Evans arrived in America in 1792 with burning ambitions to preach the gospel and to raise money to conduct an expedition to investigate the Welsh Indians. He carried letters of introduction to several worthy Welshman in Philadelphia and elsewhere, including a Dr Samuel Jones. He received very little encouragement from the Welsh settlers who strongly urged him to abandon the idea of such a quest, mainly on the grounds that the Indian tribes were savage and dangerous.
International politics now reared its ugly head. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, four nations were still battling for the right to rule the North American Continent. John Evans, a Welshman, arrived in St Louis at this time. Here was an inquisitive stranger, without visible means of support, crossing into Spanish territory with some wild story of looking for Welsh Indians.
The Spanish officials, conscious that British spies would give much to learn of their plans, decided that Evans was an English agent, rather than a harmless crank, and he was put in gaol for a considerable period. The Spaniards, however, were determined to find out more about Evans' aims and they eventually came to accept that his mission was simply a quest for Welsh Indians. They also realised that he had received little support from the Welsh settlers and that he was a potential ally, in that he was embittered by a lack of support from his fellow countrymen and that he had no particular love of the English. Could Evans be won over to the Spanish cause?
And so Evans was cajoled, coaxed, bullied and flattered into becoming an agent of Spain. A prime objective of the Spaniards was to seek out and win over Mandan territory. How better to achieve this than to employ a man who possibly had some kinship with the Mandans, and better still, who spoke their language?
Evans travelled 1,800 miles in 68 days with the Spaniards, arriving back in St. Louis in July 1797, from where he wrote to Dr Samuel Jones in Philadelphia:
'In
respect to the Welsh Indians, I have only to inform you that I could not meet
with such people and from what intercourse I have had with Indians from latitude
30 to 40 I think that I maysafely inform our friends that they have no existence.'
Yet the very brevity and finality of Evans' letter and the fact that he never left St Louis, make this negative report strangely suspicious. Mr Arthur T Halliday's great-grandfather was convinced that 'Evans never returned to Philadelphia because he lied to his friends about the Indians.'
A P Nastair, and even such an authority on Indian and particularly Cherokee history as Mrs Penelope Allen, tell another story altogether about Evans and his motives. Mrs Allen points out that Evans made his report after a search of only six months and that in some of his earlier reports Evans 'appeared to be none too careful with the truth and inclined to be boastful.'
There seems little doubt, that for better or for worse, Evans had decided to stay with the Spaniards and that at their request he wrote the letter stating that no Welsh Indians existed. What better evidence was there to rebut a British claim to Mandan territory than the statement of a Welshman, who had come to America solely to discover Welsh Indians?
Mr Halliday's great-grandfather added a postscript to his memoranda on the subject by stating in 1803 that Evans 'when heavily in strong liquor bragged to his friends in St Louis that the Welsh Indians would keep their secret to their graves because he had been handsomely paid to keep quiet on the subject. He added that in a few more years there would be no more trace of any Welsh ancestry or language as time and disease would eventually remove all traces.'
Evans was intelligent and he could draw maps, but it seems far more likely that the generous treatment he received from the Spaniards was due to his refuting the Welsh Indian story rather than for any other services. Having written his letter to Dr. Samuel Jones, Evans continued on the downward path. He became a cheat as well as a drunkard and was involved in trouble when he took for himself land, which had been intended for others. He died in New Orleans in May 1799, at the early age of 29.
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