Legends are a tool to help keep cultural memories alive. The Welsh story of Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd is no exception. Modern readers may be aware of this story through books like Circle of Stones, by Anna Lee Waldo, as well as A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L’Engle.  Never adequately proven, this legend tells the tale of a Welsh prince and his companions who become adventurous seafarers in the twelfth century.  The major strand of the legend has them sailing to America where they spread the Welsh language either through their interactions with Native Americans or, possibly, by settling and cohabitating with them. The main evidence for Madoc’s actual existence as of this writing is speculation and in some cases, outright forgery, but there are traces of him in the oral cultural record.  This article will attempt to place the entirety of the Madoc legend within the historical context it deserves.

In the 1600s, an unusual story came out of the region in North America now called South Carolina.  The Reverend Morgan Jones was from Monmouthshire in Britain and moved in 1660 to America.  Settling with the Welsh Quakers in southwestern Pennsylvania, near present-day Philadelphia, Jones went to what is the South Carolina region sometime in the 1660s as a chaplain under a Major-General who was stationed in Virginia.  Prior to Jones’s journey to the region, there had been rumors of Indians living in America who spoke perfect Welsh, Jones’s native language, but these reports are questionable in their validity.  Morgan Jones’s version has since come to be considered one of very few first-hand accounts of such a group of Indians—most of the other reports are second and third hand sources.  Of the encounter, Jones writes that during the trip to the area, he and five other individuals were captured by American Indians and would have been executed.  What happened next was nothing short of remarkable.  Jones explains, in his own words:

“‘Whereupon, being something cast-down, and speaking to this effect in the British [Welsh] tongue, ‘Have I escaped so many dangers, and must I now be knocked on the head like a dog?’ an Indian came to me, who afterwards appeared to be a war-captain belonging to the Sachems of the Doegs (whose original I found must needs be from the Welsh) and took me up by the middle, and told me in the British tongue I should not die; and thereupon went to the Emperor of the Tuscaroras, and agreed for my ransom and the men that were with me …’”¹

            The Morgan Jones story spread like wildfire.  Between the 1660s and the mid-1800s, numerous such stories came to light.  The stories all indicated various tribes as speaking perfect Welsh.  Sometime in the late 1840s, a group of Welsh Mormons, led by Dan Jones from North Wales, allegedly encountered a group of Welsh-speaking Indians.  Jones alerted Mormon leader Brigham Young to the discovery of an apparent group of Welsh Indians, and Young himself became interested in the encounter. Young even asked Jones to organize an expedition so that the so-called Welsh Indians could be converted to Mormon Christianity, but the expedition ultimately failed.²  

            Morgan Jones’ story was unique only in the sense that he had made contact with an American Indian culture who already understood a decidedly European language; that is, the Welsh language. James Axtell in his work Natives and Newcomers suggests that traders, and military officers such as Jones, were in a position that allowed for beneficial interactions between the Europeans and American Indians:

Where language was lacking, the familiar behavior of trade communicated the Indians’ intentions and terms.  Military officers who sought native allies against less receptive natives—or who were sought as allies by native factions—recognized with equal ease the normative behavior of military allies.  If their Indian partners seldom conducted war with the martial discipline of Europe, they at least shared a common enemy and a common understanding of strategic alliance.³

Other individuals in search of adventure must have found the allegations of Welsh Indians intriguing.  Artist George Catlin spent several winters with a group of American Indians called the Mandans. Eventually deciding that these Indians had to be the Madocians, Catlin identified certain customs of the Mandans as being Welsh—including their use of a coracle, a boat formed in such a way from wood and hides that it seemed nearly identical to the Welsh and Irish curraghs which were popular in Ireland and Wales throughout the medieval period.

Who, though, were the Welsh Indians, and why was the American public so enamored with finding them?  The story appears to have originated from a popular Welsh legend about a seafaring prince active during the mid-twelfth century A.D.  The legend, which is about the Welsh prince Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd, plays an important part in both British and American history.  In American history, Madoc inspired the story of the Welsh Indians.  This is due to the idea that Madoc left his home country of Wales and landed on the shores of North America.  Countless people have attempted, all unsatisfactorily, to find or at the very least identify an American Indian group as the Welsh Indians. 

