Madoc
Encyclopedia
Madoc or Madog ab Owain Gwynedd was, according to folklore, a Welsh
prince who sailed to America
in 1170, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus
's voyage in 1492. According to the story, he was a son of Owain Gwynedd
who took to the sea to flee internecine violence at home. The legend evidently evolved out of a medieval tradition about a Welsh hero's sea voyage, only allusions to which survive. However, it attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era
, when English and Welsh writers made the claim that Madoc had come to the Americas as a ploy to assert prior discovery, and hence legal possession, of North America by the Kingdom of England
. The story remained popular in later centuries, and a later development asserted that Madoc's voyagers had intermarried with local Native Americans
, and that their Welsh-speaking descendants still lived somewhere on the American frontier. These "Welsh Indians" were accredited with the construction of a number of natural and man-made landmarks throughout the American Midwest
, and a number of white travellers were inspired to go and look for them.
The Madoc story has been the subject of much speculation in the context of possible pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
. No historical or archaeological proof of such a man or his voyages has been found in the New or Old World; however speculation abounds connecting him with certain sites, such as Devil's Backbone
, located on the Ohio River at Fourteen Mile Creek near Louisville, Kentucky
. The legend has provided fertile inspiration for generations of poets and novelists, and cultural historians.
, was a real prince of Gwynedd during the 12th century and is widely considered one of the greatest Welsh rulers of the Middle Ages
. His reign was fraught with battles with other Welsh princes and with Henry II of England
. At his death in 1170, a bloody dispute broke out between his heir Hywel
the Poet-Prince and Owain's younger sons Maelgwn
, Rhodri
, and led by Dafydd
, all three the sons of the Princess-Dowager Cristen. Owain had at least 13 children from his two wives and several more children born out of wedlock but legally acknowledged under Welsh tradition. According to the legend, Madoc and his brother Rhirid were among them, though no contemporary record attests to this.
The story claims that Madoc was disheartened by this fighting, and he and Rhirid set sail from Llandrillo (Rhos-on-Sea
) in the cantref of Rhos to explore the western ocean with a small fleet of boats. They discovered a distant and abundant land where one hundred men disembarked to form a colony, and Madoc and some others returned to Wales to recruit settlers. After gathering ten ships of men and women the prince sailed west a second time, never to return. Madoc's landing place has been suggested to be west Florida
or Mobile Bay
, Alabama
, in the United States
.
Although the folklore tradition acknowledges that no witness ever returned from the second colonial expedition to report this, the story continues that Madoc's colonists traveled up the vast river systems of North America
, raising structures and encountering friendly and unfriendly tribes of Native Americans
before finally settling down somewhere in the Midwest
or the Great Plains
.
A later development combined the story of Madoc's voyage with a colonial legend that an Indian
tribe speaking a European language existed somewhere on the American frontier. In the early tales, the white Indians' specific language ranged from Irish
to Portuguese
, and the tribe's name varied from teller to teller (often, the name was unattested elsewhere). However, later versions settled on Welsh
, and connected the tribe to the descendants of Madoc's settlers.
On November 26, 1608, Peter Wynne, a member of Captain Christopher Newport
's exploration party to the villages of the Eastern Siouan
Monacan above the falls of the James River
in Virginia
, wrote a letter to John Egerton
, informing him that some members of Newport's party believed the pronunciation of the Monacans' language resembled "Welch", which Wynne spoke, and asked Wynne to act as interpreter. The Monacan were among those non-Algonquian tribes collectively referred to by the Algonquians as "Mandoag". Another early settler to claim an encounter with a Welsh-speaking Indian was the Reverend Morgan Jones, who told Thomas Lloyd
, William Penn
's deputy, that he had been captured in 1669 by a tribe of Tuscarora
called the Doeg. According to Jones, the chief spared his life when he heard Jones speak Welsh, a tongue he understood. Jones' report says that he then lived with the Doeg for several months preaching the Gospel
in Welsh and then returned to the British Colonies
where he recorded his adventure in 1686. Historian Gwyn Williams
comments "This is a complete farrago and may have been intended as a hoax".
Several later travelers claimed to have found the Welsh Indians, and one even claimed the tribe he visited venerated a copy of the Gospel written in Welsh. Stories of Welsh Indians became popular enough that even Lewis and Clark were ordered to look out for them. Folk tradition has long claimed that a site now called "Devil's Backbone" about fourteen miles upstream from Louisville, Kentucky
, was once home to a colony of Welsh-speaking Indians. Eighteenth-century Missouri River
explorer John Evans
of Waunfawr
in Wales took up his journey in part to find the Welsh-descended "Padoucas" or "Madogwys" tribes.
There have been suggestions that the wall of Fort Mountain
in Georgia
owes its construction to a race of what the Cherokee
termed "moon-eyed people" because they could see better at night than by day. (A competing tradition claims that the wall was built by Hernando de Soto
to defend against the Creek
Indians around 1540.) Archaeologists believe the stones were placed there by Native Americans. These "moon-eyed people," who were said to have fair skin, blonde hair and opalescent eyes, have often been associated with Prince Madoc and his Welsh band. Benjamin Smith Barton proposed that these "moon-eyed people" who "could not see in the day-time" may have been an albino race. John Haywood also mentioned the legend in his The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee although the latter work was an effort to prove that the native tribes of Tennessee
were descendants of ancient Hebrews
.
