Which I barely spoke of in page 206, of Vol. I. which sailed under the
direction of Prince Madoc, or Madawc, from North Wales, in the early
part of the fourteenth 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 suppose everybody
has 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, intermixed 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, amalgamated with a tribe, or part of a tribe, of the natives,
which would account for the unusual appearances of this tribe of
Indians, and also for the changed character and customs of the Welsh
Colonists, provided these be the remains of them.
Since those notes were written, as will have been seen by my subsequent
Letters, and particularly in page 9 of this Volume, I have descended
the Missouri river from the Mandan village to St. Louis, a distance
of 1800 miles, and have taken pains to examine its shores; and from
the repeated remains of the ancient locations 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.
In the annexed chart of the Missouri and Ohio rivers, will be seen laid
down the different positions of the ancient marks of their towns which
I have examined; and also, nearly, (though not exactly) the positions
of the very numerous civilized fortifications which are now remaining
on the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, in the vicinity of which I believe
the Mandans once lived.
These ancient fortifications, which are very numerous in that vicinity,
some of which enclose 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 incontestable 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 imperishable
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 Mississippi, 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 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 beseiged, until it was necessary to erect these
fortifications for their defence, 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 have all perished,
except, perhaps, that portion of them who might have formed alliance
by marriage with the Indians, and their offspring, 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 past by
the name of the _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 support me, they will at least be worth
knowing, and may, at the same time, be the means of eliciting further
and more successful enquiry.
As I have said, in page 9 of this Volume, and in other places, the
marks of the Mandan villages are known by the excavations 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 decided remain for centuries, and one that is easily detected
the moment that it is met with. After leaving the Mandan 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 number that were living when I
was amongst them. Near the mouth of the big Shienne river, 200 miles
below their last location, I found still more ancient remains, and in
as many as six or seven other places between that and the mouth of the
Ohio, as I have designated on the chart, and each one, as I visited
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
endeavoured to extinguish them, as they have been endeavouring to do
ever since our first acquaintance with them; but who, being always
fortified by a strong piquet, or stockade, have successfully withstood
the assaults of their enemies, 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 Riccarees and Minatarees
build their wigwams in the same way: but this proves nothing, for the
Minatarees are Crows, from the north-west; and by their own showing,
fled to 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 inferior to the
Mandans; and by the traditions of the Mandans, as well as from the
evidence of the first explorers, Lewis and Clarke, and others, have
lived, until quite lately, on terms of intimacy with the Mandans, whose
villages they have successively occupied as the Mandans have moved and
vacated them, as they now are 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 enquiry
may elicit; and, at the same time, I offer the Welsh word _Mandon_,
(the woodroof, a species of madder used as a red dye,) as the name that
might possibly have been applied by their Welsh neighbours to these
people, on account of their very ingenious 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-ka-nu-mah-ka-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.
The above facts, together with the other 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 have formerly
occupied a country much farther to the South; and that they have
repeatedly 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 opinion 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
donations, and which have so much surprised the enquiring 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 above all others that are brought amongst them by
the Fur Traders.
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
civilized people, as it is as yet unknown to other Indian tribes in
that vicinity, or elsewhere. Of this interesting fact, Lewis and
Clarke have given an account thirty-three years ago, at a time when no
Traders, or other white people, 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 _coracle_, made of _raw-hides_,
the skins of buffaloes, stretched underneath a frame made of willow
or other boughs, and shaped nearly round, like a tub; which the woman
carries 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. In referring to +plate+ 240, letter _c_, page 138, the reader
will see several drawings of these seemingly awkward crafts, which,
nevertheless, the Mandan women will _pull_ through the water at a rapid
rate.
How far these extraordinary facts may go in the estimation of the
reader, with numerous others which I have mentioned in Volume I.,
whilst speaking of the Mandans, of their various complexions, colours
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 that 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 native, 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
emigrated from the latter stream; and that they have, in the manner
that I have already stated, with many of their customs, been preserved
from the _almost total_ destruction of the bold colonists of Madawc,
who, I believe, settled upon and occupied for a century or so, the rich
and fertile banks of the Ohio. In adducing the proof for the support of
this theory, it I have failed to complete it, I have the satisfaction
that I have not taken up much of the reader’s time, and I can therefore
claim his attention a few moments longer, whilst I refer him to a brief
vocabulary of the Mandan language in the following pages, where he may
compare it with that of the Welsh; and better, perhaps, than I can,
decide whether there is any affinity existing between the two; and if
he finds it, it will bring me a friendly aid in support of the position
I have taken.
From the comparison, that I have been able to make, I think I am
authorized to say, that in the following list of words, which form a
part of that vocabulary, there is a striking similarity, and quite
sufficient to excite surprise in the minds of the attentive reader,
if it could be proved that those resemblances were but the results of
accident between two foreign and distinct idioms.
_English._ _Mandan._ _Welsh._ _Pronounced._
_I_ Me Mi Me
_You_ Ne Chwi Chwe
_He_ E A A
_She_ Ea E A
_It_ Ount Hwynt Hooynt
_We_ Noo Ni Ne
_They_ Eonah {Hwna _mas._ Hoona
{Hona _fem._ Hona
_Those ones_ Yrhai Hyna
_No_, or, _there is not_ Megosh Nagoes Nagosh
{Nage
_No_ {Nag
{Na
_Head_ Pan Pen Pan
_The Great Spirit_ Maho peneta Mawr penaethir[47] Maoor panaether
Ysprid mawr[48] Uspryd maoor
[47] To act as a great chief—head or principal—sovereign or supreme.
[48] The Great Spirit.