Online you can find many pages dedicated to a Welsh prince named Madoc, who set sail from Wales roughly one century before his country was conquered by the English, and settled in North America.
I came across an interesting book, that predates these webpages by 150 years: America Discovered by the Welsh in 1170 A.D., by Benjamin H. Bowen (1876).
It is fun to read, and mentions among other things, the white, bearded indians of Baroa (on page 140) (I have posted about them), von Humboldt's reference to white Indians in the Orinoco region. It describes linguistic links, and stories told by those who settled and explored North America.
There is a also a long epic poem "Madoc" published in 1805 by Robert Southey (1774-1843) that details the mythic voyage from Wales to America, but not to what is now the U.S., but to Mexico, where he met the Aztecs (Aztlan). But is it based on facts?
Lhoyd's History of Wales, 1584
There is a much older written reference about Madoc by David Powel, published in 1584, and it is found in his work The historie of Cambria, now called Wales: a part of the most famous yland of Brytaine, written in the Brytish language aboue two hundreth yeares past: tr. into English by H. Lhoyd... Corrected, augmented, and continued out of records and best approoued authors, by Dauid Powel (see pages 166-167), quoted below.
The book, in its introduction, says that the official Welsh records it mentions were compiled by Caradoc of Lancaruan and later continued until 1270, and conserved in two Welsh abbeys. It was later translated into English by Humffrey Lhoyd (1527-1568). David Powel added onto Lhoyd's work.
The story of Madoc is the following: When the Welsh King Owen Gwyneth died in 1170, his sons and heirs began fighting among themselves for the throne. One of them, Macoc opted out and set sail across the Atlantic to find a new place to settle and reign over. Below is the story of his adventures:
"...Madoc another of Owen Gwyneth his sonnes left the land in contention betwixt his brethren, and prepared certaine ships with men and munition, and sought aduentures by seas, sailing West, and leauing the coast of Ireland so far north, that he came to a land unknowen, where he saw manie strange things. This land must needs be some part of that countrie of which the Spaniardes affirme themselues to be the first finders sith Hannos time; for by reason and order of Cosmographie, this land, to the which Madoc came, must needs be some part of Noua Hispania or Florida. Whereupon it is manifest, that that countrie was long before by Brytaines discovered, afore either Columbus or Americus Vesputius lead anie Spaniards thither. Of the viage and returne of this Madoc there be manie fables fained, as the common people doo vse in distance of place and length of time rather to augment than to diminish: but sure it is, that there he was. And after he had returned home and declared the pleasant and fruitfull countries that he had seene without inhabitants; and vpon the contrarie part, for what barren and wild ground his brethren and nephues did murther one another: he prepared a number of ships, and got with him such men and women as were desirous to liue in quietnes, and taking leaue of his freends tooke his iournie thitherward againe. Therefore it is to be presupposed, that he and his people inhabited part of those countries; for it appeareth by Francis Loues, that in Acusanus and other places, the people honored the crosse: whereby it may be gathered that Christians had beene there, before the comming of the Spaniards. But bicause this people were not manie, they folowed the maners of the land, they came vnto, and vsed the language they found there.
†‡† This Madoc arriuing in that Westerne countrie, vnto the which he came, in the yeare 1170. left most of his people there: and returning backe for more of his owne nation, acquaintance and freends, to inhabite that faire and large countrie: went thither againe with ten sailes, as I find noted by Gutyn Owen. Gutyn Owen. I am of opinion that the land, wherevnto he came, was some part of Mexico: the causes which make me to thinke so be these.
1 The common report of the inhabitants of that countrie, which affirme, that their rulers descended from a strange nation, that came thither from a farre countrie: which thing is confessed by Mutezuma king of that countrie, in his oration made for quieting of his people, at his submission to the king of Castile, Hernando Curteis being then present, which is laid downe in the Spanish Chron cles of the conquest of the West Indies.
2 The Brytish words and names of places, vsed in that countrie euen to this daie, doo argue the same as when they talke togither, they use this word Gwrando, which is, Hearken or listen. Also they haue a certeine bird with a white head, which they call Pengwin, that is, white head. But the Iland of Corroeso, the cape of Bryton, the riuer of Gwyndor, and the white rocke of Pengwyn, which be all Brytish or Welsh words, doo manifestlie shew that it was that countrie which Madoc and his people inhabited."
The footnotes 1 and 2 were taken from Sir George Peckham's true Report of the late discoueries, published in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. by Richard Hakluyt. See p. 14. (and here, Chapter III)
Context
It has been suggested that this reference to Madoc and America during the Elizabethan period was created to set a precedent and first discovery by the British Welsh people and justify England's colonial pretences in America during Queen Elizabeth the First's time. In 1586 the English established the short-lived English colony of Roanoke Island, in what is now North Carolina, and it failed. However, in 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh named the eastern coast Virgina, in honor of the Queen. Sir Humphrey Gibson claimed Newfoundland for England in 1583. Was Madoc "invented" to justify the English Crown's claim? (see p. 281 in the work quoted above, which uses Madoc to justify these territorial claims.)
Peckham quotes David Ingram, a British sailor who said he walked 2,000 km (3,200 miles) from Tampico in the Gulf of Mexico to Maine - Nova Scotia in 1566-69. He lived among the natives. It was Ingram who mentions the word "Gwrando" a Welsh greeting used by the natives. He also mentions them using the same name to identify penguins. But note that these are not those found in the southern Oceans, but the great auk (Pinguinus impennis), which was known as penguin or garefowl. It was exterminated by the mid-1800s. It is not related to the Southern penguins which were named after them, as they looked very similar (black and white, swimming, flightless birds). The English word "penguin" comes from the Welsh "pen" "gwyn" "white" and "head", respectively. Referring to the auk. Ingram was rescued by a French ship in 1569, in Nova Scotia. His journey was recorded, but that will be the subject of another post.
Other later mentions of Madoc
The image above comes from A Popular History of the United States (p. 66 onwards) by William Bryant and Sydney Gay (1888), which tells about Madoc and of reports from the late 1600s of a pale-skinned Native American tribe speaking a British language in North America. With later reports from the 1770s and 1780s, a tribe called Mandans, who had Welsh traits:
"Among them were in use certain words in which is a resemblance or a fancied resemblance to the old British language. In the manufacture of their pottery and in the making of blue beads they are said to have shown a superiority over the ordinary savage. Mr Catlin believed them to be a cross theory and between the Indians and the Welsh and is inclined to accept a theory favored also by some other writers that the Mandans are the descendants of the Mound Builders and that the builders of those numerous earth works were the people originating in Madoc's Colony. The boat they used Catlin says was more like the coracle of the Welsh than the canoe of other Indians and he asserts that in complexion in the color of their hair and eyes they seemed rather to be allied to the white than the red race"
Closing Comments
Madoc's voyages is an interesting story. But, is it True? It would be hard to find Welsh genes among the surviving Native Americans of the East Coast. They were decimated and expelled from their territories as the European settlers occupied the eastern seabord. Then the Indian Removal Act promoted by President Andrew Jackson and signed by him on May 28, 1830 led to the forced removal of all surviving Native American tribes in the East, to what is now Oklahoma, beyond the Mississippi River.
Did the Welsh bring Old World diseases with them? Did they share their European technology like iron smelting, farming, dogs, horses, or cattle with the natives? If they did, it seems that just as with the Vikings before them, who set up a small settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland c.1000 AD, the Natives didn't adopt the new knowledge, and probably liquidated the settlers, or expelled them.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©
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