The main evidence for Madoc’s existence is purely speculation.  The literary references to Madoc, in fact, are few and far between.  One of the earliest written references available referencing Madoc in the modern sense of the legend comes from a fifteenth century vicar in Morganwg, which is now the area of Glamorgan.  At one point, the vicar, Maredudd ap Rhys, wrote to a friend thanking him for a recent gift of new fishing nets.  The letter contains a poem referencing Madoc:

“Madog wych, mwyedig wedd,

Iawn genau Owain Gwynedd,

Ni fynnai dir, flenaid oedd,

Na da mawr ond y moroedd.

Brave Madoc, great of fame,

True offspring of Owain Gwynedd,

Had no land, it was his soul,

Nor great goods but the sea …”⁴

At the end of the letter Maredudd ap Rhys wrote “I am Madoc to my age, and to his passion for the seas have I been accustomed.”  This would indicate that the Madoc story was well known in the 1400s, or at least someone named Madoc who was well known for sailing the seas was a common figure in Wales before Maredudd ap Rhys penned the poem comparing himself to the maritime figure.  Prior to Maredudd ap Rhys’ poem, there is a reference in a thirteenth century work, Renyard the Fox, by a Dutchman named Willem.  A longer work called “Madoc” is allegedly referenced at the beginning of Renyard, but it is not known if that piece is about the Madoc known today. 

The Madoc known today comes from a legend which appears to have largely been created in the sixteenth century.  The bulk of the legend says that in 1169, Prince Owain Gwynedd had died without naming an heir from amongst his seventeen sons.  England wanted a puppet prince on North Wales’ throne, but Welsh inheritance laws and English inheritance laws were very different.  In Wales, illegitimacy was not considered an issue for inheritance.  Under the Law of Hywel Dda, if a Welsh father acknowledged his eldest son, even if that son was illegitimate he could still inherit.  However, English laws clearly stated that no illegitimate children could inherit, no matter their standing, unless freed from the stigma by the Pope himself.  Additionally, by that time Wales was being considered a territory under the English crown.

            Owain’s sons were conflicted.  Only two of the brothers had been conceived and born in wedlock.  But, Wales needed to be freed of its English puppeteers.  The brothers’ argument appears to have been thus:  Place a legitimate brother on the throne of Gwynedd, and Wales would forever be subjected to English rule.  But place an illegitimate brother on that same throne, and Wales might win independence from England.  The brothers also had considered that Gwynedd was a powerful region in Wales.  If an equally powerful ruler was in control of Gwynedd, then all of Wales would listen.

            According to legend, Madoc ap Owain, one of the brothers, wanted no part in this scheme.  He would have heard stories from his mother’s homeland of Ireland about a Benedictine monk called St. Brendan, whom his mother—Brenda—had been named after.  The stories spoke of how St. Brendan had gone in search of new lands whose occupants could be converted to Christianity.  Madoc’s father, so the stories claimed, was half Viking.  And everyone had heard the stories of Eric the Red and Eric’s own son, Leif Ericsson.  Madoc’s mind was, legend says, set:  he would leave his war-torn home and try to follow the same routes St. Brendan and his Viking ancestors had taken to a land called Iaragal, or The Land Between the Sunsets.

Word must have spread about the adventure.  Madoc gained so many followers that he had to build a second ship.  Eventually, in 1170 A.D., the Pedr Sant (Saint Peter) and the Gwennan Gorn (Stag’s Horn) set sail from their home port, which likely would have been along the Northern Welsh coast as Gwynedd shares a boundary with the sea.  Indeed, most sources agree that he set sail from a harbor in the Perfeddwlad, the area of Wales between the Conway and the Dee rivers.  This northern route also made sense for another reason.  The Navigatio, an epic poem describing St. Brendan’s adventures, indicates that the monk did indeed take the northern route, using islands along the route to aid in the long sea voyage.  The Pedr Sant and the Gwennan Gorn would have likely followed the same route taken by St. Brendan in the sixth century A.D., which would have been north to the Faeroes Islands, the Orkney Islands, to Iceland, to Greenland, and finally to Newfoundland.  The legend says that Madoc sailed to what is now America, becoming the first British sailor to set foot on that land.  Deciding to leave his followers at the port he had found, Madoc left and went back to Wales to gather more colonists.  However, en route back to America, the Welsh were blown off course.  Madoc never arrived back in his colony. 