There is also a theory that the "Welsh Caves" in Desoto State Park
, northeastern Alabama
, were built by Madoc's party, since local native tribes were not known to have ever practiced such stonework or excavation as was found on the site.
In 1810, John Sevier
, the first governor of Tennessee, wrote to his friend Major Amos Stoddard
about a conversation he had had in 1782 with the old Cherokee
chief Oconostota
concerning ancient fortifications built along the Alabama River
. The chief allegedly told him that the forts had been built by a white people called "Welsh", as protection against the ancestors of the Cherokee
, who eventually drove them from the region. Sevier had also written in 1799 of the alleged discovery of six skeletons in brass armor bearing the Welsh coat-of-arms.
suggested the Mandans were descendants of Madoc and his fellow voyagers in North American Indians (1841); he found the round Mandan Bull Boat similar to the Welsh coracle
, and he thought the advanced architecture of Mandan villages must have been learned from Europeans (advanced North American societies such as the Mississippian
and Hopewell culture
s were not well known in Catlin's time). Supporters of this claim have drawn links between Madoc and the Mandan mythological figure Lone Man, who, according to one tale, protected some villagers from a flooding river with a wooden corral.
, but no detailed version of it survives. The earliest certain reference appears in a cywydd
by the Welsh poet Maredudd ap Rhys
(fl. 1450-83) of Powys, which mentions a Madog who is a son or descendant of Owain Gwynedd and who voyaged to the sea. The poem is addressed to a local squire, thanking him for a fishing net on a patron's behalf. Madog is referred to as "Splendid Madog... / Of Owain Gwynedd's line, / He desired not land... / Or worldy wealth but the sea." There are also claims that the Welsh poet and genealogist Gutun Owain
wrote about Madoc before 1492. However, Gwyn Williams in Madoc, the Making of a Myth, makes it clear that Madoc is not mentioned in any of Gutun Owain's surviving manuscripts.
The story may also have been known on the continent. In the introduction to the Middle Dutch
poem Van den vos Reynaerde (About Reynard the Fox), the author Willem mentions that he had previously written a work called Madoc. This does not survive, but a number of subsequent Dutch writers refer to it. Willem's Madoc was possibly an adaptation of the Welsh Madoc story, though many of the later mentions associate the hero with a dream, perhaps instead identifying it as dream literature.
The Madoc legend attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era
, when Welsh and English writers used it bolster British
claims in the New World
versus those of Spain
. The earliest surviving full account of Madoc's voyage, as the first to make the claim that Madoc had come to America, appears in Humphrey Llwyd 1559 Cronica Walliae, an English adaptation of the Brut y Tywysogion
. The story soon became hugely popular. A Title Royal
was submitted to Queen Elizabeth in 1580 which stated that "The Lord Madoc, sonne to Owen Gwynned
, Prince of Gwynedd
, led a Colonie and inhabited in Terra Florida
or thereabouts" in 1170. An account of Madoc's story appears in George Peckham's A True Report of the late Discoveries of the Newfound Landes (1583). It was picked up in David Powel
's Historie of Cambria (1584) and Richard Hakluyt
's The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). John Dee
went so far as to assert that Brutus of Britain and King Arthur
as well as Madoc had conquered lands in the Americas and therefore their heir Elizabeth I of England
had a priority claim there.
The Welsh Indians were not claimed until over a century later. Morgan Jones' tract is the first account, and was printed by The Gentleman's Magazine
in 1740, launching a slew of publications on the subject. There is no genetic or archaeological evidence that the Mandan are related to the Welsh, however, and John Evans and Lewis and Clark reported they had found no Welsh Indians. The Mandan are still alive today; the tribe was decimated by a smallpox
epidemic in 1837-1838 and banded with the nearby Hidatsa
and Arikara
into the Three Affiliated Tribes
.
The Welsh Indian legend was revived in the 1840s and 1850s; this time the Zunis, Hopi
s, and Navajo
were claimed to be of Welsh descent, by George Ruxton
(Hopis, 1846), P. G. S. Ten Broeck (Zunis, 1854), and Abbé Emmanuel Domenach (Zunis, 1860), among others. Brigham Young
became interested in the supposed Hopi-Welsh connection: in 1858 Young sent a Welshman with Jacob Hamblin
to the Hopi mesas to check for Welsh-speakers there. None were found, but in 1863 Hamblin brought three Hopi men to Salt Lake City, where they were "besieged by Welshmen wanting them to utter Celtic words," to no avail. Llewellyn Harris, a Welsh-American Mormon missionary who visited the Zuni in 1878, wrote that they had many Welsh words in their language, and that they claimed their descent from the "Cambaraga"—white men who had come by sea 300 years before the Spanish. However, Harris' claims have never been independently verified.
The Madoc legend survived well into the twentieth century. In 1953, the Daughters of the American Revolution
erected a plaque on the shores of Mobile Bay, Alabama "In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer who landed… in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language." This plaque was later removed by the Alabama Parks Department.
, regard the story as myth. Madoc's legend has been a notable subject for poets, however. The most famous account in English is Robert Southey
's long 1805 poem Madoc
, which uses the story to explore the poet's freethinking and egalitarian ideals. Fittingly, Southey wrote Madoc to help finance a trip of his own to America, where he and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
hoped to establish a Utopian state they called a "Pantisocracy
". Southey's poem in turn inspired twentieth-century poet Paul Muldoon
to write Madoc: A Mystery, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
in 1992. It explores what may have happened if Southey and Coleridge had succeeded in coming to America to found their "ideal state". In Russian
, the noted poet Alexander S. Pushkin composed a short poem "Madoc in Wales" (Медок в Уаллах, 1829) on the topic.
