, where evi-
dent traces of them have been lately found; fuch as the
ruins of forts, millftones, earthen ware, etc. It is pre-
fumed that, as their fituation was fecluded, and not liable
to be molefted, they left it only in confequence of dif-
covering a more inviting country; and none could be more
fo than where they finally fettled. The center of the coun-
try of the Madawgwys, and where their villages are moft
numerous, is about 38 degrees north latitude, and 102
degrees weft longitude of London; but they extend (pof-
fibly in detached communities) from about 37 degrees
north latitude and 97 degrees weft longitude. The gen-
eral name of Cymry is not left among them, though they
call themfelves Madawgwys, Madogiaid, Madagiaint, and
Madogian; names of the fame import, meaning the peo-
ple of Madawg. Hence the French travellers in Louif-
iana have called them Padoucas, Montocantes and other
names bearing a fimilitude to what they call themfelves,
and by which they are known to the native Indians.
From the country of the Madawgwys fome of the rivers
run eaftward and others to the weft; by the former they
came into the Miffouri, and fo into the Miffiffippi, bring-
ing with them fkins, pickled buffalo-tongues, and other
articles for traffic, and by the latter they have a communi-
cation with the Pacific ocean, from a great fait lake in

Appendix 139

their country, down the Oregon, or the great river of the
weft, through the ftraits of Juan de Fuca, and other open-
ings. The character of thefe infulated Cambrians, who
are a numerous people, is that they are very warlike; are
more civilized than the Indians; live in large villages in
houfes built of ftone; are commodioufly clad; ufe horfes
in hunting. They have iron, of which they could make
tools, but have no fire-arms and they navigate the lake
in large piragunas. Their government is on the feudal
fyftem, and their princes are confidered as the direct de-
scendants of Madawg.

William Owen's Further Account of the Welsh Indians
[Gentleman's Magazine, 1791, Volume 1, Page 397]

The accounts which were received prior to Mr. Bowles 's
communications had not furnifhed me with the name by
which the Welch Indians were known; but, on comparing
them together, I was fully of opinion that the Padoucas
were thofe people; efpecially as the name was but a flight
deviation in found from Madawgwys, the real appellation
which we may juftly fuppofe they gave themfelves. There-
fore it made a very forcible impreffion on my mind, when
the firft thing Mr. Bowles faid was, what they are called,
the Padoucas, in confirmation of the idea I had formed,
prior to any inquiry being made at all on the fubject.
And as to the moft important point, whether the language
fpoken by thofe people was Welch, the proofs adduced
were equally fatisfactory and clear; there was, faid Mr.
B., a Welchman with me, at home, who efcaped from
the Spaniards in Mexico, by making his way acrofs the
Continent, 'paffing through the country of the Padoucas,

140 Appendix

where to his great furprife, he found himfelf with a peo-
ple f peaking his own language. He remained among
them for fome time, and found they had fome books,
which were wrapped up in fkins, and religiously preferred,
and confidered to be fome kind of myfteries, as there
was a tradition that thofe things contained an account
from whence they had come. That the Padoucas fpeak
the Welch language is further confirmed by Mr. Price,
one of the companions of Mr. Bowles, who was born
amongft the Creeks.

He, after obferving his being acquainted with Welch
himfelf, declared that his father, who was a Welchman,
had opportunities of frequent interviews, and converted
with the Padoucas in his native language, as he had lived
the greateft part of his life, and died in the Creek Country.

Mr. Bowles, in confequence of being told at what peri-
od Madawg's emigration took place, obferved, that his
followers could not have increafed to fo numerous a peo-
ple confidering how few they were when they emigrated.
But the accounts of Mr. Price and of Rev. Mr. Rankin,
of Kentucky, agree in faying, that the Padoucas have
lately leffened their number, through the rage of civil
difcord.

Mr. Rankin alfo reprefents, that there are evident
traces of their having formerly inhabited the country
about Kentucky; particularly wells dug, which ftill remain
unfilled, and ruins of buildings, neither of which were
the works of the Indians. From the laft particulars we
may infer, that the Welch Indians found by Morgan Jones
in North Carolina, about one hundred and thirty years
ago, were the Padoucas, or at leaft a part of them; who,
receding into fuch of the interior parts as were unpoffeffed

Appendix 141

by the natives, as the European Colonifts fpread over
the maritime countries, remained ftationary for a time
on the banks of the Ohio; but, in confequence of exploring
that river to its junction with the Miffimppi, and ftill
preffing onward, they difcovered, and finally fettled in,
the beautiful region where we now find them.

WILLIAM OWEN.

Columbus' Discovery of America Questioned

[Lady Frazer's Papers in Gentleman's Magazine Quoted in Burder's Welch Indians, Page 5]

The chief thing that induced me to look into fome
authors here mentioned, was my reading a fmall book
in octavo lent me by a French gentleman to purfue about
twenty-five years ago; it was tranflated into English and
gave an account of a great nation of Indians within-land
from Cape Florida that actually fpeak Welch.

i. Pleafe to look into James Howell's Letters, vol. ii.,
p. 71, concerning the ancient Brittaines, and you will find
that Madoc ap Owen, the-firft in the year 1170, which
is three hundred and fixteen years before Columbus faw
it. He died at Mexico, and this following epitaph was
found engraven on his tomb in the Welch language.

" Madoc wifmio ydie wedd,
Jawn ycnan Owen Gwynedd,
Ni fennum dvi enriddoedd,
Ni dv mawr ondy mervedd."

[ENGLISHED]

" Madoc ap Owen was I call'd,
Strong, tall, and comely, not enthrall'd
With home-bred pleafures; but for fame,
Through land and fea I fought the fame."

142 Appendix

2. See third volume of the Voyages of the Englifh
Nation, by Richard Hakluyt, Student of Chrift Church,
in Oxford, p. i.

3. See Pagett's Chriftianography, p. 47.

4. See the third and laft volume of the Turkifh Spy,
p. 202.

5. See Purchas's Pilgrimage, book viii, p. 899.

6. See Broughton, who affirms that the faith of Chrift
was preached in America by some of our firft planters
that preached in Britain.

7. See George Abbot, Lord Archbifhop of Canterbury's
Hiftory of the World, p. 255, 56, and 57, who informs
us that King Arthur had fome knowledge of America,
and that a prince of Wales firft found it out.

8. See the Welch Cambria, wrote by David Powell, and
Sir John Price, Knt. tranflated into Englifh by Hum-
phrey Llyod, Gent., there you will fee the reafons that
induced the Prince Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd to travel.

9. See Sir Walter Raleigh's Hiftory of the World, and
the words the natives ufed when they talked together.
They fay thefe and the like words: gwrundo, which is
hearken, or liften, in Welch; a bird with a white head,
they call pengwyn; the white rock, caregwen; a river,
gwndwr; and there is a promontory, not far from Mex-
ico, called Cape Breton, all which are Britifh words; and
many more words of like nature; which does manifeftly
fhew that it was that country that Prince Madoc 's peo-
ple inhabited.