To understand the world associated with Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd and his importance, a number of historical events must be fully examined.  These include The Navigatio and St. Brendan’s voyage in a historical context with Welsh history after 1169 AD.  Another historical explanation includes why England even thought of claiming America to begin with.  Without an English claim on America, the American war for independence may very well have been with Spain, not England.  America’s official language could just as easily have become Spanish instead of English.  If “Madoc Fever” had not been so rampant in England and Wales in the 1500s, world history could have taken a very different path indeed.

Wales in Madoc’s time went through a period of wars with England in an effort to gain independence, and it appears that the English almost always seemed to use Welsh cultural legends, including that of Madoc, to their own advantages.  This was clearly evident in the late 1100s, during the initial political vacuum following Owain Gwynedd’s death.  Only two of Owain’s sons, Iorwerth and Dafydd, were considered eligible for the Welsh crown as far as the English nobility were concerned.  However, every Welsh history scholar specializing in the period in question agrees that Iorwerth’s nickname, Drwyndwn (“Iorwerth Drwyndwn” translates into English as “Edward with the Broken Nose”), indicates he had a physical disability, which would have made him ineligible for the Welsh crown according to contemporary custom.  Thus, the crown went to the first available individual, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth.

            Llywelyn ap Iorwerth was Owain’s grandson and Iorwerth Drwyndwn’s son.  Born around 1173, it didn’t take Llywelyn long to come onto the political scene.  “In 1194, when he was twenty-two years old, he defeated his uncle, Dafydd”⁵.  The English king still supported the uncle,⁶ but Llywelyn ap Iorwerth “became ruler of the rest of Gwynedd on the death of his cousin, Gruffudd [sic], in 1200.”⁷  From the years 1201 to 1208, Llywelyn had an alliance with King John that was sworn in 1201⁸ which ultimately culminated in a marriage between Llywelyn and Joan, King John’s illegitimate daughter, in 1205.

            Perhaps it was due to his ambitions that Llywelyn soon had a skill for making enemies.  He was still considered an outlaw in England even after he married Joan, and had to have a writ of safe passage from John to be anywhere outside of Wales that was in English control.  But Llywelyn had the support of the Church: “As John was an enemy of the Church, [Pope] Innocent III gave his blessing to the Welsh revolt and … it was probably Innocent who also urged Philip Augustus [the then King of France] to make contact with Llywelyn.”⁹  Indeed, at one point in 1212, the Church’s authority helped “Llywelyn to unite Wales and attack John.”¹⁰  Llywelyn was so rebellious against John that eventually Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, Llywelyn’s eldest illegitimate son by Tangwystl, was captured by the English and became and inmate at Criccieth Castle.¹¹

            Even though his daughter was married to Llywelyn as part of a peace treaty between Wales and England, John invaded Wales in 1211 after deciding that one of his most dangerous enemies was Llywelyn, forcing the Welsh prince to “recognize the king as his heir should his marriage to Joan not produce a son.”¹²  Joan did produce a son, Dafydd, who was recognized as Llywelyn’s heir by John as well as Pope Innocent, but the inheritance caused conflict between Gruffydd and Dafydd.  Clearly, the conflict that Owain’s sons had experienced concerning the case of inheritance and legitimacy was not the first time the issue would occur.  Joan’s marriage to Llywelyn was already looked down upon by the Welsh, perhaps as an act of betrayal on Llywelyn’s part.  As John Davies explains:

In 1220, Henry [John’s successor] supported Llywelyn in his efforts to ensure that his son by Joan, Henry’s nephew Dafydd, should be heir to Gwynedd.  That dispensation involved disinheriting Llywelyn’s eldest son, Gruffudd [sic] who had been born to Tangwystl before the marriage with Joan.  In 1222, the arrangement was granted the blessing of the Pope.  In 1226, Dafydd received oaths of allegiance from ‘the great men of Wales,’ and the Pope freed Joan from the stigma of illegitimacy.¹³

            John initially won the 1211 attack on Wales and Llywelyn.  Llywelyn sent his wife, Joan, to negotiate with her father following the attack.  The negotiations did not bode well for the Welsh.  One of the conditions of the negotiations was that Llywelyn had to pay tribute to John.  Another condition was that Llywelyn had to hand over a group of hostages, among them his own son, Gruffydd, and a seven year old boy.  The hostages were all from the baron families who opposed John.

