WINs = White Indian Negroes
RHOS-ON-SEA, Wales, UK–The story of a Welsh prince beating Christopher Columbus to it by 300 years was the stuff of myths and legends.
Stories of Madoc's voyage to the New World in 1170 didn't make it into the school curriculum when I was growing up in North Wales in the 1960s, but that didn't matter. Madoc was our hometown son who had made history, or so the story went.
The Madoc story gained recognition in North America more than a decade earlier when in 1953, Washington D.C.- based Daughters of the American Revolution erected two plaques – one in Rhos-on-Sea, the other in Mobile, Ala. – commemorating Madoc's voyage.
The plaques read "In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170 and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language."
Historians delight in debunking the Madoc story, pointing out Penrhyn Bay, Rhos-on-Sea on the North Wales coast, where Madoc was supposed to have set sail, was far too shallow for a ship big enough to cross the Atlantic. Yet, during excavations for a garden for a Rhos-on-Sea home, remains of an ancient harbour were discovered.
In Wales – with a population of three million on the west side of Great Britain where 18 per cent of the population speak the Celtic language – Howard Kimberley has founded the Madoc International Research Association, hoping to find the truth.
Kimberley, 63, a former engineer who spent years researching the Madoc story, says many historians dismiss it as an Elizabethan invention, created to lay prior claim on the New World by saying that Madoc discovered America 300 years before Columbus.
But Kimberley says he has found copies of references to Madoc that pre-date the reign of Elizabeth I and Columbus' trips.
Kimberley, studying for a master's degree in Celtic History at the University of Wales in the hopes of uncovering more evidence, wants to raise funds to cover the cost of DNA tests to help prove the Madoc story.
The challenge is obtaining permission to test Native American bone samples that pre-date Columbus. Kimberley has found an ally in a Shawnee "wisdom-keeper" named Ken Lonewolf.
Lonewolf, 67, from the Pittsburgh area, believes he is descended from a tribe of Welsh Indians and is working on persuading U.S. authorities to release samples for DNA testing and carbon dating.
"Our last Shawnee leader was named Chief White Madoc; this name must have been passed down for many generations," says Lonewolf. "This was our chief who sold our village to white settlers in the late 1790s. This is not a figment of my imagination, but a matter of county court record dating to the late 1790's or early 1800's."
DNA tests have already determined that Lonewolf and Kimberley, whose female ancestors are Welsh, share the mitochondrial (female) DNA. "Now there's a coincidence," says Kimberley. "What we can't prove is when Lonewolf acquired a Welsh ancestor."
Dana Olson, 59, of Jeffersonville, Ind., has also investigated the story and wrote a popular book, Prince Madoc and the White Indians.
Olson's interest began when he was researching another book and discovered a stone fortification near Falls of the Ohio, Ind.
Olson went on to discover numerous other forts in Tennessee, Missouri and Alabama said to be similar to forts built in Wales.
"The physical evidence supports the recurring theory that the Welsh voyager penetrated far into the interior of America where he established a chain of fortifications and stoneworks that still exist today."
European and American explorers told stories of pale-skinned, Welsh-speaking Indians and Olson points to George Caitlin who lived with the Mandan Indians in Missouri in the early 1800s. Caitlin, considered the greatest Indian painter of the early American period, reported the Mandans, largely wiped out by a smallpox epidemic in 1837, spoke Welsh, says Olson.
Olson admits that there isn't unequivocal evidence of Madoc's existence. "But the evidence that we do have keeps expanding. I think it is so important to keep working on it because of the historical significance," says Olson.
David Klausner, professor of English and Medieval studies at the University of Toronto, calls the Madoc story "persistent" but favours the theory that the Elizabethans or the Tudor kings of England invented it for political gain.
But early Celtic narrative does mention legendary voyages to the Western Isles, says Klausner.
Klausner also points out that the stories of Norse voyagers discovering Vinland were thought to be myths until the discovery of L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.
So I ask Klausner if it is possible that one day, undeniable evidence of Madoc's voyages will be found.
"There is always the possibility," says Klausner.