Novelists have also handled the Madoc legend. Madeleine L'Engle
's 1978 science fiction novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet
imagines a descendant of Madoc who threatens the world with nuclear annihilation. In 1990 and 1991 Pat Winter published the two-volume Madoc Saga. Journalist James Alexander Thom
also researched Madoc's voyage for his 1995 novel The Children of First Man. The fantasy work Excalibur
, by American novelist Sanders Anne Laubenthal
, is set in Mobile
and is based on the presumption that Madoc brought King Arthur
's sword Excalibur
to the New World. James A. Owen
wrote the novel the Indigo King, in which it is discovered that Madoc was exiled from a place called the Archipelago of Dreams with his twin Myrddyn (who becomes Merlin
). Madoc was then banished in the Library of Alexandria
, until he becomes Mordred
and tries to become the High King Arthur
, but is eliminated.
The township of Madoc, Ontario
, and the nearby village of Madoc
are both named in the prince's memory, as are several local guest houses and pubs throughout North America and the United Kingdom. Despite suggestions to the contrary, the Welsh town of Porthmadog
(meaning "Madoc's Port" in English) and the village of Tremadog
("Madoc's Town") in the county of Gwynedd
are actually named after the industrialist and Member of Parliament
William Alexander Madocks
, their principal developer, rather than the legendary son of Owain Gwynedd. The Prince Madog, a research vessel owned by the University of Wales
and VT Group
, set sail on July 26, 2001, on her maiden voyage.
A plaque at Fort Mountain State Park
in Georgia recounts a nineteenth-century interpretation of the ancient stone wall that gives the site its name. The plaque repeats Tennessee governor John Sevier's statement that the Cherokees believed "a people called Welsh" had built a fort on the mountain long ago to repel Indian attacks.
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
prince who sailed to America
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
in 1170, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
's voyage in 1492. According to the story, he was a son of Owain Gwynedd
Owain Gwynedd
Owain Gwynedd ap Gruffydd , in English also known as Owen the Great, was King of Gwynedd from 1137 until his death in 1170. He is occasionally referred to as "Owain I of Gwynedd"; and as "Owain I of Wales" on account of his claim to be King of Wales. He is considered to be the most successful of...
who took to the sea to flee internecine violence at home. The legend evidently evolved out of a medieval tradition about a Welsh hero's sea voyage, only allusions to which survive. However, it attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era
Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign . Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history...
, when English and Welsh writers made the claim that Madoc had come to the Americas as a ploy to assert prior discovery, and hence legal possession, of North America by the Kingdom of England
Kingdom of England
The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England...
. The story remained popular in later centuries, and a later development asserted that Madoc's voyagers had intermarried with local Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
, and that their Welsh-speaking descendants still lived somewhere on the American frontier. These "Welsh Indians" were accredited with the construction of a number of natural and man-made landmarks throughout the American Midwest
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
, and a number of white travellers were inspired to go and look for them.
The Madoc story has been the subject of much speculation in the context of possible pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
Theories of Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact are those theories that propose interaction between indigenous peoples of the Americas who settled the Americas before 10,000 BC, and peoples of other continents , which occurred before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean in 1492.Many...
. No historical or archaeological proof of such a man or his voyages has been found in the New or Old World; however speculation abounds connecting him with certain sites, such as Devil's Backbone
Devil's Backbone (rock formation)
Devil's Backbone is a rock formation and peninsula formed by the flow of Fourteen Mile Creek into the Ohio River, and is currently situated in Charlestown State Park near Charlestown, Indiana...
, located on the Ohio River at Fourteen Mile Creek near Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
. The legend has provided fertile inspiration for generations of poets and novelists, and cultural historians.
Background
Madoc's purported father, Owain GwyneddOwain Gwynedd
Owain Gwynedd ap Gruffydd , in English also known as Owen the Great, was King of Gwynedd from 1137 until his death in 1170. He is occasionally referred to as "Owain I of Gwynedd"; and as "Owain I of Wales" on account of his claim to be King of Wales. He is considered to be the most successful of...
, was a real prince of Gwynedd during the 12th century and is widely considered one of the greatest Welsh rulers of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
. His reign was fraught with battles with other Welsh princes and with Henry II of England
Henry II of England
Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...
. At his death in 1170, a bloody dispute broke out between his heir Hywel
Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd
Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd Wales Prince of Gwynedd in 1170, a Welsh poet and military leader. Hywel was the son of Owain Gwynedd, prince of Gwynedd, and an Irishwoman named Pyfog. In recognition of this, he was also known as Hywel ap Gwyddeles...
the Poet-Prince and Owain's younger sons Maelgwn
Maelgwn ab Owain Gwynedd
Maelgwn ab Owain Gwynedd was a prince of part of Gwynedd.Maelgwn was the son of Owain Gwynedd and Gwladus ferch Llywarch ap Trahaearn, and therefore full brother to Iorwerth Drwyndwn, the father of Llywelyn the Great...
, Rhodri
Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd
Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd was prince of part of Gwynedd, one of the kingdoms of medieval Wales. He ruled from 1175 to 1195.On the death of Owain Gwynedd in 1170, fighting broke out among his nineteen sons over the division of his kingdom...
