Hakluyt, a writer of daring deeds and exploration, wrote in 1582 a report on the voyages of Madoc. This was based on information he had received from a Welsh bard, one Gutton Owen, who had come across it in the chronicles of both Conway Abbey and Strata Florida Abbey, where all important events in Welsh life were recorded. Owen, at the time, was on a commission from Henry VII, who was the first Welsh King of England, to trace Henry's royal lineage.

A document in support of a proposal to solve the problem of English Catholics by 'evacuating' them across the Atlantic, prepared by Sir George Peckham and addressed to Queen Elizabeth, carried a preface dated 12 November, 1583, which stated: - 'And it is very evident that the planting there shall in time right amplie enlarge her Majesties Territories and Dominions (or I might rather say) restore to her Highnesse auncient right and interest in those Countries, into the which a noble and woorthy personage, lyneally descended from the blood royall, borne in Wales, named Madock ap Owen Gwyneth, departing from the coast of England, about the yeere of our Lord God 1170 arrived and there planted himselfe, and his Colonies, and afterward appeareth in an auncient Welch Chronicle, where he then gave to certaine Llandes, Beastes, and Fowles, sundrie Welch names, as the Lland of Pengwyn, which yet to this day beareth the same.'

The earliest known printed account of the Madoc story is from Dr David Powel’s 'The Historie of Cambria' published in 1584. 'Madoc ... left the land in contention betwixt his bretheren and prepared certain shipps with men and munitions and sought adventures by seas, sailing west ... he came to land unknown where he saw manie strange things ... Of the viage and return of this Madoc there be manie fables faimed ... And after he had returned home, and declared the pleasant and fruitfulle countries that he had seen without inhabitants, and upon the contrarie part, for what barren and wilde ground his bretheren and nepheues did murther one another, he prepared a number of shipps, and got with him such men and women as were desirous to live in quietnesse, and taking leave of his freends tooke his journie thitherward againe ... This Madoc arriving in the countrie, into which he came in the yeare 1170, left most of his people there, and returning back for more of his own nation, aquaintance, and friends, to inhabit that fayre and large countrie, went thither again.'

The story continues that in 1666 the Rev Morgan Jones, a Welsh missionary in North America, was captured by an Indian tribe with fair features and was about to be killed. But he prayed loudly to God in Welsh for deliverance, and was suddenly spared, treated as an honoured guest and found he was able to converse freely in Welsh with the natives.

In 1739, a Frenchman, La Verendrye, encountered a tribe of Indians on the Upper Missouri 'Whose Fortifications are not characteristic of the Indians... Most of the women do not have Indian features... The tribe is mixed white and black. The women are fairly good looking, especially the light coloured ones; many have blonde or fair hair.' He called them Mantannes.

There were many other visitors to the so-called Welsh tribe; one of interest was a Maurice Griffith who was taken prisoner by the Shawnee Indians in 1764. The Indians eventually befriended him and took him on a hunting expedition to seek the source of the Missouri. High in the mountains they came across 'three white men in Indian dress' with whom they travelled for several days until they arrived at a village where there were others of the same tribe, all having the same European complexion.

A council of this white Indian tribe decided to put the strangers to death and Griffith decided it was time to speak. He addressed them in the Welsh language explaining that they had no hostile intentions but merely sought the source of the Missouri and that they would return to their own lands satisfied with their discoveries. The Chief of the Tribe greeted them in Welsh and they were thereafter treated as guests, staying with the nation some eight months. Griffiths eventually returned to Virginia but his story aroused little interest.

The historian John Williams published an account of the legend in London in 1791 with further observations the following year. This inspired many impoverished radicals back in Wales to leave for the New World in an attempt to create a new 'Gwalia' (Wales) on the other side of the Atlantic.

In October 1792, a French fur trader, Jacques d’Eglise, who had set off up the Missouri in August 1790, arrived back in St Louis. He had travelled over 800 leagues from St Louis up the river and had found a mighty and wealthy tribe of Indians, the Mandans. There had been earlier rumours of this remarkable tribe, but no one had ever reached them from St Louis. He said that they were 5,000 strong, living in eight, great fortified villages; they had the finest furs; they lived in sight of a volcano and alongside the Missouri, which at that point flowed from the west or north-west and could take the largest boats. d’Eglise reported that their fortified villages were like cities compared with other native settlements, they were much more civilised than other Indians and the final marvel, these Mandans 'are white like Europeans'. Here at last was confirmation of all those stories of civilised white Indians, which had been filtering back along the Missouri for years.