Around 1215 “Wales … suddenly became united, and the chieftains summoned Llywelyn to lead them.”¹⁴  John died in 1216, though not before Llywelyn and other Welsh lords forced him to sign the Magma Carta in 1215.

            Llywelyn was so strong a leader that in 1216 the native chroniclers record the first known instance of a Welsh prince, Gwenwynwyn, having done homage to another, Llywelyn … it is reasonable to suppose that where Gwenwynwyn, the next most powerful native ruler to Llywelyn whom he vehemently opposed, had submitted, other less powerful rulers would have followed suit swearing fealty and owing homage to one whose overlordship was fast becoming, by its very proximity, more real and tangible than that of the king.¹⁵

            Around 1215, there was a sudden push for unity by the Welsh barony.  Llywelyn was considered the most worthy of the Welsh lords for leadership of the region._¹⁶    During the hostage situation, John had hung many of the Welsh individuals who had been in his custody, including the seven year old boy.  Shortly thereafter, Llywelyn and the other Welsh barons forced John to sign the Magna Carta document.  John died a year later, in 1216, but Llywelyn lived until 1244.  The next major incident involving the events put in place by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth occurred during the reign of Llywelyn’s grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.

            By the time Llywelyn ap Gruffydd and his brother Owain were accepted by the Welsh as rulers of Gwynedd in the 1240s following Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s death in 1244, Wales was still struggling to free itself from English sovereignty.  In the Treaty of Woodstock, Henry III, it seemed, did everything he could to force the Welsh as a people—not just the members of the royal houses such as Aberffraw, Gwynedd, Deheubarth, Powys, Gwynllŵg, and Senghennydd—to bow to him.  Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, however, seems to have been just as determined as his grandfather in uniting Wales under a single ruler—himself.

            By 1256 Llywelyn II held sole control of Gwynedd Uwch Conwy as well as “the Perfeddwlad … at the request of its oppressed inhabitants.”¹⁷  The fact that the Welsh by this time were asking Llywelyn to rule their lands is significant in itself—Henry III appears to not have been much better at handling the position of the English crown in Wales than had John.  Indeed, wrote John Davies, “Walter de Clifford, lord of Llandovery, was so incensed when he received a summons from Henry III that he forced the royal messenger to eat it, seal and all.  In the lands seized by the crown—lands which were held from 1254 onward by Edward Longshanks, Henry’s son and heir—heavy burdens were placed upon the inhabitants.  They longed for a deliverer.”¹⁸

            Over the next two years, to 1258, Llywelyn gained Meirionnydd, Builth, Gwrtheyrnion, Powys Wenwynwyn, Ystrad Tywi, and Ceredigion (the latter two having been taken by members of the House of Deheubarth).  Llywelyn was so powerful by 1257 that when men who were allied with Henry saw that the English king could not take down even Llywelyn’s armies, they allied themselves instead to Llywelyn.  In 1258, as a sign of the power he held, Llywelyn used the title Prince of Wales while contacting the Scottish opposition to Henry’s forces.¹⁹

In 1265, the Pipton Agreement was signed.  This agreement on Llywelyn’s part meant that he was officially recognized as Prince of Wales by the English crown through the Frenchman Simon de Montfort, with whom Llywelyn had allied in 1264.  However, “Llywelyn was to hold his principality as a vassal of the king of England as was to pay the king the sum of £20,000.”²⁰  In August 1265, de Montfort was killed at Evesham, but he had fought against the crown “with an army largely Welsh.”²¹

The Treaty of Montgomery was signed by Llywelyn ap Gruffydd and Henry III in 1267.  “[T]here was ratified the treaty which gave Wales peace under the recognized rule of Llywelyn.  The extent of his power during the year of peace is proved by his one expedition, in which he took Caerphilly Castle, owing to a dispute with Gilbert de Care, the most powerful baron of the greatest baronial family of the Middle Ages.”²²

However, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd did not have long to enjoy his new-found power granted by the English crown.  Henry’s son, Edward Longshanks, inherited the crown in 1272.  Five years later, Wales once again was at war with England.