, and led by Dafydd
Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd
Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd was Prince of Gwynedd from 1170 to 1195. For a time he ruled jointly with his brothers Maelgwn ab Owain Gwynedd and Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd....
, all three the sons of the Princess-Dowager Cristen. Owain had at least 13 children from his two wives and several more children born out of wedlock but legally acknowledged under Welsh tradition. According to the legend, Madoc and his brother Rhirid were among them, though no contemporary record attests to this.
The story claims that Madoc was disheartened by this fighting, and he and Rhirid set sail from Llandrillo (Rhos-on-Sea
Rhos-on-Sea
Rhos-on-Sea also known as Llandrillo-yn-Rhos in Welsh, or Rhos or Llandrillo , is a seaside resort in Conwy County Borough, Wales. The population was 7,110 in 2001. It is a mile to the north but effectively a suburb of Colwyn Bay, on the coast of North Wales...
) in the cantref of Rhos to explore the western ocean with a small fleet of boats. They discovered a distant and abundant land where one hundred men disembarked to form a colony, and Madoc and some others returned to Wales to recruit settlers. After gathering ten ships of men and women the prince sailed west a second time, never to return. Madoc's landing place has been suggested to be west Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
or Mobile Bay
Mobile Bay
Mobile Bay is an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico, lying within the state of Alabama in the United States. Its mouth is formed by the Fort Morgan Peninsula on the eastern side and Dauphin Island, a barrier island on the western side. The Mobile River and Tensaw River empty into the northern end of the...
, Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Although the folklore tradition acknowledges that no witness ever returned from the second colonial expedition to report this, the story continues that Madoc's colonists traveled up the vast river systems of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, raising structures and encountering friendly and unfriendly tribes of Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
before finally settling down somewhere in the Midwest
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
or the Great Plains
Great Plains
The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...
.
Welsh Indians
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
tribe speaking a European language existed somewhere on the American frontier. In the early tales, the white Indians' specific language ranged from Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
to Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, and the tribe's name varied from teller to teller (often, the name was unattested elsewhere). However, later versions settled on Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, and connected the tribe to the descendants of Madoc's settlers.
On November 26, 1608, Peter Wynne, a member of Captain Christopher Newport
Christopher Newport
Christopher Newport was an English seaman and privateer. He is best known as the captain of the Susan Constant, the largest of three ships which carried settlers for the Virginia Company in 1607 on the way to find the settlement at Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, which became the first permanent...
's exploration party to the villages of the Eastern Siouan
Siouan languages
The Western Siouan languages, also called Siouan proper or simply Siouan, are a Native American language family of North America, and the second largest indigenous language family in North America, after Algonquian...
Monacan above the falls of the James River
James River (Virginia)
The James River is a river in the U.S. state of Virginia. It is long, extending to if one includes the Jackson River, the longer of its two source tributaries. The James River drains a catchment comprising . The watershed includes about 4% open water and an area with a population of 2.5 million...
in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, wrote a letter to John Egerton
John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater
John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater KB, PC was an English peer and politician.The son of the Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley and Elizabeth Ravenscroft, he was a Member of Parliament for Callington from 1597 to 1598, and for Shropshire in 1601. Knighted on 8 April 1599, he was Baron of the...
, informing him that some members of Newport's party believed the pronunciation of the Monacans' language resembled "Welch", which Wynne spoke, and asked Wynne to act as interpreter. The Monacan were among those non-Algonquian tribes collectively referred to by the Algonquians as "Mandoag". Another early settler to claim an encounter with a Welsh-speaking Indian was the Reverend Morgan Jones, who told Thomas Lloyd
Thomas Lloyd (lieutenant governor)
Thomas Lloyd was a lieutenant-governor of provincial Pennsylvania.He was born in Dolobran, Montgomeryshire, Wales, and subsequently educated at Ruthin School. He studied law and medicine at Jesus College, Oxford, from which he was graduated in 1661...
, William Penn
William Penn
William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful...
's deputy, that he had been captured in 1669 by a tribe of Tuscarora
Tuscarora (tribe)
The Tuscarora are a Native American people of the Iroquoian-language family, with members in New York, Canada, and North Carolina...
called the Doeg. According to Jones, the chief spared his life when he heard Jones speak Welsh, a tongue he understood. Jones' report says that he then lived with the Doeg for several months preaching the Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
in Welsh and then returned to the British Colonies
British colonization of the Americas
British colonization of the Americas began in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia and reached its peak when colonies had been established throughout the Americas...
where he recorded his adventure in 1686. Historian Gwyn Williams
Gwyn A. Williams
Gwyn Alfred "Alf" Williams was a Welsh historian particularly known for his work on Antonio Gramsci and Francisco Goya as well as on Welsh history.- Life :...
comments "This is a complete farrago and may have been intended as a hoax".
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
, was once home to a colony of Welsh-speaking Indians. Eighteenth-century Missouri River
Missouri River
The Missouri River flows through the central United States, and is a tributary of the Mississippi River. It is the longest river in North America and drains the third largest area, though only the thirteenth largest by discharge. The Missouri's watershed encompasses most of the American Great...
explorer John Evans
John Evans (explorer)
John Thomas Evans was a Welsh explorer who produced an early map of the Missouri River.John Evans was born in Waunfawr, near Caernarfon...
of Waunfawr
Waunfawr
Waunfawr is a large village on the outskirts of the Snowdonia National Park, Gwynedd, in North Wales, south of Llanrug. Its population is roughly 1,500...
in Wales took up his journey in part to find the Welsh-descended "Padoucas" or "Madogwys" tribes.