Appendix 143

XVII
UNBELIEVERS IN THE MADOC TRADITION

Nearly all the extracts taken from various authors
and authorities and inserted in the foregoing appendix or
text are in favor of the truth of the tradition of a Welsh
colony established by Prince Madoc in America in the
Twelfth century. Only a fraction of them can be con-
sidered as dissenting, and this dissent is generally given
in such mild terms as to carry no weight. It was not
my purpose in preparing this monograph to present only
one side of the question, or to quote from authorities
only who were in full accord. I proposed to present facts
as they appear in history and tradition and to bring to
their support the authorities which sustain them, without
any wish on my part to give the weight of authority to
either side. With the facts as stated in the text and
presented in the extracts the reader has the means of
forming an opinion of his own as to whether the tradition
be true or false. It might seem fairer, however, when
so many authorities in favor of the tradition are given,
to present some which do not favor it, if any such be
known. I know of but two authors of eminence enough
to speak on the subject, who did not believe in the truth
of the Madoc tradition and put themselves on record to
that effect. These were Lord Littleton, who in his "Life
of King Henry II" with considerable energy denied the
truth of the Madoc tradition, and William Robertson,
who in his "History of America" did likewise. Neither of
these historians had much to say on the subject, but
what was said left no doubt of his unbelief in the truth

144 Appendix

of the tradition. If it were my undertaking to establish
the truth of the Madoc tradition, I might say that neither
Littleton nor Robertson use uncontestible facts or unan-
swerable arguments in what they say ; but as it is my pur-
pose only to present an historic sketch of the subject,
I have no criticism to offer. In the following two extracts,
one from Littleton and the other from Robertson, the
reader will have before him all that these two authors said
on the subject.

Littleton on the Madoc Tradition

This being the laft mention made of the Welfh in my
account of thefe times, I will take notice here of a re-
markable paffage in Dr. Powell's hiftory of Wales, con-
cerning a voyage performed by one of their princes in
the 1 6th year of the reign of King Henry the Second.
The words are thefe:

"Madoc, another of Owen Gwyneth's fons, left the
land in contention betwixt his brethren, and prepared
certain fhips with men and munition, and fought adven-
tures by sea, failing weft, and leaving the Coaft of Ire-
land fo far to the north, that he came to a land unknown
where he faw many ftrange things."

In enquiring what credit is due to this ftory, it will
be neceffary to premife that this part of the Hiftory pub-
lifhed by Dr. Powell is not taken from the Chronicle of
Caradoc of Llancarvan, who (as Powell affirms) ended
his collections in the year 1156, antecedent to the date
of this fuppofed event; but it is faid by Humphrey Lluyd,
the tranflator of Caradoc, to have been compiled from
collections made from time to time, and kept in the ab-
beys of Conway and Stratflur.

BANGOR VILLAGE

BANGOR CATHEDRAL

Appendix H5

We are alfo told that the beft and faireft copy of thefe
was written by Gutryn Owen in the days of Edward the
Fourth, and tranflated into Englifh by the Humphrey
Lluyd before-mentioned, who flourifhed in the reign of
King Henry the Eighth, and continued the hiftory to
the death of Prince Llewelyn ap Gruffyth in the year
1282. But, this gentleman having been prevented by
death from publifhing his work, it was not fent to the
prefs till the year 1584, when Dr. Powell publifhed it,
with many additions and interpolations of his own. The
latter fays in his preface "that he had conferred Lluyd 's
translation with the Britifh book, whereof he had two
ancient copies, and corrected the fame when there was
caufe so to do," and adds, "that, after the moft part
of the book was printed, he received another larger copy
of the fame tranflation, being better corrected, at the
hands of Robert Glover, Somerfet herald, a learned and
ftudious gentleman in his profeffion, the which if he had
had the beginning, many things had come forth in better
plight than they now be."

It is therefore very doubtful whether the above-cited
paffage concerning the Madoc voyage gives the fenfe of
the Britifh book which Gutryn Owen had tranfcribed, as
tranflated by Lluyd, or as corrected by Powell, and wheth-
er we can depend on its being agreeable to the original
text. It may be fufpected that Lluyd, living after the
difcovery of America by Columbus, may have dreft up
fome accounts of traditions about Madoc, which he found
in Gutryn Owen, or other ancient Welfh writings, in fuch
a manner as to make them convey an idea, that this prince,
who perhaps was a bolder navigator than any of his coun-
trymen in the age when he lived, had the honour of

1 46 Appendix

being the firft difcoverer of that country. Sir Philip Her-
bert, a writer of the fame nation, who is zealous for the
truth of this fuppofed difcovery (which he conceives would
give our kings a title to the Weft Indies) adds to the au-
thority of Gutryn (or Guten) Owen, that of Cynwrick
ap Grono, another ancient Welfh bard, and alfo of Sir
Meredith ap Rhees who lived in the year 1477. The
words of the former bard he does not quote, but thofe
of the latter he does, and tranflates them into Englifh.
The poet, fpeaking in the perfon of his hero, fays,

" Madoc ap Owen was I call'd,
Strong, tall and comely, not enthralled,
To home-bred pleafure, but to fame:
Thro land and fea I fought the fame."

This proves indeed that Madoc was famous in thofe
days for fome voyage he had made, but, not marking
the courfe, it is of no importance to the matter in quef-
tion, which entirely depends on his difcovering land to
the fouth-weft of Ireland. Dr. Powell, having given the
defcription above cited, viz: that he failed weft, and
leaving the coaft of Ireland far north, came to a land
unknown, adds the following note:

"This Madoc arriving in that weftern country, into
which he came in the year 1170, left moft of his people
there, and returning back for more of his own nation,
acquaintance and friends, to inhabit that fair and large
country, went thither again with ten fails, as I find it
noted by Gutryn Owen."

And then he gives us fome reafons why he takes this
land unknown to have been fome part of Mexico, rather
than of Nova Hifpania, or Florida as Lluyd had fuppofed.
Without comparing the arguments for their different con-

Appendix H7

jectures (as none of them feem to me to have much weight)
I will only fay that if Madoc did really difcover any part
of America, or any iflands lying to the fouth-weft of Ire-
land in the Atlantic ocean, without the help of the com-
pafs, at a time when navigation was ill underftood, and
with mariners lefs expert than any others in Europe, he
performed an atchievment incomparably more extraor-
dinary than that of Columbus. But, befides the incredi-
bility of the thing itfelf, another difficulty occurs; that
is, to know how it happened that no Englifh hiftorian,
contemporary with him, has faid a word of this furpriz-
ing event, which, on his return into Wales, and public
report of the many ftrange things he had feen, muft have
made a great noife among the Englifh in thofe parts,
and would have certainly reached the ears of Henry him-
felf. Why is no notice taken of a fact fo important to
the honour of his country by Giraldus Cambrenfis, who
treats fo largely of the ftate of Wales in his times? One
may alfo be in fome doubt, what could have caufed fo
entire a deftruction of the colony planted by Madoc, and
of all belonging to it, as that in no land, fince difcovered
to the south-weft of Ireland, any certain monument, vef-
tige, or memory of it, has ever yet been found. But
the firft foundation of all enquiry about this adventure,
which many good modern writers have inclined to be-
lieve, fhould be a faithful and well-attefted tranflation
of the words of Gutryn Owen, or Cyn wrick ap Grono,
relating thereto, if their writings ftill remain. (Notes
to Littleton's Henry II, edition of 1767, Volume 4,
page 371.)

