In Welsh folklore, Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd (also spelled Madog) was a Welsh prince who sailed to the Americas in 1170, over 300 years before Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492. According to the story, Madoc was a son of Owain Gwynedd who went to sea to flee internecine violence at home. The "Madoc story" evolved from a medieval tradition about a Welsh hero's sea voyage, of which only allusions survive. The story reached its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era when English and Welsh writers wrote of the claim Madoc had gone to the Americas as an assertion of prior discovery, and hence legal possession, of North America by the Kingdom of England.
The Madoc story remained popular in later centuries, and a later development said Madoc's voyagers had intermarried with local Native Americans, and that their Welsh-speaking descendants still live in the United States. These "Welsh Indians" were credited with the construction of landmarks in the Midwestern United States, and a number of white travellers were inspired to search for them. The Madoc story has been the subject of much fantasy in the context of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories. No archaeological, linguistic, or other evidence of Madoc or his voyages has been found in the New or Old World but legends connect him with certain sites, such as Devil's Backbone on the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky.
Family story
Owain Gwynedd, who according to the legend was Madoc's father, was a real 12th-century king of Gwynedd and is considered one of the greatest Welsh rulers of the Middle Ages. Owain's 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 Owain's heir Hywel the Poet-Prince, and Owain's younger sons Maelgwn and Rhodri—children of the Princess-Dowager Cristin verch Goronwy—and was led by Dafydd, the child of Gwladus ferch Llywarch. Owain had at least 13 children from his two wives and several more children were born out of wedlock but legally acknowledged under Welsh tradition. According to the legend, Madoc and his brother Rhirid or Rhiryd were among them, though no contemporary record attests to this.
The name Madog The poet Llywarch ap Llywelyn of the 12th and 13th centuries did mention someone of this name as someone who fought in Conwy, North Wales, and in another poem reports one Madog to have been murdered.
Voyages attestation Mediaeval texts
The earliest certain reference to a seafaring man named Madoc or Madog occurs in a by the Welsh poet Maredudd ap Rhys (fl. 1450–1483) of Powys that mentions a Madog who was a descendant of Owain Gwynedd and who voyaged to the sea. The poem is addressed to a local squire, thanking him on a patron's behalf for a fishing net. Madog is referred to as "Splendid Madog ... / Of Owain Gwynedd's line, / He desired not land ... / Or worldly wealth but the sea".
In around 1250 to 1255, a Flemish writer called Willem identifies himself in his poem Van den Vos Reinaerde as "Willem die Madoc maecte" (Willem, the author of Madoc, known as "Willem the Minstrel"). Though no copies of Willem's "Madoc" survive, according to Gwyn Williams: "In the seventeenth century a fragment of a reputed copy of the work is said to have been found in Poitiers". The text provides no topographical details about North America but says Madoc, who is not related to Owain in the fragment, discovered an island paradise, where he intended "to launch a new kingdom of love and music". There are also claims the Welsh poet and genealogist Gutun Owain wrote about Madoc before 1492. Gwyn Williams in Madoc, the Making of a Myth said Madoc is not mentioned in any of Gutun Owain's surviving manuscripts.
Elizabethan and Stuart claims to the New World The Madoc legend reached its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era, when Welsh and English writers used it to bolster British claims in the New World against those of Spain. The earliest-surviving full account of Madoc's voyage, the first to make the claim Madoc visited America before Columbus, appears in Humphrey Llwyd's Cronica Walliae (published in 1559), an English adaptation of the Brut y Tywysogion.
John Dee used Llwyd's manuscript when he submitted the treatise "Title Royal" to Queen Elizabeth I in 1580, which stated: "The Lord Madoc, sonne to Owen Gwynned, Prince of Gwynedd, led a Colonie and inhabited in Terra Florida or thereabouts" in 1170. The story was first published by George Peckham as A True Report of the late Discoveries of the Newfound Landes (1583) and, like Dee, it was used to support English claims to the Americas. The story 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). According to Dee, not only Madoc, but also Brutus of Troy and King Arthur, had conquered lands in the Americas and therefore their heir Elizabeth I had a priority claim there.