There have been suggestions that the wall of Fort Mountain
Fort Mountain (Murray County, Georgia)
Fort Mountain is a mountain in northern Georgia, just east of Chatsworth. It is part of the Cohutta Mountains, a small mountain range at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. It also lies within the Chattahoochee National Forest....
in Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
owes its construction to a race of what the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
termed "moon-eyed people" because they could see better at night than by day. (A competing tradition claims that the wall was built by Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto (explorer)
Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who, while leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, was the first European documented to have crossed the Mississippi River....
to defend against the Creek
Creek people
The Muscogee , also known as the Creek or Creeks, are a Native American people traditionally from the southeastern United States. Mvskoke is their name in traditional spelling. The modern Muscogee live primarily in Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida...
Indians around 1540.) Archaeologists believe the stones were placed there by Native Americans. These "moon-eyed people," who were said to have fair skin, blonde hair and opalescent eyes, have often been associated with Prince Madoc and his Welsh band. Benjamin Smith Barton proposed that these "moon-eyed people" who "could not see in the day-time" may have been an albino race. John Haywood also mentioned the legend in his The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee although the latter work was an effort to prove that the native tribes of Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
were descendants of ancient Hebrews
Hebrews
Hebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...
.
There is also a theory that the "Welsh Caves" in Desoto State Park
DeSoto State Park
DeSoto State Park is located in northeast Alabama, near Fort Payne. Named after Hernando de Soto, it was developed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps after the Great Depression. The park's natural scenery includes more than of forest, rivers, waterfalls, and beautiful mountain terrain...
, northeastern Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, were built by Madoc's party, since local native tribes were not known to have ever practiced such stonework or excavation as was found on the site.
In 1810, John Sevier
John Sevier
John Sevier served four years as the only governor of the State of Franklin and twelve years as Governor of Tennessee. As a U.S. Representative from Tennessee from 1811 until his death...
, the first governor of Tennessee, wrote to his friend Major Amos Stoddard
Amos Stoddard
Amos Stoddard was born on October 26, 1762 to Anthony and Phebe Stoddard in Woodbury, Connecticut. He married Catherine Tallman. He died at Fort Meigs on May 11, 1813, where he was the artillery commander. Before this, he was commandant of Upper Louisiana.-Military and political career:He served...
about a conversation he had had in 1782 with the old Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
chief Oconostota
Oconostota
Oconostota was the Warrior of Chota and the First Beloved Man of the Cherokee from 1775 to 1781.-Meaning of the name:...
concerning ancient fortifications built along the Alabama River
Alabama River
The Alabama River, in the U.S. state of Alabama, is formed by the Tallapoosa and Coosa rivers, which unite about north of Montgomery.The river flows west to Selma, then southwest until, about from Mobile, it unites with the Tombigbee, forming the Mobile and Tensaw rivers, which discharge into...
. The chief allegedly told him that the forts had been built by a white people called "Welsh", as protection against the ancestors of the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
, who eventually drove them from the region. Sevier had also written in 1799 of the alleged discovery of six skeletons in brass armor bearing the Welsh coat-of-arms.
Mandans
In all, at least thirteen real tribes, five unidentified tribes, and three unnamed tribes have been identified as Welsh Indians. Eventually, the legend settled on identifying the Welsh Indians with the Mandan people, who were said to differ from their neighbors in culture, language, and appearance. The painter George CatlinGeorge Catlin
George Catlin was an American painter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West.-Early years:...
suggested the Mandans were descendants of Madoc and his fellow voyagers in North American Indians (1841); he found the round Mandan Bull Boat similar to the Welsh coracle
Coracle
The coracle is a small, lightweight boat of the sort traditionally used in Wales but also in parts of Western and South Western England, Ireland , and Scotland ; the word is also used of similar boats found in India, Vietnam, Iraq and Tibet...
, and he thought the advanced architecture of Mandan villages must have been learned from Europeans (advanced North American societies such as the Mississippian
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
and Hopewell culture
Hopewell culture
The Hopewell tradition is the term used to describe common aspects of the Native American culture that flourished along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern United States from 200 BCE to 500 CE. The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society, but a widely dispersed set of related...
s were not well known in Catlin's time). Supporters of this claim have drawn links between Madoc and the Mandan mythological figure Lone Man, who, according to one tale, protected some villagers from a flooding river with a wooden corral.
Sources of the legend
The Madoc story evidently originated in medieval romance. There are allusions to what may have been a sea voyage tale akin to The Voyage of Saint BrendanBrendan
Saint Brendan of Clonfert or Bréanainn of Clonfert called "the Navigator", "the Voyager", or "the Bold" is one of the early Irish monastic saints. He is chiefly renowned for his legendary quest to the "Isle of the Blessed," also called St. Brendan's Island. The Voyage of St...