148 Appendix

Robertson on the Madoc Tradition

The pretensions of the Welsh to the discovery of Amer-
ica seem not to rest on a foundation much more solid.
In the Twelfth century, according to Powell, a dispute
having arisen among the sons of Owen Guyneth, king of
North Wales, concerning the succession to his crown,
Madoc, one of their number, weary of this contention,
betook himself to sea in quest of a more quiet settle-
ment. He steered due west, leaving Ireland to the north,
and arrived in an unknown country, which appeared to
him so desirable that he returned to Wales, and carried
thither several of his adherents and companions. This
is said to have happened about the year 1170, and after
that, he and his colony were heard of no more. But it
is to be observed that Powell, on whose testimony the
authenticity of this story rests, published his history
about four centuries from the date of the event which
he relates. Among a people as rude and illiterate as the
Welsh at that period, the memory of a transaction so
remote must have been very imperfectly preserved, and
would require to be confirmed by some author of greater
credit, and nearer to the era of Madoc 's voyage, than
Powell. Later antiquaries have indeed appealed to the
testimony of Meredith ap Rees, a Welsh bard who died
A. D. 1477. But he, too, lived at such a distance of time
from the event that he can not be considered as a wit-
ness of much more credit than Powell. Besides, his verses,
published by Hakluit, Volume III, page i, convey no
information but that Madoc, dissatisfied with his domes-
tic situation, employed himself in searching the ocean
for new possessions. But even if we admit the authen-

Appendix 149

ticity of Powell's story, it does not follow that the un-
known country which Madoc discovered by steering west,
in such a course as to leave Ireland to the north, was
any part of America. The naval skill of the Welsh in
the Twelfth century was hardly equal to such a voyage.
If he made any discovery at all, it is more probable that
it was Madeira, or some other of the Western isles. The
affinity of the Welsh language with some dialects spoken
in America has been mentioned as a circumstance which
confirms the truth of Madoc 's voyage. But that affinity
has been observed in so few instances, and in some of
these is so obscure, or so fanciful, that no conclusion can
be drawn from the casual resemblance of a small num-
ber of words. There is a bird which, as far as is yet
known, is found only on the coasts of South America,
from Port Desire to the Straits of Magellan. It is dis-
tinguished by the name of Penguin. This word in the
Welsh language signifies White-head. Almost all the au-
thors who favor the pretensions of the Welsh to the dis-
covery of America mention this as an irrefragable proof
of the affinity of the Welsh language with that spoken
in this region of America. But Mr. Pennant, who has
given a scientific description of the penguin, observes
that all the birds of this genus have black heads, "so
that we must resign every hope (adds he) founded on
this hypothesis of retrieving the Cambrian race in the
New World." Philos. Transac., Volume LVIII, page 91,
etc. Besides this, if the Welsh, towards the close of the
Twelfth century, had settled in any part of America,
some remains of the Christian doctrine and rites must
have been found among their descendants when they were
discovered about three hundred years posterior to their

1 50 Appendix

migration; a period so short, that in the course of it we
can not well suppose that all European ideas and arts
would be totally forgotten. Lord Littleton, in his notes
to the fifth book of his History of Henry II, page 371,
has examined what Powell relates concerning the discov-
eries made by Madoc, and invalidates the truth of his
story by other arguments of great weight. (Robertson's
History of North and South America, London edition,
1834, page 241.)

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FIELD, HONORABLE EMMET 327 Fifth Louisville.

FINCK, EDWARD BERTRAND 200 East Gray Louisville.

FOWLER, COLONEL CHARLES W Lyndon.

GARDNER, Miss LIZZIE Kentucky Street School Louisville.

GATES, CHARLES D 1052 Second Louisville.

154 List of Members

GAULBERT, GEORGE 1322 Fourth Louisville.

GENTRY, ROBERT T Sonora.

GIBSON, CHARLES H Louisville Trust Building Louisville.

GILBERT, HONORABLE G. G Shelbyville.

GIFFORD, HARLEY N 1118 Second Louisville.

GILBERT, DOCTOR RICHARD B 712 Third Louisville.

GODSHAW, DOCTOR CRAINE C 2450 Third Louisville.

GOERTNER, PHILIP A 216 Fifth Louisville.

GOODMAN, HARRY M., M. D 817 Third Louisville.

GRAHAM, SAMUEL P 1289 Second Louisville.

GREEN, PINCKNEY F 1116 Fourth Louisville.

GREEN, Miss SUSIE T Second and Broadway Louisville.

GREEN, Miss NANCI LEWIS Lexington.

GREEN, JOHN E 170 Broadway New York City.

GRISWOLD, HOWARD M 222 East Jacob Louisville.

GRUBBS, CHARLES S 513 Ormsby Avenue Louisville.

GUNN, JOHN T Lexington.

HAGAN, FRANK 233 Fifth Louisville.

HALDEMAN, BRUCE Courier- Journal Louisville.

HARDING, JOHN Pleasureville.

HARRIS, HONORABLE WALTER O. .940 Third Louisville.

HARMAN, T. A 1692 Everett Avenue Louisville.

HARRISON, MRS IDA WITHERS — 530 Elmtree Lane Lexington.

HART, MRS. REBECCA T Versailles.

HARDY, MRS. SALLIE E. M 223 East Breckinridge Louisville.

HAYS, MRS. ROSA BELLE McCuL-

LOUGH 1021 Fourth Louisville.

HAZELRIGG, JUDGE JAMES H Frankfort.

HELM, JAMES P 1112 Fourth Louisville.

HELM, JOHN L 1523 Fourth Louisville.

HENDRICK, HONORABLE WILLIAM J . 302 Broadway New York City.

HEWITT, GENERAL FAYETTE Frankfort.

List of Members 155

HILL, THOMAS P Stanford.

HINES, EDWARD W Third and Broadway Louisville.

HITE, WILLIAM W 176 Fourth Louisville.

HITCHCOCK, C. J 502 Belgravia Court Louisville.

HOCKER, JESSE S Stanford.

HOPKINS, ANDERSON H Carnegie Library Pittsburgh, Pa.

HOPPER, JAMES W 950 Fifth Louisville.

HOWARD, HONORABLE HENRY L Harlan C. H.

HOWE, BENJAMIN 207 East Chestnut Louisville.

HUBBELL, PROFESSOR GEORGE A. .Kentucky University Lexington.

