WALES
Madoc, um, someone: may be our man, may not (read on below)
You Lucky, Lucky Bastard! Madoc becomes yet another to discover America before you-know-who
Somewhat like our friend Abubakari, this prince of Wales also got tired of constant wars and fighting, and decided to take to the seas. Truth to tell, the fact that he was illegitimate and people likely (not) hailed him as “How’s it going, your Bastard Highness?” or “Madoc, you old bastard!” may have influenced his decision. Authenticating his story though has proven difficult, to say the least, in part because of there being so many Madocs - six in all - which researchers down the centuries have gotten all mixed up and muddled into one figure. The true Madoc, son of the King of Wales, is said to have been Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd, and another factor in his buggering off to find America might have been his exile to Lundy Island. Why he was exiled is uncertain: it couldn’t have been because he was illegitimate, as his father the king had at least two dozen children, few if any of them born within wedlock. It’s possible, I suppose, that His Majesty dear old dad may have grumped “Not another f
ucking bastard! Right you, I’ve just about had it now. Off to Lundy with ya, and let me hear no more about ye!”
Or not. But anyway on his death there was the usual scramble for power and riches, land and of course the throne, but for whatever reason (maybe because he had no real claim to it) Madoc was not interested. He instead turned to the stories of the Norse sagas and Leif Erikson’s discovery of Vinland, which I already wrote about. There had been a Norse settlement on Lundy, to which he was exiled, since the ninth century, and there Madoc may even have met one who is mentioned in the sagas and who had travelled with Leif to that new world. Madoc also more than likely had heard of the bould Saint Brendan’s voyage, and possibly thought, I could do that. So in 1170 he did just that, heading off with one of his brothers to seek out Vinland and see what all the fuss was about.
Sadly, it seems his brother’s ship sank, but Madoc continued on and it’s believed he ended up somewhere in Alabama, around the Gulf of Mexico, rather distant from where Vinland itself was said to be, but never mind, it’s a hell of a large continent. Unfortunately no written account of his voyage survives, leading our good friends the eternal skeptics to shake their heads and pour cold water (sorry) on the possibility of the Welsh reaching America, but Madoc’s exploits are rendered in story and song, and even in an account read to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in 1580. Which reads
“The Lord Madoc, sonne to Owen Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, led a Colonie and inhabited in Terra Florida or thereabowts... .” Note: It’s pretty cool that they used the phrase
terra florida (which I assume means land of flowers or something - oh right, I checked it: bay land. Well anyway) and that there was later a state named after it.
Oddly enough, even the Great Navigator himself seems to have confirmed Madoc’s being there first, as he has on his maps marked “these are Welsh waters.” Hard to see how that could have been covered up, but I guess it was. More evidence comes in letters held in the library at Chicago, one of which details a conversation between the founder of Tennessee, John Sevier, and a Cherokee chief, who, when asked who had built the fortifications that he had discovered on his land, replied that they
“were a people called the Welsh and that they had crossed the Great Water and landed first near the mouth of the Alabama River near Mobile and had driven up to the heads of the waters until they arrived at Highwassee River.” These forts - or the ruins of them - lie not only in Tennessee but also Georgia and Alabama.
If he was there, Madoc did not remain to establish his colony, but left others behind to do that while he sailed back to the land of his fathers. It’s believed he then organised a second, larger expedition around 1190 and set sail, but that’s the last anyone knows of him. Whether he ever made it back to America, perished at sea or ended up somewhere else, that’s the last we hear of him. But it wasn’t the last the Spanish heard of him, to their chagrin. When they arrived in America they kept coming across evidence that the Welsh had been their first, including natives who could speak the language (how, being Spanish, they knew it was Welsh I don’t know, but maybe their links with Ireland due to a shared faith and a common purpose against Henry VIII in the name of their religion had familiarised them with Celtic languages?) and their government began a search - which they hoped, a hope which was realised, would turn up nothing - for evidence that the leek-eaters had been there first. England finally put up her hands and said “It’s all right lads. F
uck the Welsh, we hate them anyway. Look, you were there first, so let’s just put a pin in it and say it’s yours, all right?” That was in 1670, which is significant as it means that the “Welsh question”, if you like, had been going around annoying Their Most Catholic and Bloody Frustrated Majesties for nigh on two centuries before it was finally and quietly put to bed, presumably without bothering the Welsh.
Life though does not really recognise the power of treaties, and the Welsh presence continued to stubbornly persist, with multiple stories of men meeting Indians who spoke Welsh and who seemed to be descended from them. President Thomas Jefferson walked a typical political tightrope when he addressed the possibility:
“I neither believe nor disbelieve where I have no evidence,” he said. Daniel Boone was more equivocal, claiming he had definitely seen “blue-eyed Indians” who he believed were Welsh. The most likely candidates for this tribe were the Mandans, who
“were pale-faced, some grew beards, and the oldest ones had gray hair, which was unknown among Indians. Their homes were made of logs and covered with soil and were arranged in villages that were laid out in streets and squares. They depended largely on agriculture rather than hunting, unlike other Indian tribes. Vérendrye’s account was corroborated by subsequent travelers, many of whom took special note of the blue eyes, fair skins, and light-brown hair of the lovely Mandan maidens.”
Their close-harmony male singing might have been a giveaway too. Nah, just kidding. But if they had had any coal mines at that time… all right, I’ll stop now.