[CAMPBELL] MEXICAN COLONIES TRACED BY LANGUAGE 251 
carried to the Wabash, with other white men. They were executed, 
with circumstances of horrid barbarity; but it was my good fortune to 
call forth the sympathy of a good woman of the village, who was per- 
mitted to redeem me from those who held me prisoner, by giving them a 
horse as a ransom. After remaining two years in bondage, a Spaniard 
came to the nation, having been sent from Mexico on discoveries. He 
made application to the chiefs of the Indians for hiring me, and an- 
other white man who was in the like situation, a native of Wales, and 
named John Davey, which was complied with. We took our departure 
and travelled to the westward, crossing the Mississippi near Red River, 
up which we travelled upwards of 700 miles. Here we came to a nation 
of Indians remarkably white, and whose hair was of a reddish colour, 
at least, mostly so. They lived on a small river which emptied itself 
into Red River, which they called the River Post; and in the morning, 
the day after our arrival, the Welshman informed me that he was de- 
termined to remain with the nation of Indians, giving as a reason that 
he understood their language, it being very little different from the 
Welsh. My curiosity was excited very much by this information, and 
I went with my companion to the chief men of the town, who informed 
him, in a language that I had no knowledge of, and which had no 
affinity with that of any other Indian tongue that I ever heard, that the 
forefathers of this nation came from a foreign country, and landed on 
the east side of the Mississippi (describing particularly the country now 
called West Florida); and that, on the Spaniards taking possession of the 
country, they fled to their then abode; and, as a proof of what they ad- 
vanced, they brought out rolls of parchment, wrote with blue ink, at 
least it had a bluish cast. The characters I did not understand, and 
the Welshman being unacquainted with letters of any language, I was 
not able to know what the meaning of the writing was. They were a 
bold, hardy, intrepid people, very warlike, and their women were beauti- 
ful, compared with other Indians.” 
Filson, in his account of Kentucky, written in 1784, refers to the 
voyage of Prince Madoc, and adds: “ This account has at several times 
drawn vhe attention of the world; but, as no vestiges of them had then 
been found, it was concluded, perhaps too rashly, to be a fable, or at 
least that no remains of the colony existed. Of late years, however, the 
western settlers have received frequent accounts of a nation, inhabiting 
at a great distance up the Missouri, in manners and appearance resemb- 
ling the other Indians, but speaking Welsh, and retaining some cere- 
monies of the Christian worship; and at length this is universally be- 
lieved there to be a fact. Capt. Abraham Chaplain, of Kentucky, a 