HUMPHREY, HON. ALEXANDER P. .608-14 Louisville Trust Bldg .. Louisville.

HUMPHREY, E. W. C 1403 Fourth Louisville.

HUNDLEY, JOHN B 241 West Main Louisville.

HUNTER, MRS. ROBERT 1216 First Louisville.

HURST. WILLIAM L Campion.

HUTCHCRAFT, REUBEN, JR Lexington.

JOHNSON, CHARLES F 928 Second Louisville.

JOHNSTON, COLONEL J. STODDARD.IOS East Broadway Louisville.

JONES, JUDGE L. H 620 First Louisville.

JONES, THOMAS S 205 East Chestnut Louisville.

KAUFMAN, HENRY 1609 Fourth Louisville.

KEARNS, DOCTOR CHARLES Eighth and Madison Covington.

KINCHLOB, JESSE B Shelbyville.

KINKEAD, ROBERT C 425 Park Avenue Louisville.

KINKEAD, CLEVES G 425 Park Avenue Louisville.

KIRBY, HONORABLE SAMUEL B. . . Upper River Road Jefferson County.

KNOTT, RICHARD W Evening Post Louisville.

KNOTT, STUART R First National Bank Kansas City, Mo.

LAFON, Miss MARY 1501 Fourth Louisville.

LANCASTER, MRS. CATHERINE. ... 1 161 Sixth Louisville.

LAU, MRS. HELEN ADAMS Madison House Brooklyn, N. Y.

LEAK, JOHN S 2010 Floyd Louisville.

156 List of Members

LEECH, MRS. CAROLINE A 1735 First Louisville.

LEOPOLD, LAWRENCE S Kentucky Title Building Louisville.

LEWIS, Miss BETTIE 1012 Fourth Louisville.

LEvi, Miss LILY E 2406 West Chestnut Louisville.

LEWIS, JOHN C 568 Fourth Louisville.

LEWIS, HENRY JOHN Terlingua, Tex.

LINDSAY, HONORABLE WILLIAM . . 205 West Fifty-seventh New York City.

LYTLE, MRS. ELIZABETH 820 Fourth Louisville.

MACKOY, HONORABLE WILLIAM H. 714-15 First Nat. Bank Bldg. . Cincinnati, O.

MACKOY, HARRY BRENT United Bank Building Cincinnati, O.

MARTIN, MRS. C. L 841 Second Louisville.

MATTHEWS, MRS. M. C. DUKE ... 60 West Fifty-ninth New York City.

MERCER, S. C Hopkinsville.

MILLER, HOWARD 1125 West Broadway Louisville.

MILLER, MADISON L 224 East Ormsby Louisville.

MILLER, DOCTOR JOSEPH L Thomas, W. Va.

MORTON, HONORABLE J. R Lexington.

MORTON, THOMAS B 438 West Main Louisville.

MOURNING, G. H 1332 Third Louisville.

MUIR, HONORABLE PETER B Louisville Trust Building Louisville.

MURPHY, D. X 250 Fifth Louisville.

MURPHY, JAMES C 250 Fifth Louisville.

McBRAYER, JAMES A., SR Lawrenceburg.

McCnoRD, WILLIAM C Springfield.

McCLosKEY, RIGHT REVEREND

WILLIAM GEORGE 1307 Brook Louisville.

McCoRMiCK, DOCTOR J. M Bowling Green.

McCREARY, HONORABLE JAMES B Richmond.

McCuLLOUGH, JOSEPH G 1625 Third Louisville.

MCDOWELL.MRS.CATHERINEG.W. 1237 Second Louisville.

McGoNiGALE, W. J 2212 Third Louisville.

MCKNIGHT, STUART 401 West Broadway Louisville.

List of Members 157

MCKNIGHT, WILLIAM H 401 West Broadway Louisville.

McPHERSON, ERNEST 612 West Broadway Louisville.

NEWCOMB, HERMAN DANFORTH . . 509 West Ormsby Louisville.

NEWMAN, GEORGE A., JR 1616 Fourth Louisville.

NELSON, JUDGE GEORGE B Winchester.

NORMAN, ALBERT C U. S. S. Winona Gulfport, Miss.

O'DoHERTY, JUDGE MATTHEW O. .519 West St. Catherine Louisville.

O'NEAL, JOSEPH T 1104 Second Louisville.

OTTER, ROBERT H 1105 Fourth Louisville.

OTTER, WILLIAM M 214 Sixth Louisville.

OTTER, JOHN D 214 Sixth Louisville.

OWENS, HONORABLE WILLIAM C. .Kentucky Title Building Louisville.

PARISH, PHILEMON P Midway.

PATTERSON, JAMES K., LL. D Lexington.

PARKER, DOCTOR JOHN W. F Somerset.

PARKER, CHARLES A Columbia Building Louisville.

PENDLETON, DWIGHT L- Winchester.

PENNEBAKER, ELLIOTT K Kentucky Title Building Louisville.

PETER, Miss JOHANNA R. F. D. No. 7 Lexington.

PETER, M. GARY 2002 Third Louisville.

PETTET, Miss CATHERINE 1400 Third Louisville.

PETTUS, JOSEPH 2104 Fourth Louisville.

PICKETT, DOCTOR THOMAS E 213 Wall Maysville.

PIRTLE, HONORABLE JAMES S 1215 Third Louisville.

PIRTLE, CAPTAIN ALFRED 1720 Brook Louisville.

PIRTLE, JOHN ROWAN 1326 West Chestnut Louisville.

POTTINGER, SAMUEL FOREST ..... Pension Office Washington, D. C.

POWELL, REVEREND EDWARD L. .101 East Kentucky Louisville.

POWER, LIEUTENANT CARROLL — 1659 Everett Avenue Louisville.

POWERS, JOSHUA DEE National Trust Company Louisville.

PRICE, GENERAL SAMUEL W 4600 McPherson Avenue Ferguson, Mo.

PRICE, VERNON D 1513 Fourth . . . . Louisville.

158 List of Members

PRIEST, WILLIAM C 351 Fifth Louisville.

QUARRIER, CUSHMAN Third and Burnett Louisville.

QUEEN, Miss OCTAVIA 304 West St. Catherine Louisville.

QUISENBERRY, JOHN A Danville.

QUISENBERRY, A. C Inspector General's Office. . . . Washington, D. C.

REEVE, JOHN L Henderson.

REED, JOHN DUFF 1410 Garvin Place Louisville.

REVENAUGH, AURELIUS 0 562 Fourth Louisville.

REYNOLDS, DOCTOR DUDLEY S.. . .316-358 Fourth Louisville.

REYNOLDS, REVEREND CHARLES LEE, D. D Lexington.

RICHARDSON, ORLA C 1604 Second Louisville.

ROBINSON, C. BONNYCASTLE 529 West Main Louisville.

ROBINSON, A. H 808 Columbia Building Louisville.

ROWELL, JOSEPH KIRK 1512 Twenty-first Louisville.