John Sevier, Governor of Tennessee, wrote to a Major Stoddard of the U.S. Army about a discussion he had had with the Major Chief of the Cherokee, Oconostota, in 1792. The venerable old chief informed him that, according to his forefathers, the white people who had formerly inhabited the country had made ancient fortifications on the Highwassee River now called Carolina. A battle took place between the Whites and the Cherokees at the Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River. After a truce and exchange of prisoners, the Whites agreed to leave the area, never to return, eventually settling 'a great distance' up the Missouri.

The Chief's ancestors claimed 'they were a people called Welsh and they had crossed the Great Water'. Governor Sevier also claimed to have been in the company of a Frenchman who informed him that he had been high up the Missouri and 'he had traded with the Welsh tribe; that they certainly spoke much of the Welsh dialect, and though their customs were savage and wild, yet many of them, particularly the females, were very fair and white.'

Coracle types at the National Coracle centre (Cenearth West Wales)

George Catlin, a Pennsylvania lawyer turned artist/historian, spent six years travelling extensively amongst the native peoples of North America. He wintered with the Mandans in 1832. He was most taken by 'so many peculiarities in looks and customs.' He ascertained that one in ten or twelve of the whole tribe had light hair and that it was a hereditary characteristic, which ran in families. He produced numerous paintings of the tribe and wrote prolifically about them. He compared their canoes to Welsh coracles and eventually, after further research, firmly believed the Madoc story.

George Catlin picture of Mandan bullboats and lodges

Dana Olson, in his book on the subject, places great emphasis on the stone forts located along the Tennessee and its tributaries and claims that the White Indians were ambushed on the Tennessee River but also relates about a great battle at the falls on the Ohio. He also relates finds of coins, armour, breastplates and helmets. 
The forts however are now recognised by archaeologists using carbon dating techniques on the associated organic material to date to around AD 30-430, the time of the Middle Woodland Indian. The 'forts' are thought to be boundaries around Indian ritual sites.

Observer after observer commented on the ‘whiteness’ of these Indians. It was this above all, which made them into a people of Myth. Many of them were, without doubt, fair of skin and hair. Their hair was often brown, sometimes red; it turned grey. The men had beards. Their eyes were sometimes blue. The neighbouring tribes, the Hidatsa, the Crows and the Arikara showed similar characteristics, but far less frequently.

History has presented some difficulties in verifying the legend. Although all important events in Welsh life were recorded in the monasteries and abbeys of Wales, most of the records would have been destroyed when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries between 1537 and 1540 after falling out with the Church in Rome.

The other issue affecting the lack of evidence is that the Mandan Indians, like most such tribes, only have a verbal tradition of their history and that different families are keepers of different parts of the story. With the two smallpox epidemics wiping out large sections of the community with such extreme rapidity, much of their history has been lost.

With regard to the frequency of white physical characteristics, it must be remembered that the Welsh, if they had gone, would have only numbered a few hundred at most amongst a tribe of tens of thousands. Supposing about 500 men and women left Wales to cross the Atlantic and if we assume that 400 survived the crossing and the various battles with the Indians, and they were absorbed into a tribe of some 40,000 Mandans, (Ref: Keith Bear - Mandan) then the best guess is about 1% white Europeans. Even if there were twice as many white Europeans as previously suggested, then they would only number some 2% of the tribe. These would not have been spread evenly throughout the tribe but would have been concentrated in various families and villages.

It seems unlikely that the Mandans were ever a tribe of white Indians, although they had a small percentage of members showing certain European characteristics. The reality of a tribe of white Indians as encountered by the Cherokees probably applied to a group of no more than a few hundred people and is unlikely to have lasted more than a few decades.

Nevertheless, it remains a possibility that a group of Welsh people might have sailed to America over three hundred years before Columbus, and, if they did were eventually assimilated into a tribe of Indians on the Upper Missouri.

Stone Marking Madoc's sailing from Aber-Kerrig Gwynan (Rhôs-on-Sea) Gwynedd N Wales