            In 1275, Llywelyn married Elinor de Montfort by proxy.  Elinor was Simon’s daughter and a cousin of King Edward.  Relations between Edward and Llywelyn were already strained because Llywelyn refused to pay homage to the English king, and the proxy marriage between Llywelyn and Elinor had probably made Edward furious.  When Elinor and her brother, Amaury, set sail for Wales to join Llywelyn, Edward kidnapped the two near the Scilly Isles.  Edward held Elinor captive for three years, using her as a bargaining chip against Llywelyn in order to regain control of Wales.  In 1278, Edward finally returned Elinor to Llywelyn, and the two were officially married in Worcester.  But in June 1282, Elinor died giving birth to Llywelyn’s only known child, a girl named Gwenllian.

            Earlier in 1282, Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd ap Gruffydd attacked Hawarden Castle on March 21 (Palm Sunday).  This was the catalyst for a major revolt that “by 24 March … had spread to Ceredigion and by 26 March to Ystrad Tywi.”²³  Elinor’s death probably played a role in Llywelyn’s decision to join Dafydd’s cause later that summer.  Thus it was by November 1282 that Llywelyn was with a group of men in what is today Builth Wells, in Central Wales.  The men remained there into December, establishing a stronghold for what would be the last time.

            There are different theories as to why Llywelyn ap Gruffydd was in that particular place in Central Wales.  Davies suggests that “Llywelyn had led a proportion of his army to the lordship of Builth—a region which had always been central to his strategy—with the intention of stiffening resistance there and possibly as the result of the deceitful suggestion of the sons of his cousin, Roger Mortimer, that the powerful family was prepared to assist him.”²⁴  Whatever the reason, on Friday, December 11, 1282, shortly before midnight, Llywelyn and a small handful of his men were on the banks of the Irfon River when they were attacked by what Davies claims were Shropshire soldiers, and the same author implies that Edward was also involved.  Llywelyn was killed, apparently by accident, and when it was realized who he was, his body was buried at Cwm-hir Abby.  “His head,” however, “was sent to London as proof of the king’s success.”²⁵  Following Llywelyn’s death, Edward was so pleased with his success that a messenger sent to Rome to inform the Pope of the prince’s death shortened a normally ten-week trip over snowy Alps to five weeks.

            After Llywelyn was killed, his brother Dafydd proclaimed himself Prince of Wales in a final effort to continue the Welsh resistance against Edward.  On June 28, 1283, however, Dafydd was captured at Cadair Idris and named a traitor.  He was killed on October 3, 1283 at Shrewsbury.  Llywelyn’s daughter, Gwenllian, was sent to Sepringham Cloisters by Edward following her father’s death, where she remained for the rest of her life.  In 1284, Edward officially made Wales a principality of England with the Statute of Rhuddlan, and gave the title Prince of Wales to his eldest son.  The royal family of England has since named their eldest son the Prince of Wales, a tradition which continues today.

Now to the question of how the events in Wales in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have affected the Madoc legend.  In 1189, when Henry II was King of England, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth was campaigning hard against the English.  Henry, desperate for relief from Welsh attacks, turned to a method of control the Romans had used with some success: declaring foreign cultural legends as part of the conquering culture’s literary repertoire.  The Welsh were using what was perhaps their best known cultural legend, King Arthur, in an attempt to rally against the English.  The Welsh repeatedly used Arthur as a figurehead, claiming that the ancient king would return to his people (the Welsh) when they needed him the most.  Henry effectively turned King Arthur from Welsh to English by convincing the monks at Glastonbury Abby to find Arthur’s grave.  This news was meant with silence when it was announced to the Welsh.  In 1273, Edward moved the alleged bones of King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere, to the high altar of Glastonbury Abby in a further attempt to control the Welsh resistance led by Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.