RUSSELL, JOHN C Louisville Trust Building Louisville.

RUTLEDGE, ARTHUR Louisville Trust Building Louisville.

SACKETT, FREDERICK M 1614 Third Louisville.

SANDERS, Miss MYRA Shepherdsville.

SCHROEDER, Miss EM SIDELL Middleburgh, Va .

SCOTT, JOHN MATTHEW Kentucky Title Building Louisville.

SCHULTE, BATTS OVERTON 1018 Fourth Louisville.

SELLIGMAN, ALFRED 57 Kenyon Building Louisville.

SEMPLE, MRS. PATTY B 1222 Fourth Louisville.

SEMPLE, Miss ELLEN C 509 West Ormsby Louisville.

SHACKELFORD, W. RHODES Richmond.

SHELBY, MRS. SUSAN HART Lexington.

SHELBY, EVAN 116 West Seventy-fourth New York City.

SHELBY, JOHN T Trust Company Building Lexington.

SHELDON, GENERAL H. S 502 Belgravia Court Louisville.

SHREVE, CHARLES U 1618 Third Louisville.

SHERLEY, HONORABLE Sw ACER... 301 Louisville Trust Building. Louisville.
SLOSS, STANLEY E. . . . . 1517 Second . . . . Louisville.

List of Members 159

SMITH, DOCTOR DAVID T 115 East Broadway Louisville.

SMITH, Miss MARY LULA 204 East Broadway Louisville.

SMITH, CLARK 0 228 East Jacob Louisville.

SMITH, ROGERS M Worthington.

SMITH, MILTON H 1240 Fourth Louisville.

SMITH, ZACHARY F 644 Third Louisville.

SMITH, CAPTAIN S. CALHOUN 742 Seventh Louisville.

SPEED, JAMES B 501 West Ormsby Louisville.

STEGE, Miss LILLIAN E 1912 First Louisville.

STEELE, JOHN A Midway.

STEPHENSON, HONORABLE WILLIAM W Harrodsburg.

STEWART, Miss JESSIE 620 West Breckinridge Louisville.

STEWART, JEFFERSON DAVIS R. F. D. No. 10 Buechel.

STITES, JOHN 1604 Cherokee Road Louisville.

STROTHER, JOHN C Louisville Trust Building Louisville.

SWEARINGEN, EMBRY L Kentucky Title Building Louisville.

SWEETS, REVEREND DAVID Shelbyville.

SWEETS, REVEREND HENRY H. . . 232 Fourth Louisville.

TAYLOR, EDWARD H., JR Frankfort.

TERRY, ALVAH L 502 West Ormsby Louisville.

TEVIS, ROBERT C 1608 Fourth Louisville.

TEVIS, JOHN Kentucky Title Building Louisville.

THATCHER, MAURICE H 722 West Chestnut Louisville.

THARP, PROFESSOR WILLIAM H.. .1526 First Louisville.

THOMAS, REV. FRANK MoREHEAD.211 East Fourth Owensboro.

THORNTON, DAVID L Versailles.

THRUSTON, R. C. BALLARD... . { Bffi1i aSStiT } - - Louisville.

TODD, HONORABLE GEORGE D 33 St. James Court Louisville.

TODD, ADMIRAL C. C Frankfort.

TOWNSEND, JOHN W 304 South Limestone Lexington.

TUCKER, MRS. MATTIE B Gait House Louisville.

160 List of Members

TURNER, MRS. EUGENIA Cherokee Drive Louisville.

VEECH, RICHARD S St. Matthews.

WALKER, WALTER : 1710 Fourth Louisville.

WALLER, GRANVILLE B 322 East Chestnut Louisville.

WALTER, LEWIS A 1618 Floyd Louisville.

WALTZ, REVEREND S. S 419 East Broadway Louisville.

WARREN, EUGENE C 730 Eighth Louisville.

WARREN, REVEREND EDWARD L.. 1631 Cherokee Road Louisville.

WATHEN, DOCTOR WILLIAM H 400 Belgravia Court Louisville.

WATSON, ADMIRAL JOHN CRITTEN-

DEN 817 Second Louisville.

WATHEN, Miss MARGARET A 412 West Oak Louisville.

WATTS, Miss LUCY 2909 Portland Avenue Louisville.

WATTERSON, HONORABLE HENRY. Courier- Journal Louisville.

WELLS, LEWIS G 102 West Hill Louisville.

WEISSINGER, HARRY 1242 Fourth Louisville.

WELCH, JOHN HARRISON Nicholasville.

WHEAT, JOHN L 1026 Seventh Louisville.

WHEELER, F. CLAY Winchester.

WHITE, HONORABLE JOHN D 205 Crescent Hill Louisville.

WICKLIFFE, JOHN D Bardstown.

WILHOIT, E. B Wilhoit Building Grayson.

WILLIS, DOCTOR C. C 215 West Broadway Louisville.

WILLIAMS, DOCTOR MARGARET C..2909 Portland Avenue Louisville.

WILLSON, GOVERNOR AUGUSTUS E Frankfort.

WILSON, DOCTOR DUNNING S 222 East St. Catherine Louisville.

WILSON, SAMUEL M Lexington

WILSON, GEORGE H 39 St. James Court Louisville.

WOOD, WILLIAM F 1135 First Louisville.

WOODS, HONORABLE CLARENCE E Richmond.

WOODRUFF, MRS. JANIE SCOTT 309-11 Peters Building Atlanta, Ga.

WOODS, REVEREND NEANDER Clarksville, Tenn.

List of Members 161

WOODS, ROBERT E 2109 Brook Louisville.

WOODSON, ISAAC T 105 West Barret Avenue Louisville.

WOOLFOLK, LEANDER C 1401 Fourth Louisville.

WORTHINGTON, DOCTOR SAMUEL M Versailles.

YAGER, PROFESSOR ARTHUR Georgetown.

YEAMAN, REVEREND M. V. P Harrodsburg.

YOUNG, COLONEL BENNETT H. . . . 1535 Fourth Louisville.

YOUNGLOVE, JOHN E Bowling Green.

YUST, WILLIAM F Free Public Library Louisville.

LIST OF FILSON CLUB PUBLICATIONS

The Filson Club is an historical, biographical, and
literary association located in Louisville, Kentucky. It
was named after John Filson, the first historian of Ken-
tucky, whose quaint little octavo of one hundred and
eighteen pages was published at Wilmington, Delaware,
in 1784. It was organized May 15, 1884, and incorporated
October 5, 1891, for the purpose, as expressed in its char-
ter, of collecting, preserving, and publishing the history
of Kentucky and adjacent States, and cultivating a taste
for historic inquiry and study among its members. While
its especial field of operations was thus theoretically lim-
ited, its practical workings were confined to no locality.
Each member is at liberty to choose a subject and pre-
pare a paper and read it to the Club, among whose ar-
chives it is to be filed. From the papers thus accumulated
selections are made for publication, and there have now
been issued twenty- three volumes of these publications.
They are all paper-bound quartos, printed with pica old-
style type on pure white antique paper, with broad mar-
gins, untrimmed edges, and halftone illustrations. They
have been admired both at home and abroad, not only
for their original and valuable matter, but also for their
tasteful and comely appearance. They are not printed
for sale in the commercial sense of the term, but for dis-
tribution among the members of the Club. Only limited
editions to meet the wants of the Club are published,
but any numbers which may be left over after the mem-
bers have been supplied are exchanged with other associ-

164 List of Filson Club Publications

ations or sold at about the cost of publication. The
following is a brief catalogue of all the Club publications
to date.

1. JOHN FILSON, the first historian of Kentucky. An
account of his life and writings, principally from original
sources, prepared for The Filson Club and read at its
second meeting in Louisville, June 26, 1884, by Reuben
T. Durrett, A. B., LL. B., A. M., LL. D., President of
the Club. Illustrated with a likeness of Filson, a fac-
simile of one of his letters, and a photo-lithographic re-
production of his map of Kentucky printed at Philadelphia
in 1784. 4to, 132 pages. John P. Morton & Company,
Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1884.

2. THE WILDERNESS ROAD: A description of the
routes of travel by which the pioneers and early settlers
first came to Kentucky. Prepared for The Filson Club
by Captain Thomas Speed, Secretary of the Club. Illus-
trated with a map showing the routes of travel. 4to, 75
pages. John P. Morton & Company, Printers, Louisville,
Kentucky. 1886.

3. THE PIONEER PRESS OF KENTUCKY, from the print-
ing of the first paper west of the Alleghanies, August n,
1787, to the establishment of the Daily Press, 1830. Pre-
pared for The Filson Club by William Henry Perrin, mem-
ber of the Club. Illustrated with facsimiles of pages of
the Kentucky Gazette and Farmer's Library, a view of
the first printing house in Kentucky, and likenesses of
John Bradford, Shadrack Penn, and George D. Prentice.
4to, 93 pages. John P. Morton & Company, Printers,
Louisville, Kentucky. 1888.

4. LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE CALEB WALLACE, some-
time a Justice of the Court of Appeals of the State of

List of Filson Club Publications 165

Kentucky. By the Reverend William H. Whitsitt, D. D.,
member of the Club. 4to, 151 pages. John P. Morton
& Company, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1888.

5. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCH,
Louisville, Kentucky, prepared for the Semi-Centennial
Celebration, October 6, 1889. By Reuben T. Durrett,
A. B., LL. B., A. M., LL. D., President of the Club. Il-
lustrated with likenesses of the Reverend William Jackson,
the Reverend Edmund T. Perkins, D. D., and views of
the church as first built in 1839 and as it appeared in
1889. 4to, 90 pages. John P. Morton & Company,
Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1889.

6. THE POLITICAL BEGINNINGS OF KENTUCKY: A nar-
rative of public events bearing on the history of the
State up to the time of its admission into the American
Union. By Colonel John Mason Brown, member of the
Club. Illustrated with a likeness of the author. 4to,
263 pages. John P. Morton & Company, Printers, Lou-
isville, Kentucky. 1889.

7. THE CENTENARY OF KENTUCKY: Proceedings at
the celebration by The Filson Club, Wednesday, June i,
1892, of the one hundredth anniversary of the admission
of Kentucky as an independent State into the Federal
Union. Prepared for publication by Reuben T. Durrett,
A. B., LL. B., A. M., LL. D., President of the Club. Il-
lustrated with likenesses of President Durrett, Major Stan-
ton, Sieur LaSalle, and General George Rogers Clark,
and facsimiles of the music and songs of the Centennial
Banquet. 4to, 200 pages. John P. Morton & Company,
Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1892.

8. THE CENTENARY OF LOUISVILLE: A paper read
before the Southern Historical Association, Saturday, May

1 66 List of Filson Club Ptiblications

i, 1880, in commemoration of the one hundredth anniver-
sary of the beginning of the city of Louisville as an in-
corporated town under an act of the Virginia Legislature.
By Reuben T. Durrett, A. B., LL. B., A. M., LL. D.,
President of the Club. Illustrated with likenesses of Col-
onel Durrett, Sieur LaSalle, and General George Rogers
Clark. 4to, 200 pages. John P. Morton & Company,
Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1893.

9. THE POLITICAL CLUB, Danville, Kentucky, 1786-
1790. Being an account of an early Kentucky debating
society, from the original papers recently found. By Cap-
tain Thomas Speed, Secretary of the Club. 4to, xii-i67
pages. John P. Morton & Company, Printers, Louisville,
Kentucky. 1894.

10. THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF RAFINESQUE. Pre-
pared for The Filson Club and read at its meeting Monday,
April 2, 1894. By Richard Ellsworth Call, M. A., M. Sc.,
M. D., member of the Club. Illustrated with likenesses
of Rafmesque and facsimiles of pages of his Fishes of the
Ohio and Botany of Louisville. 4to, xii-227 pages. John
P. Morton & Company, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky,
1895.

11. TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY. Its origin, rise, de-
cline, and fall. Prepared for The Filson Club by Robert
Peter, M. D., and his daughter, Miss Johanna Peter, mem-
bers of the Club. Illustrated with a likeness of Doctor
Peter. 4to, 202 pages. John P. Morton & Company,
Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1896.

12. BRYANT'S STATION and the Memorial Proceedings
held on its site under the auspices of the Lexington Chap-
ter D. A. R., August 18, 1896, in honor of its heroic moth-
ers and daughters. Prepared for publication by Reuben

List of Filson Club Publications 167

T. Durrett, A. B., LL. B., A. M., LL. D., President of
the Club. Illustrated with likenesses of officers of the
Lexington Chapter D. A. R., President Durrett of The
Filson Club, Major Stanton, Professor Ranck, Colonel
Young, and Doctor Todd, members of the Club, and full-
page views of Bryant's Station and its spring, and of the
battlefield of the Blue Licks. 4to, xii-227 pages. John
P. Morton & Company, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky.
1897.

13. THE FIRST EXPLORATIONS OF KENTUCKY. The
Journals of Doctor Thomas Walker, 1750, and of Colonel
Christopher Gist, 1751. Edited by Colonel J. Stoddard
Johnston, Vice-President of the Club. Illustrated with a
map of Kentucky showing the routes of Walker and Gist
throughout the State, with a view of Castle Hill, the
residence of Doctor Walker, and a likeness of Colonel
Johnston. 4to, 256 pages. John P. Morton & Company,
Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1898.

14. THE CLAY FAMILY. Part First — The Mother of
Henry Clay, by Zachary F. Smith, member of the Club.
Part Second — The Genealogy of the Clays, by Mrs. Mary
Rogers Clay, member of the Club. Illustrated with a
full-page halftone likeness of Henry Clay, of each of the
authors, and a full-page picture of the Clay coat-of-arms,
also four full-page grouped illustrations, each containing
four likenesses of members of the Clay family. 4to, vi-
276 pages. John P. Morton & Company, Printers, Lou-
isville, Kentucky. 1899.

15. THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE. Part First — The
Battle and Battle-ground; Part Second — Comment of the
Press; Part Third — Roll of the Army commanded by Gen-
eral Harrison. By Captain Alfred Pirtle, member of the

1 68 List of Filson Club Publications

Club. Illustrated with a likeness of the author and like-
nesses of William Henry Harrison and Colonel Joseph
Hamilton Daveiss and Elkswatawa, 'The Prophet,"
together with three full-page views and a plot of the
battle-ground. 4to, xix-is8 pages. John P. Morton &
Company, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1900.

1 6. BOONESBOROUGH, a pioneer town of Kentucky.
Its origin, progress, decline, and final extinction. By
George W. Ranck, historian of Lexington, Kentucky, etc.,
and member of the Club. Illustrated with copious half-
tone views of its site and its fort, with likenesses of the
author and of Daniel Boone, and a picture of Boone's
principal relics. 4to, xii-286 pages. John P. Morton &
Company, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1901.

17. THE OLD MASTERS OF THE BLUEGRASS. By Gen-
eral Samuel W. Price, member of the Club. Consisting
of biographic sketches of the distinguished Kentucky
artists Matthew H. Jouett, Joseph H. Bush, John Grimes,
Oliver Frazer, Louis Morgan, Joel T. Hart, and Samuel
W. Price, with halftone likenesses of the artists and
specimens of their work. 4to, xiii-i8i pages. John P.
Morton & Company, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1902.

18. THE BATTLE OF THE THAMES. By Colonel Ben-
nett H. Young, member of the Club. Presenting a re-
view of the causes which led to the battle, the prepara-
tions made for it, the scene of the conflict, and the vic-
tory. Illustrated with a steel engraving of the author,
halftone likenesses of the principal actors and scenes and
relics from the battlefield. To which is added an appen-
dix containing a list of the officers and privates engaged.
4to, 288 pages. John P. Morton & Company, Printers,
Louisville, Kentucky. 1903.

List of Filson Club Pttblications 169

19. THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. By Zachary F.
Smith, member of the Club. Presenting a full account of
the forces engaged, the preparations made, the prelimi-
nary conflicts which led up to the final battle and the
victory to the Americans on the 8th of January, 1815.
Illustrated with full-page likenesses of the author, of Gen-
erals Jackson and Adair, of Governors Shelby and Slaugh-
ter, and maps of the country and scenes from the bat-
tlefield, to which is added a list of Kentuckians in the
battle. 4to, 224 pages. John P. Morton & Company,
Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1904.

20. THE HISTORY OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF
TRANSYLVANIA UNIVERSITY. By Doctor Robert Peter,
deceased. Prepared for publication by his daughter, Miss
Johanna Peter, member of the Club. Illustrated with
full-page likenesses of the author and principal professors,
and a view of the old medical hall and its janitor. 4 to,
205 pages. John P. Morton & Company, Printers, Louis-
ville, Kentucky. 1905.

21. LOPEZ'S EXPEDITIONS TO CUBA. By A. C. Quis-
enberry, member of the Club. Presenting a detailed ac-
count of the Cardenas and the Bahia Honda expeditions,
with the names of the officers and men, as far as ascer-
tainable, who were engaged in them. Illustrated with
full-page likenesses of A. C. Quisenberry the author, Gen-
eral Narciso Lopez commander-in-chief, Colonel John T.
Pickett, Colonel Theodore O'Hara, Colonel Thomas T.
Hawkins, Colonel William Logan .Crittenden, Captain Rob-
ert H. Breckenridge, Lieutenant John Carl Johnston, and
landscape views of Cuba, Rose Hill, Moro Castle, and a
common human bone-heap of a Cuban cemetery. In the
appendix, besides other valuable matter, will be found a

1 70 List of Filson Club Publications

full list of The Filson Club publications and of the mem-
bers of the Club. 4to, 172 pages. John P. Morton &
Company, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1906.

22. THE QUEST FOR A LOST RACE. By Thomas E.
Pickett, M. D., member of the Club. Presenting the the-
ory of Paul B. DuChaillu, an eminent ethnologist and
explorer, that the English-speaking people are descended
from the Scandinavians rather than the Teutons, from
the Normans instead of the Germans. Examples of simi-
lar customs and peculiarities between the Scandinavians
and English are given, and the work illustrated with half-
tone likenesses of the author, of William the Conqueror,
of DuChaillu, and of "Our Beautiful Scandinavian," with
maps of Scandinavia and Northumbria, and with like-
nesses of a number of distinguished Kentuckians whose
names, aspects, and habits indicate descent from the
Scandinavians or Norman-French. 4to, 229 pages. John
P. Morton & Company, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky.
1907.

23. TRADITIONS OF THE EARLIEST VISITS OF FOREIGNERS
TO NORTH AMERICA, the first formed and first inhabited
of the continents. By Reuben T. Durrett, A. B., LL.
B., A. M., LL. D., President of the Club. An attempt
to show that history, tradition, and science favor the
probability that the East was originally peopled from
the West, that the first Oriental visitors found this
country already with occupants, and that America was
really the first formed and first inhabited of the conti-
nents. The principal pre-Columbian discoveries are
cited, and ample space given to the tradition that
Prince Madoc planted a Welsh colony in America in
the Twelfth century which at one time occupied the

List of Filson Club Publications 171

country at the Falls of the Ohio. Copiously illustrated
with halftone views of mountains, valleys, castles, churches,
abbeys, etc., in Wales, the native country of the colony,
a view of the Falls of the Ohio at the time the colony
may be supposed to have dwelt there, and a likeness of
the author. 4to, 200 pages. John P. Morton & Com-
pany, Printers, Louisville, Kentucky. 1908.

INDEX

PAGE

Absence of a tribe of Welsh Indians — no evidence that they

never existed 68

After Columbus made known America, there were numerous

claimants to its discovery 70

Agassiz pronounced North America the oldest of the continents . . 72

America — oldest of the continents 70

America never found uninhabited by visitors from the Eastern

continent 69

America first inhabited of the continents 75

Americans could go to Ireland as easy as the Irish could come

to America 16

Atlantis the vanished island of Plato 2

Atlantis tradition originated in Egypt twelve thousand years

ago 4

Atlantis tradition has support from geology 4

Atlantis submerged twelve thousand years ago 3

Atlantis described in the "Timaeus" and "Critias" of Plato 3

Autochthons of America 115

Bancroft on the Madoc tradition 113

Beatty, Charles, tells what he learned of the Welsh Indians while

a missionary 38

Binon's account of the Welsh Indians 133

Bones and implements of man found in Europe indicating the

Quaternary age 78

Bones of man in caves and gravels best proof of his former exist-
ence 78

Bones and implements of Tertiary man found in America 79

174 Index

PAGE

Bowles, a Cherokee chief, on the Welsh Indians 130

Bourbois River, Missouri, yielded the skeleton of a mastodon of

the Tertiary age 80

Bryant & Gay's Popular History on the Welsh Indians 45

Brasseur de Bourbourg on the Island of Atlantis 113

Burial of a widow's two sons 85

Burder, George, on the Welsh tradition 42

Catlin lived for years among the Mandans and believed them

to be the Welsh Indians 44

Catlin, George, on the Welsh Indians 44

Calaveras County, California, yielded a human skull in auriferous

gravel of the Tertiary age 80

Caractacus — his speech before Emperor Claudius 120

Caernarvon Castle x

Chinese claim of a visit to America in 499 12

Civil war between the sons of Prince Gwynedd 23

Civilization and whisky destroyed many Indians 67

Clark, George Rogers, tells about curious house near Kaskaskia . . 49
Croghan, Colonel George, — his letter to Governor Dinwiddie about