, but no detailed version of it survives. The earliest certain reference appears in a cywydd
Cywydd
The cywydd is one of the most important metrical forms in Welsh traditional poetry.There are a variety of forms of the cywydd, but the word on its own is generally used to refer to the cywydd deuair hirion as it is by far the most common type.The first recorded examples of the cywydd date from the...
by the Welsh poet Maredudd ap Rhys
Maredudd ap Rhys
Maredudd ap Rhys was a Welsh language poet and priest from Powys.Maredudd composed poems on themes of love, religion and nature.He is thought to have been the bardic tutor to Dafydd ab Edmwnd.-References:...
(fl. 1450-83) of Powys, which mentions a Madog who is a son or descendant of Owain Gwynedd and who voyaged to the sea. The poem is addressed to a local squire, thanking him for a fishing net on a patron's behalf. Madog is referred to as "Splendid Madog... / Of Owain Gwynedd's line, / He desired not land... / Or worldy wealth but the sea." There are also claims that the Welsh poet and genealogist Gutun Owain
Gutun Owain
Gutun Owain was a Welsh language poet. Gutun Owain was born near Oswestry in what is now north Shropshire and was a student of Dafydd ab Edmwnd....
wrote about Madoc before 1492. However, Gwyn Williams in Madoc, the Making of a Myth, makes it clear that Madoc is not mentioned in any of Gutun Owain's surviving manuscripts.
The story may also have been known on the continent. In the introduction to the Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects which were spoken and written between 1150 and 1500...
poem Van den vos Reynaerde (About Reynard the Fox), the author Willem mentions that he had previously written a work called Madoc. This does not survive, but a number of subsequent Dutch writers refer to it. Willem's Madoc was possibly an adaptation of the Welsh Madoc story, though many of the later mentions associate the hero with a dream, perhaps instead identifying it as dream literature.
The Madoc legend attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era
Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign . Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history...
, when Welsh and English writers used it bolster British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
claims in the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
versus those of Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. The earliest surviving full account of Madoc's voyage, as the first to make the claim that Madoc had come to America, appears in Humphrey Llwyd 1559 Cronica Walliae, an English adaptation of the Brut y Tywysogion
Brut y Tywysogion
Brut y Tywysogion is one of the most important primary sources for Welsh history. It is an annalistic chronicle that serves as a continuation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. Brut y Tywysogion has survived as several Welsh translations of an original Latin version, which has...
. The story soon became hugely popular. A Title Royal
Royal Charter
A royal charter is a formal document issued by a monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. They were, and are still, used to establish significant organizations such as cities or universities. Charters should be distinguished from warrants and...
was submitted to Queen Elizabeth in 1580 which stated that "The Lord Madoc, sonne to Owen Gwynned
Owain Gwynedd
Owain Gwynedd ap Gruffydd , in English also known as Owen the Great, was King of Gwynedd from 1137 until his death in 1170. He is occasionally referred to as "Owain I of Gwynedd"; and as "Owain I of Wales" on account of his claim to be King of Wales. He is considered to be the most successful of...
, Prince of Gwynedd
Kingdom of Gwynedd
Gwynedd was one petty kingdom of several Welsh successor states which emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages, and later evolved into a principality during the High Middle Ages. It was based on the former Brythonic tribal lands of the Ordovices, Gangani, and the...
, led a Colonie and inhabited in Terra Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
or thereabouts" in 1170. An account of Madoc's story appears in George Peckham's A True Report of the late Discoveries of the Newfound Landes (1583). It was picked up in David Powel
David Powel
David Powel was a Welsh Church of England clergyman and historian who published the first printed history of Wales in 1584.-Life:...
's Historie of Cambria (1584) and Richard Hakluyt
Richard Hakluyt
Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is principally remembered for his efforts in promoting and supporting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and...
's The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). John Dee
John Dee
John Dee was a Welsh mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I.John Dee may also refer to:* John Dee , Basketball coach...
went so far as to assert that Brutus of Britain and King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
as well as Madoc had conquered lands in the Americas and therefore their heir Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
had a priority claim there.
The Welsh Indians were not claimed until over a century later. Morgan Jones' tract is the first account, and was printed by The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
in 1740, launching a slew of publications on the subject. There is no genetic or archaeological evidence that the Mandan are related to the Welsh, however, and John Evans and Lewis and Clark reported they had found no Welsh Indians. The Mandan are still alive today; the tribe was decimated by a smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
epidemic in 1837-1838 and banded with the nearby Hidatsa
Hidatsa
The Hidatsa are a Siouan people, a part of the Three Affiliated Tribes. The Hidatsa's autonym is Hiraacá. According to the tribal tradition, the word hiraacá derives from the word "willow"; however, the etymology is not transparent and the similarity to mirahací ‘willows’ inconclusive...
and Arikara
Arikara
Arikara are a group of Native Americans in North Dakota...
into the Three Affiliated Tribes
Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation
Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, are a Native American group comprising a union of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples, whose native lands ranged across the Missouri River basin in the Dakotas...
.
The Welsh Indian legend was revived in the 1840s and 1850s; this time the Zunis, Hopi
Hopi
The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...
s, and Navajo
Navajo people
The Navajo of the Southwestern United States are the largest single federally recognized tribe of the United States of America. The Navajo Nation has 300,048 enrolled tribal members. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body which manages the Navajo Indian reservation in the...
were claimed to be of Welsh descent, by George Ruxton
George Ruxton
George Frederick Ruxton was a British explorer and travel writer who observed the expansion of America in the 1840s during the period when the US government was pursuing its policy of manifest destiny...