By 1169 AD and the time Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd was planning his voyage in the middle of the Welsh conflict, St. Brendan’s adventures were almost as well known in Ireland, Europe, England, and Wales as King Arthur was, and Madoc would likely have been familiar his whole life with stories of the Irish saint.  If Madoc really was trying to escape the political situation in Wales previously described, and was familiar with the sea, it makes sense that his adventures might have been influenced by Saint Brendan, especially if even at that early date there were paper records of the saint’s voyages.  Indeed, in Columbus’s time, there were allegedly maps showing “St. Brendan’s Island,” an island far to the west of England and the Threefold World of Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Everyone agreed that it existed, and that it was divided in two by an enormous river.  The only problem was, no one could quite decide where it was located, and so St. Brendan’s Island was largely depicted as a “phantom island” or a “moving island,” depending on the cartographer. 

            Vincent H. de P. Cassidy discusses the issues of moving or phantom islands in his article “The Voyage of an Island,” which appeared in the journal Speculum in 1963.  Cassidy’s discussion was of the island of Thule, a mythical island popular in Greek literature, and writes that the location of the island, like St. Brendan’s Island, was difficult to pinpoint.  Consequently, Thule seems to have largely become the stuff of legend.  The Romans, according to Tacitus about 100 A.D., allegedly reached Thule but turned back.  Pytheas of Massilia, writing during the time the city of Carthage flourished, believed “that his Thule was to the west as well as north, but between Pytheas and Tacitus, the island—textually at least—had drifted south and east.  It would soon reveal a tendency to move northward.”²⁶

            Additionally, Cassidy writes that Thule became an interest of the Irish monks.  “King Alfred gave his royal blessings to the northwestern … land that men call ‘Thila’ and Irish clerics sailing in the same direction were accustomed to seek solitude on the island of ‘Tile.’  Dicuil, an Irish monk who wrote a geographic treatise in 825, was himself disposed at times to seek an island retreat.”²⁷ Mario Esposito wrote that Dicuil was apparently “employed at the Carolingian court,” in France, from about 814 to 816.²⁸  Later, in 825, Dicuil would write of the island of Thule, now apparently equated with Iceland, in a work titled Liber De Mensura Orbis Terrae.  From Dicuil’s description, the island was probably in or near the Arctic Circle.²⁹  However, Dicuil largely disappeared from literary criticism by about 850 AD, and nobody referenced him often after that.  Interestingly, though, Thule continued to play a part in the Madoc legend, and variations of the name consistently appear in most sources discussing the story.

Given the sheer amount of controversy surrounding just the location of St. Brendan’s Island and even Thule, how probable, then, is Brendan’s story as told in The Navigatio?  In 1919, a paper titled “Evolution and Mystery in the Discovery of America,” written by Edwin Swift Balch, appeared in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.  The paper discussed early voyages, of which Balch wrote that:

When the Vikings first reached Iceland in the ninth century A.D. they found some Irishmen settled there.  The importance of this is obvious.  From a navigator’s point of view, it is an American island.  Any people who reached Iceland was [sic] bound sooner or later to reach America.  And effectively in another part of the Norsk Sagas, there is mention of a Great Ireland far to the west, which may refer to Greenland.  But while it is impossible to say exactly what the Irish did do or where they got to, it is nevertheless unquestionable that they forged an important link in the evolution of the discovery of America.  Indeed their discovery of Iceland seems to warrant considering them the first European discoverers of an American land.³⁰

            According to Timothy Severin, an experimental archaeologist, settling Iceland would not have taken St. Brendan too far off course at all if the Irish saint had set his sights on reaching America.  Even if he had not set sail in the sixth century but much later, St. Brendan likely still would have used a somewhat northerly route and “island hopped.”  This navigational technique would probably have been necessary as Brendan would have used a type of water craft called a curragh.  The curragh was a wooden boat frame with hides stretched over it.  Severin, in his recreation of the voyage described in The Navigatio, built a traditional curragh and sailed the North Atlantic in it.  As St. Brendan might have done, Severin, too, stopped at various islands in the northern Atlantic Ocean.  The resulting voyage was published in book form as The Brendan Voyage, but it provides some unique points of view that seem to support the idea of St. Brendan reaching America sometime before Columbus.