According to the 1584 Historie of Cambria by David Powel, Madoc was disheartened by this family fighting, and he and Rhirid set sail from Llandrillo (Rhos-on-Sea) in the cantref of Rhos to explore the western ocean. In 1170, they purportedly discovered a distant, abundant land where about 100 men, women and children disembarked to form a colony. According to Cronica Walliae and many works derived from it, Madoc and some others returned to Wales to recruit additional settlers. After gathering eleven ships and 120 men, women and children, Madoc and his recruiters sailed west a second time to "that Westerne countrie", and ported in "Mexico", a claim Reuben T. Durrett cited in his work Traditions of the earliest visits of foreigners to north America, and stated Madoc never returned again to Wales.
In 1624, John Smith, a historian of Virginia, used the Chronicles of Wales to report that Madoc went to the New World in 1170, over 300 years before Columbus, with some men and women. Smith says the Chronicles say Madoc returned to Wales to get more people and traveled back to the New World. In the late 1600s, Thomas Herbert popularised the stories told by Dee and Powel, adding more detail from unknown sources, suggesting Madoc may have landed in Canada, Florida, or Mexico, and reporting Mexican sources stated they used currachs.
"Welsh Indians" as potential descendants As immigrants came into contact with more groups of Native Americans in the United States, at least thirteen real tribes, five unidentified tribes, and three unnamed tribes have been suggested as "Welsh Indians". Eventually, the legend settled on identifying the Welsh Indians with the Mandan people, who were said to differ from their neighbours in culture, language, and appearance. Nevertheless, historians of early America, notably including Samuel Eliot Morison agree that the voyage story is fictional.
On 26 November 1608, Peter Wynne, a member of Captain Christopher Newport's exploration party to the villages of the Monacan people—Virginia Siouan speakers above the falls of the James River in Virginia—wrote a letter to John Egerton informing him some members of Newport's party believed the pronunciation of the Monacans' language resembled "Welch", which Wynne spoke, and asked Wynne to act as an interpreter. The Monacan were among those non-Algonquian tribes the Algonquians collectively referred to as "Mandoag". The Monacan tribe spoke to Wynne about the lore of the Moon-eyed people who were short bearded men with blue eyes and pale skin, they were sensitive to light and only emerged at night. The story has been associated with the legend of the Welsh settlement of Madog in the Great Smoky Mountains within the Appalachian Mountains.
The Reverend Morgan Jones told Thomas Lloyd, William Penn's deputy, he had been captured in 1669 in North Carolina by members of a tribe identified as the Doeg, who were said to be a part of the Tuscarora. There is no evidence the Doeg proper were part of the Tuscarora. According to Jones, the chief spared his life when he heard Jones speak Welsh, which he understood. Jones' report says he lived for several months with the Doeg, preaching the Gospel in Welsh, and then returned to the British Colonies, where he recorded his adventure in 1686 in a letter originally sent to Lloyd which after passing through other hands was printed in The Gentleman's Magazine by Theophilus Evans, Vicar of St David's in Brecon. This launched a slew of publications on the subject. The historian Gwyn A. Williams commented: "This is a complete farrago and may have been intended as a hoax".
Thomas Jefferson had heard of Welsh-speaking Indian tribes. In a letter written to Meriwether Lewis on 22 January 1804, Jefferson wrote of searching for the Welsh Indians who were "said to be up the Missouri". The historian Stephen E. Ambrose wrote in his history book Undaunted Courage Jefferson believed the "Madoc story" to be true, and instructed the Lewis and Clark Expedition to find the descendants of the Madoc Welsh Indians. Neither they nor John Evans found any.
In 1810, John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, wrote to his friend Major Amos Stoddard about a conversation he had in 1782 with the Cherokee chief Oconostota concerning ancient fortifications along the Alabama River. According to Sevier, the chief said the forts were built by a white people called "Welsh" as protection against the ancestors of the Cherokee, who eventually drove them from the region. In 1799, Sevier had written of the discovery of six skeletons in brass armour bearing the coat of arms of Wales, and that Madoc and the Welsh were first in Alabama.
In 1824, Thomas S. Hinde wrote a letter to John S. Williams, editor of The American Pioneer, regarding the Madoc tradition. In the letter, Hinde claimed to have gathered testimony from sources that stated Welsh people under Owen Ap Zuinch had travelled to America in the twelfth century, over 300 years before Christopher Columbus. According to Hinde, in 1799 near Jeffersonville, Indiana on the Ohio River, six soldiers were exhumed with brass breastplates that bore Welsh coats of arms.