(Hopis, 1846), P. G. S. Ten Broeck (Zunis, 1854), and Abbé Emmanuel Domenach (Zunis, 1860), among others. Brigham Young
Brigham Young
Brigham Young was an American leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and a settler of the Western United States. He was the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death in 1877, he founded Salt Lake City, and he served as the first governor of the Utah...
became interested in the supposed Hopi-Welsh connection: in 1858 Young sent a Welshman with Jacob Hamblin
Jacob Hamblin
Jacob Vernon Hamblin was a Western pioneer, Mormon missionary, and diplomat to various Native American Tribes of the Southwest and Great Basin. During his life, he helped settle large areas of southern Utah and northern Arizona where he was seen as an honest broker between Mormon settlers and the...
to the Hopi mesas to check for Welsh-speakers there. None were found, but in 1863 Hamblin brought three Hopi men to Salt Lake City, where they were "besieged by Welshmen wanting them to utter Celtic words," to no avail. Llewellyn Harris, a Welsh-American Mormon missionary who visited the Zuni in 1878, wrote that they had many Welsh words in their language, and that they claimed their descent from the "Cambaraga"—white men who had come by sea 300 years before the Spanish. However, Harris' claims have never been independently verified.
The Madoc legend survived well into the twentieth century. In 1953, the Daughters of the American Revolution
Daughters of the American Revolution
The Daughters of the American Revolution is a lineage-based membership organization for women who are descended from a person involved in United States' independence....
erected a plaque on the shores of Mobile Bay, Alabama "In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer who landed… in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language." This plaque was later removed by the Alabama Parks Department.
Later speculation and fiction
Several attempts to confirm Madoc's historicity have been made, but historians of early America, notably Samuel Eliot MorisonSamuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years...
, regard the story as myth. Madoc's legend has been a notable subject for poets, however. The most famous account in English is Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
's long 1805 poem Madoc
Madoc (poem)
Madoc is an 1805 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. It is based on the legend of Madoc, a supposed Welsh prince who fled internecine conflict and sailed to America in the 12th century. The origins of the poem can be traced to Southey's school boy days where he completed a prose version of...
, which uses the story to explore the poet's freethinking and egalitarian ideals. Fittingly, Southey wrote Madoc to help finance a trip of his own to America, where he and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
hoped to establish a Utopian state they called a "Pantisocracy
Pantisocracy
Pantisocracy was a utopian scheme devised in 1794 by the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey for an egalitarian community...
". Southey's poem in turn inspired twentieth-century poet Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
to write Madoc: A Mystery, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman publisher Faber & Faber...
in 1992. It explores what may have happened if Southey and Coleridge had succeeded in coming to America to found their "ideal state". In Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, the noted poet Alexander S. Pushkin composed a short poem "Madoc in Wales" (Медок в Уаллах, 1829) on the topic.
Novelists have also handled the Madoc legend. Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time...
's 1978 science fiction novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
A Swiftly Tilting Planet is a 1978 science fiction novel by Madeleine L'Engle, part of the Time Quartet. In it, Charles Wallace Murry, an advanced and perceptive child in A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door, has grown into adolescence...
imagines a descendant of Madoc who threatens the world with nuclear annihilation. In 1990 and 1991 Pat Winter published the two-volume Madoc Saga. Journalist James Alexander Thom
James Alexander Thom
James Alexander Thom is an American author, most famous for his works in the Western genre and colonial American history; known for their historical accuracy borne of his painstaking research. Born in Gosport, Indiana, he graduated from Butler University and served in the United States Marine Corps...
also researched Madoc's voyage for his 1995 novel The Children of First Man. The fantasy work Excalibur
Excalibur (novel)
Excalibur is a 1973 Arthurian fantasy novel by American writer Sanders Anne Laubenthal. It was first published by Ballantine Books as the sixtieth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in August, 1973, and has been reprinted a number of times since.-Plot summary:The novel is set in modern...
, by American novelist Sanders Anne Laubenthal
Sanders Anne Laubenthal
Sanders Anne Laubenthal was an American poet, novelist, historian and textbook writer. Much of her work concerns Mobile, Alabama, of which she was a native. She also wrote about the history of unrecorded areas of Scotland...
, is set in Mobile
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
and is based on the presumption that Madoc brought King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
's sword Excalibur
Excalibur
Excalibur is the legendary sword of King Arthur, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain. Sometimes Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are said to be the same weapon, but in most versions they are considered separate. The sword was...
to the New World. James A. Owen
James A. Owen
James A. Owen is an American comic book creator, publisher and writer. He is best known for his creator-owned comic book series Starchild and as the author of The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica novel series, that began with Here, There Be Dragons in 2006.-Life and career:Owen...
wrote the novel the Indigo King, in which it is discovered that Madoc was exiled from a place called the Archipelago of Dreams with his twin Myrddyn (who becomes Merlin
Merlin
Merlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in the Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures...
). Madoc was then banished in the Library of Alexandria
Library of Alexandria
The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship from its construction in the...
, until he becomes Mordred
Mordred
Mordred or Modred is a character in the Arthurian legend, known as a notorious traitor who fought King Arthur at the Battle of Camlann, where he was killed and Arthur fatally wounded. Tradition varies on his relationship to Arthur, but he is best known today as Arthur's illegitimate son by his...
and tries to become the High King Arthur
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
, but is eliminated.
The township of Madoc, Ontario
Madoc, Ontario
Madoc is a township in Eastern Ontario, Canada, in Hastings County.The township was named after legendary Welsh prince Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd, credited by some with discovering North America in 1170.-Communities:...