            As for the Irish in Iceland, the Irish clerics had already been settled on the Faeroe Islands by the 700s AD.  G. J. Marcus writes

it is apparent that one of the major causes of the emigration to the Faeroe Islands was the swiftly rising population of Norway at the time.  The archaeological evidence shows fairly clearly that in the course of the eighth century many of the farms situated along the west coast of Norway became overpopulated.  The surplus either moved into the interior or went overseas.  Some of these emigrants made their homes in the fertile lands of eastern England and Normandy; but by far the greater number sailed westward across the sea to new settlements in the North.³¹

Thus, a scenario for the Leif Ericsson story has been validated by archaeological studies.  The Irish colonies were well known by the tenth century, and the Irish had preceded the Norse settlements in the North Atlantic.  With Iceland already largely claimed by the Irish monks, and with knowledge of more land to the west, it makes sense that the Norse would have continued on, and settled Greenland.  Prior to the Norse, the Irish may have made it to America according to some oft-quoted descriptions in The Navigatio. 

            Severin’s wife, a medievalist, made the remark one day that The Navigatio seemed far too accurate for it to have been made up, as so many epic poems usually were.³²  There were too many descriptions in the piece that could be traced to modern geographical landmarks.  For example, among these descriptions is a “coagulated ocean,” which could refer to the phenomenon seen in arctic and Antarctic waters which geologists call pancake ice.  Pancake ice forms as the ocean surface solidifies, but it does not solidify all at once.  Pieces of ice—hence the term pancake ice—form at first, before finally forming solid ice over certain regions of the ocean’s surface.  This is one of the supporting pieces of evidence for a northerly route for St. Brendan, as there are indeed certain areas of ocean in the North Atlantic, such as between Greenland and Newfoundland, that exhibit a tendency toward pancake ice formation—or a “coagulated ocean.”

            Another description in The Navigatio that may be traced to a known geographical landmark is that of a set of islands full of sheep.  This is a very accurate description of the Faeroes Islands.  A second island landmark is described by The Navigatio as being an island whose inhabitants pelted the monks with fire and burning rocks.  Many scholars have suggested that this may be Iceland, which today is known to be a volcanic island.  Along the way, so The Navigatio tells its readers, the monks saw pillars of glass, which may reference icebergs. 

Finally, perhaps the most tantalizing clue of all that St. Brendan and his followers made it to America comes from the description of an island thousands of miles across that was divided in two by an enormous river.  This may very well be a description of an exploration of North America, and the Irish monks may indeed have explored as far west as the Mississippi River—quite possibly the enormous river—before deciding to turn back.  It seems entirely plausible that these various, very specifically described, landmarks may be the result of an actual seventh century voyage that took place in the North Atlantic Ocean.  Because the monks would likely have had no prior experience with volcanoes, pancake ice, or icebergs (or perhaps they were writing for an audience who would likely never have seen such wonders), they may have been describing these geological facts in terms that would have been fairly easily understood by the main literary audience back home in Ireland or even in mainland Europe.

            Severin’s experimental voyage proved that it would have been very likely for St. Brendan to reach America, and he unintentionally proved that it would have been possible for Madoc to reach America, as well.  However, most versions of the Madoc legend suggest that Madoc had used a southerly route instead of the more traditional northern route possibly used by St. Brendan.  This suggests that Madoc (or at the least various writers of the legend) had known of the current off the coast of Africa—the same current that Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl used during his own voyages when he built the papyrus reed boats Ra I and Ra II.  The idea of using a southerly current might be farfetched if one assumes that Madoc was attempting to follow Brendan’s voyage. 

            According to the legend, Madoc alternately landed either in what is now Mobile Bay, Alabama or the mouth of the Mississippi River.  (The landing spot is as ambiguous as Madoc himself.)  If Madoc had taken a northerly route, he probably would have entered the St. Lawrence Seaway by Newfoundland, the location of the Viking colony now known as L’Anse aux Meadows.  At the very least, he would have skirted the eastern coastline of America, rounded the tip of the Florida peninsula, and ended up in Mobile Bay.  But if Madoc had indeed taken the southerly route and used that African current, then his landing in the southern area of what is now the United States makes perfect sense as it would be one of the first landing spots available, and it mirrors the route that Columbus took during his famed voyage in 1492.  Yet even this proposed route has its problems.  With such large settlements of Irish and Norse in the North Atlantic, a southerly route hardly makes sense historically.  Why would a sailor ignore such potential resources of food, water, and materials for repairing a ship?  It is clearly evident that these northern oceanic settlements of the Irish and the Norse were well known in the twelfth century.  Completely ignoring them for an uncertain route makes very little sense in terms of survival.  However, the southerly route does make sense from a political point of view.