the Welsh Indians 117

Delaware River gravels yield argillite implements of the Terti-
ary age 79

Different authors have varied opinions about Plato's Atlantis . . 107

Diodoms Siculus' glowing account of his island 7

Doeg Indians in Maryland in 1666 32

Doeg Indians secure Jones' release from the Tuscaroras 31

Drake's Aboriginal Races of America 66

Erickson's better claim to discovery of America than Herjtilson . . 14

Index 175

PAGE

Falls of Ohio in state of nature xi

Fall River skeleton in Norse armor 65

Filson, John, on Madoc tradition 46

Filson tells all about the Madoc tradition and puts his hearers

asleep 51

Filson's kind notices of Indians 52

Filson, John, with eminent Kentucky pioneers 47

Filson, John, in meeting of Kentucky pioneers to learn about

Madoc tradition 48

Frazer, Lady, her opinion of the Columbian discovery 141

Fusang, the name given America by the Chinese 12

Geologists measure age of continents not in years but in eras,

ages, periods, etc 71

Giraldus, the historian, on the Welsh 122

Griffin relates early traditions of Falls of the Ohio iv

Griffiths and five Shawnees reach the Welsh Indians up the

Missouri 51

Griffiths and companions are condemned to death and his speak-
ing Welsh saved them 60

Gutton Owen's copy of the Madoc tradition 22

Gwynedd's oldest son could not inherit the crown because of his

broken nose 23

Harrison tells of a grayevard opposite the Falls 50

Harlech Castle xi

Levi Hicks also tells of Indians who talked Welsh 39

Hinde mentions six Welsh skeletons found at the Falls of the

Ohio 62

Hinde states that the Welsh colony was once at the Falls 62

Hinde, Thomas S., on the Madoc tradition 61

1 76 Index

PAGE

Illustrations of twenty-third publication .

Importance of Parson Jones' statement

Indians' superstition about the cholera

Irish claim of discovery extended from Virginia to Florida 16

Irish claim of the discovery of America 15

Island of Atlantis as told by Windsor 104

Jefferson's belief that immigrants went from America to Asia

instead of from Asia to America 75

Jones, etc., saved by his use of Welsh words

Jones and companions taken prisoners by the Indians

Jones' starving condition at Port Royal

Jones, Reverend Morgan, — his account of the Madoc tradition .

Jones' errors as to geography

Journey of Israelites through Red Sea and Wilderness distorted
in Indian tradition

List of members of The Filson Club, 1908 151-161

Lord Littleton's opinion of the Madoc tradition 144

Madoc tradition as given in Hakluit

Madoc tradition widely known in America 17

Madoc tradition from Filson's History . 52

Madoc tradition in Welsh history

Madoc tradition in Kentucky

Madoc tradition in America

Madoc tradition as known in Europe 19

Madoc tradition in Powell's edition of Caradoc's Wales 22

Mammoth Cave mummy of unknown age 81

Mammoth Cave mummy 82

Index 177

PAGE

Man's love for the ancient 86

Man might have been placed first in America as well as in Asia .... 84

Mandan derived from Madawgwys 101

Mandans destroyed by smallpox in 1838 90

Mclntosh hears Welshman talk with Indians 63

Moore tells of battle of Sand Island, in which the White Indians

perished 50

Morgan Jones' opinion of the Welsh Indians 132

Montezuma's speech to his people when dethroned by Cortez ... 135

Mound Builders equal to the Atlantians 9

Mound Builders antedated the Red Indians 77

Mound Builders, The 83

Mounds of Louisville 51

Nebulous theory of the origin of our solar system 72

Norse claim of the discovery of America 13

No certain way of measuring the age of continents in years 70

Ocean soundings indicate a sunken island on its bed 5

Origin of Prince of Wales vii

Owen's account of the Welsh Indians 137-139

Philadelphians propose to go in search of the Madoc colony 34

Phoenician tradition as to Atlantis 7

Pottery and ornaments peculiar to Mandans 102

Prehistoric river in England 4

Red Indians first people found here by Europeans 77

Red Indians could give no rational account of their origin 77

Relics of Welsh Indians along the Missouri River 99

1 78 Index

PAGE

Roberts, Lieutenant Joseph, gives account of a Welsh Indian

he met in Washington 54

Robertson, the historian, on the Madoc tradition 148

Rough catalogue of Filson Club publications 163-171

Sanders tells of a White Indian killed by a panther 50

Scythians could more easily have reached America than Chinese . . 12

Selections from the Gentleman's Magazine 137

Selections from the "Inquiry" and "Further Observations" by

Reverend John Williams 126

Shaler's estimate of the time America had existed before life

began 71

Skeletons in Welsh armor found at the Falls suggest doubt 64

Skinner, Doctor, consoled Filson by suggesting his hearers were

spellbound instead of being asleep 52

Button, Benjamin, tells what he learned while among the Welsh

Indians 38

Smallpox among the Indians very fatal 67

Smallpox — cause of its virulence and fatality among Indians .... 92
Smith, Captain John, first published the Madoc tradition in

America 29

Stuart, Captain Isaac, tells what he learned about the Welsh

Indians while living with them as a prisoner and when at

liberty 35

St. Asaph x

Sutton further tells of Jewish customs among the Indians 40

Toulmin gives to the "Palladium" Griffiths' account of the Welsh

Indians 57

Tradition of Madoc's colony in America as told by Bryant & Gay . . 108

Index 179

PAGE

Unbelievers in the Madoc tradition 143

"Universal History" on the Madoc tradition 124

Welsh colony at the Falls of the Ohio 18

Welsh Indians spoke Welsh as well as Roberts, the Welshman .... 55

Welsh Indians builders of mounds in Mississippi Valley 98

Welsh a maritime people 126

Welsh a cultured people 129

Welsh colony ancestors of Mandans 97

Where in America Madoc landed his colony 98

Whole tribes of Indians destroyed 65

Williams, Reverend John, — his valuable work on the subject ... 42

BINDING

NOVA

no. 23

Filson Club, Louisville, Ky.
Publications

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