There was serious consideration by the Church authorities of a
declaration that the Moqui (Hopi) Indians of northern Arizona had a
dialect that at least embraced many Welsh words. President Young had
heard that a group of Welshmen, several hundred years before, had
disappeared into the western wilds, so, with his usual quick inquiry into
matters that interested him, he sent southward, led by Hamblin, in the
autumn of 1858, a linguistic expedition, also including Durias Davis and
Ammon M. Tenney. Davis was a Welshman, familiar with the language of his
native land. Tenney, then only 15, knew a number of Indian dialects, as
well as Spanish, the last learned in San Bernardino. They made diligent
investigation and found nothing whatever to sustain the assertion. Not a
word could they find that was similar in anywise to any European
language.
It happens that the Hopi tongue is a composite, mainly a Shoshonean
dialect, probably accumulated as the various clans of the present tribe
gathered in northeastern Arizona, from the cactus country to the south,
the San Juan country to the northward and the Rio Grande valley to the
eastward. But the Welsh legend was slow in dying.
This expedition of 1858, besides the two individuals noted, included
Frederick and William Hamblin, Dudley and Thomas Leavitt, Samuel Knight,
Ira Hatch, Andrew S. Gibbons (later an Arizona legislator), Benjamin
Knell and a Paiute guide, Naraguts. The journey started at Hamblin's home
in the Santa Clara settlement and was by way of the mouth of the Paria,
where a good ferry point was found, but not used, and the Crossing of the
Fathers on the Colorado, probably crossed by white men for the first time
since Spanish days. The Hopi villages were found none too soon, for the
men were very hungry. They had lost the mules that carried the
provisions. The Hopi were found hospitable and furnished food until the
runaway mules were brought in. There was some communication through the
Ute language, after failure with the language of Wales. William Hamblin,
Thomas Leavitt, Gibbons and Knell were left as missionaries and the rest
of the dozen made a difficult return journey to their homes, a part of
the way through snow.
The missionaries left with the Hopi returned the same winter. They had
not been treated quite as badly as Father Garces, but there had been a
division among the tribes, started by the priesthood. There was very good
prophecy, however, by the Indians, to the effect that the Mormons would
settle in the country to the southward and that their route of travel
would be by way of the Little Colorado.
It might be well to insert, at this point, a condensation of the Welsh
legend, though affecting, especially, the Zuni, a pueblo-dwelling tribe,
living to the eastward of the Hopi and with little ethnologic connection.
The following was written by Llewellyn Harris (himself of Welsh
extraction), who was a Mormon missionary visitor to the Zuni in January,
1878, and is reprinted without endorsement:
"They say that, before the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, the Zuni
Indians lived in Mexico. Some of them still claim to be the descendants
of Montezuma. At the time of the conquest they fled to Arizona and
settled there. They were at one time a very powerful tribe, as the ruins
all over that part of the country testify. They have always been
considered a very industrious people. The fact that they have, at one
time, been in a state of civilization far in advance of what they are at
present, is established beyond a doubt. Before the Catholic religion was
introduced to them, they worshipped the sun. At present they are nearly
all Catholics. A few of them have been baptized into our Church by
Brothers Ammon M. Tenney and R.H. Smith, and nearly all the tribe say
they are going to be baptized.
"They have a great many words in the language like the Welsh, and with
the same meaning. Their tradition says that over 300 years before the
conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, some white men landed in Mexico and
told the Indians that they had come from the regions beyond the sea to
the east. They say that from these white men came the ancient kings of
Mexico, from whom Montezuma descended.
"These white men were known to the Indians of Mexico by the name of
Cambaraga; and are still remembered so in the traditions of Zuni Indians.
In time those white people became mixed with Indians, until scarcely a
relic of them remained. A few traditions of the Mexican Indians and a few
Welsh words among the Zunis, Navajos and Moquis are all that can be found
of that people now.
"I have the history of the ancient Britons, which speaks of Prince Madoc,
who was the son of Owen Guynedd, King of Wales, having sailed from Wales
in the year 1160, with three ships. He returned in the year 1163, saying
he had found a beautiful country, across the western sea. He left Wales
again in the year 1164, with fifteen ships and 3000 men. He was never
again heard of."