The History of Wales

 

The History of Wales

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The legend of Madog discovering America over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas on October 12th 1492.

According to the story, Madog was a Prince of Gwynedd, who in 1170 sailed westward across the Atlantic and landed on the American shore. He returned to Gwynedd to recruit settlers and left, never to be seen again. The settlers supposedly travelled up the great rivers before settling down in the Midwest and intermarrying with a Native American tribe.

References to Madog discovery of America;

* A site on Rose Island, Kentucky, is claimed as once being home to a colony of Welsh-speaking Indians.

* The references to a seafaring Madog were used during the Elizabethan era to bolster British claims in America. The earliest surviving account to make the claim that Madog had come to America appears in Humphrey Llwyd's unpublished 1559 Cronica Walliae. John Dee then used this manuscript when he submitted a treatise the "Title Royal" to Queen Elizabeth in 1580

* During the first English navigation of the James River in 1607, Welshman Peter Wynne, wrote that some of the pronunciation of the Monacan language resembled "Welch".

* Another encounter with a Welsh-speaking Indian was claimed by the Reverend Morgan Jones, who said that he had been captured in 1669 by a tribe of Tuscarora called the Deog, whose chief spared his life when he heard Jones speak Welsh, a language he understood.

* Francis Lewis, a signer of the American Declaration of Independence is said to have had a conversation with an Indian chief who spoke Welsh,

* Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States believed the "Madoc story" to be true.

* Llewellyn Harris, the missionary who visited the Zuni tribe in 1878, noted that they had many Welsh words in their language.

Jon Eastwood

I asked Mobile (Alabama) History Museum to see this plaque which they have gathering dust in their archive. It was situated in Fort Morgan until a hurricane destroyed it. I can well believe that as I live in Alabama now and had to leave a Fort Morgan beach trip early a few weeks back because of hurricane Sally!