, and the nearby village of Madoc
Madoc, Ontario (town)
Madoc is a community in the municipality of Centre Hastings, Hastings County, Ontario, Canada. It is located at the junction of Highway 7 and Highway 62, southeast of Bancroft, halfway between Toronto and Ottawa.-History:...
are both named in the prince's memory, as are several local guest houses and pubs throughout North America and the United Kingdom. Despite suggestions to the contrary, the Welsh town of Porthmadog
Porthmadog
Porthmadog , known locally as "Port", and historically rendered into English as Portmadoc, is a small coastal town and community in the Eifionydd area of Gwynedd, in Wales. Prior to the Local Government Act 1972 it was in the administrative county of Caernarfonshire. The town lies east of...
(meaning "Madoc's Port" in English) and the village of Tremadog
Tremadog
Tremadog is a village on the outskirts of Porthmadog, in Gwynedd, north west Wales. It was a planned settlement, founded by William Madocks, who bought the land in 1798...
("Madoc's Town") in the county of Gwynedd
Gwynedd
Gwynedd is a county in north-west Wales, named after the old Kingdom of Gwynedd. Although the second biggest in terms of geographical area, it is also one of the most sparsely populated...
are actually named after the industrialist and Member of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
William Alexander Madocks
William Madocks
William Alexander Madocks was a landowner and Member of Parliament for the town of Boston in Lincolnshire from 1802 to 1820, and then for Chippenham in Wiltshire from 1820 to 1826...
, their principal developer, rather than the legendary son of Owain Gwynedd. The Prince Madog, a research vessel owned by the University of Wales
University of Wales
The University of Wales was a confederal university founded in 1893. It had accredited institutions throughout Wales, and formerly accredited courses in Britain and abroad, with over 100,000 students, but in October 2011, after a number of scandals, it withdrew all accreditation, and it was...
and VT Group
VT Group
VT Group plc was a British defence and services company, formerly known as Vosper Thornycroft. The Company had diversified from shipbuilding into various engineering and support services, becoming involved in many areas of provision through five main operating groups: VT Communications, VT...
, set sail on July 26, 2001, on her maiden voyage.
A plaque at Fort Mountain State Park
Fort Mountain State Park
Fort Mountain State Park is a 3,712 acre Georgia state park located between Chatsworth and Ellijay on Fort Mountain. The mountain is named for an ancient 885 foot long rock wall located on the peak. The wall is thought to have been built by area Native Americans either for defense or for...
in Georgia recounts a nineteenth-century interpretation of the ancient stone wall that gives the site its name. The plaque repeats Tennessee governor John Sevier's statement that the Cherokees believed "a people called Welsh" had built a fort on the mountain long ago to repel Indian attacks.
Fiction
- Olson, Dana (2001?): The legend of Prince Madoc: Discoverer of America in 1170 A.D. and the history of the Welsh colonists, also known as the White Indians or the Moon-Eyed People. Jeffersonville, Ind.: Olson Enterprises. ISBN 9780967790305
- Thom, James AlexanderJames Alexander ThomJames Alexander Thom is an American author, most famous for his works in the Western genre and colonial American history; known for their historical accuracy borne of his painstaking research. Born in Gosport, Indiana, he graduated from Butler University and served in the United States Marine Corps...
(1994): The Children of First Man. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 9780345370051 - Winter, Pat (1990): Madoc. New York: Bantam. ISBN 9780413394507
- Winter, Pat (1991): Madoc's Hundred. New York: Bantam. ISBN 9780553285215
- Knight, Bernard, "Madoc, Prince of America", New York: St Martin's Press (1977)
- Lee Waldo, AnnaAnna Lee WaldoAnna Lee Waldo is an American historical fiction author. She is most noted for her novel, Sacajawea.-Biography:Anna Lee Waldo was born in 1925 in Great Falls, Montana, growing up in Whitefish...
(1999): "Circle of Stones". New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312970611 - Lee Waldo, Anna (2001): Circle of Stars. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312203801
- L'Engle, MadeleineMadeleine L'EngleMadeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her young-adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time...
(1978): A Swiftly Tilting Planet. New York: Dell Publishing. ISBN 0440401585 - Pryce, MalcolmMalcolm PryceFor the footballer, see Malcolm Price.Malcolm Pryce is a British author, mostly known for his noir detective novels.Born in Shrewsbury, England, Pryce moved at the age of nine to Aberystwyth, where he later attended Penglais Comprehensive School before leaving to do some travelling. After working...
(2005): With Madog to the New World. Y Lolfa. ISBN 9780862437589 - Rosemary Clement-Moore (2009): The Splendor Falls. Delacorte Books for Young Readers. ISBN 9780385736909
Juvenile fiction
- Pugh, Ellen (1970): Brave His Soul: The Story of Prince Madog of Wales and His Discovery of America in 1170. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. ISBN 9780396061908
- Thomas, Gwyn and Margaret Jones (2005): Madog. Talybont: Y Lolfa Cyf. ISBN 0862437660
Poetry
- Muldoon, Paul (1990): Madoc: A Mystery. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-14488-8 – New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-19557-9
- Southey, Robert (1805): Madoc. London : Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and A. Constable and Co. Edinburgh. 19 editions. eBook
External links
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- Williams, John, 1791: