THE GEOEGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 463 



NOTES ON THE WELSH COLONY— ORIGIN OF MANDANS. 



The Welsh colony, which I before barely spoke of,* which sailed under the direction 

 of Prince Madoc, or Madawc, from North Wales, in the early part of the fourteenth 

 century, in ten ships, according to numerous and accredited anthors, and never returned 

 to their own country, have been supposed to have landed somewhere on the coast of 

 North or South America; and from the best authorities (which I will suppose every- 

 body has read rather than quote them at this time) I believe it has been pretty 

 clearly proved that they landed either on the coast of Florida or about the mouth of 

 the Mississippi, and, according to the history and poetry of their country, settled 

 somewhere in the interior of North America, where they are yet remaining, inter- 

 mixed with some of the savage tribes. 



In my letter just referred to, I barely suggested that the Mandans, whom I found 

 with so many iieculiarities in looks and customs, which I have already described, 

 might xjossiblybe the remains of this lost colony amalgamated with a tribe, or part 

 of a tribe, o£ the natives, which would account for the unusual appearances of this 

 tribe of Indians, and also for the changed character and customs of the Welsh col- 

 onists, x^rovided these be the remains of them. 



Since those notes were written, as will have been seen by my subsequent letters, I 

 have descended the Missouri River from the Mandan village to Saint Louis, a distance 

 of 1,800 miles, and have taken pains to examine its shores; and from the repeated 

 remains of the ancient location of the Mandans, which I met with oti the banks 

 of that river, I am fully convinced that I have traced them down nearly to the 

 mouth of the Ohio River; and from exactly similar appearances, which I recollect to 

 have seen several years since in several jilaces in the interior of the State of Ohio, I am 

 fully convinced that they have formerly occupied that part of the country, and have, 

 from some cause or other, been put in motion, and continued to make their repeated 

 moves until they arrived at the place of their residence at the time of their extinc- 

 tion on the Upper Missouri. 



These ancient fortifications, which are very numerous in that vicinity, some of 

 which inclose a great many acres, and being built on the banks of the rivers, with 

 w^alls in some places 20 or 30 feet in height, with covered ways to the water, evince a 

 knowledge of the science of fortifications, apparently not a century behind that of 

 the present day, were evidently never built by any nation of savages in America, 

 and present to us incontestible proof of the former existence of a people very far 

 advanced in the arts of civilization, who have, from some cause or other, disappeared, 

 aud left these imperishable proofs of their former existence. 



Now I am inclined to believe that the ten ships of Madoc, or a part of them at least_ 

 entered the Mississippi River at the Balize, and made their way uii the Mississippi, or 

 that they landed somewhere on the Florida coast, and that their brave and persevering 

 colonists made their way through the interior to a position on the Ohio River, where 

 they cultivated their fields and established in one of the finest countries on earth a 

 fiourishing colony ; but were at length set upon by the savages, whom, perhaps, they 

 provoked to warfare, being trespassers on their hunting-grounds, and by whom, in 

 ovorxiowering hordes, they were beseiged, until it was necessary to erect these forti- 

 fications for their defense, into which they were at last driven by a confederacy of 

 tribes, and there held till their ammunition and i^rovisions gave out, and they in the 

 end have all perished, excejit, perhaps, that portion of them who might have formed 

 alliance by marriage with the Indians, aud their ofl^spring, who would have been 

 half-breeds, and of course attached to the Indians' side ; wiiose lives have been spared 

 in the general massacre; and at length being despiv-sed, as all half-breeds of enemies 

 are, have gathered themselves into a band and, severing from their jjarent tribe, have 

 moved off and increased [in numbers and strength as they have advanced up the 



* See also page 459, herein, -^T P, 