            The version of Madoc’s landing spot in southern North America may have originated during the time of Queen Elizabeth I.  John Dee, a Welshman living in London, is one of the culprits in this version of the Madoc legend.  He presented a number of documents to Elizabeth in 1577: 

One of the documents that Dee presented to Elizabeth was a map of America, on the back of which he outlined the Queen’s ‘Title Royall to … foreyn Regions.’ [sic]  In this remarkably well-ordered document, Dee rests his claims almost entirely on past British conquests and explorations, though some of the voyages he cites are of doubtful validity.  For example, he concluded that Elizabeth had the right to much of Atlantis, or America, because of the trip by ‘the Lord Madoc, Sonne to Owen Gwynedd Prynce of Northwales”, who, Dee believed, led “a Colonie and inhabited in Terra Florida, or thereabowts.’”³³

At that time, England was in the middle of an ongoing conflict with Spain.  What better way, then, for the English queen to gain a foothold in the conflict than by proclaiming that a Welshman (and everyone knew that Wales was an English territory) had reached America first?  It should be no surprise, then, to understand that the spot where Madoc was supposed to have landed—either Mobile Bay, Alabama, or at the mouth of the Mississippi River—turned out to be in Spanish-held territory when the northern route would have provided so many more convenient spots for an adventurous Celtic voyager to land.   Indeed, other English writers expanded on the Madoc story after John Dee presented his version of it to Elizabeth.  In 1584, Humphrey Lloyd translated a history of Wales written by Caradoc of Llancarvan.  Lloyd agreed with Dee in that Madoc had sailed the Atlantic and discovered America long before the Spanish, writing that the land Madoc had settled with colonists “had to have been ‘part of that countrie of which the Spaniardes affirme themselves to be the first finders since Hannos time.’  The lessons of cosmography dictated that he found either Florida or New Spain.  Hence it was clear that the British had discovered this land long before Columbus or Vespucci.”³⁴  Once again, the English were proving their adeptness at identifying and then appropriating a well known cultural legend to fit their political needs.

            The Madoc legend seems to have gone through various phases of popularity.  One of those periods was in the sixteenth century, during the English/Spanish conflict.  It was out of vogue after the Elizabethan period, only to regain literary popularity in the late 1700s.  That particular period of “Madoc fever,” as the periods in which the Madoc legend is popular are called, seems to have lasted until about the mid-1900s.  In 1805, the American explorers Lewis and Clark embarked on their historic exploratory trek across the Louisiana Purchase, or what later became the majority of the western portion of the United States of America.  President Thomas Jefferson wrote to Lewis and Clark during their journey.  In some of his letters to the explorers, Jefferson mentioned John Evans and the Welsh Indians.

Interestingly, David Williams, in an article from The American Historical Review dated 1949³⁵, indicated that the Welsh Indians had been a story expanded by the Gwyneddigion Society and its cohorts.  The Gwyneddigion Society was a Welsh literary group which was also responsible for the creation of the eisteddfod, that famed Welsh cultural festival similar to the American Chautauqua assemblies, about the late 1780s.  The Gwyneddigion Society seems to have given rise to another literary society in Wales, the Caradogion.

            In 1801, the Caradogion published a piece called The Myvyrian Archaiology, which had evidently been titled after one of the editors, Owain Myfyr.  Although The Myvyrian Archaiology contained genuine ancient Welsh texts, one of the stories Myfyr and his editors focused on was, not surprisingly, that of Madoc.  Most of the papers they published that were also presented at the eisteddfod were in support of the Madoc legend.  However, in 1858, Thomas Stephens submitted, to the Llangollen eisteddfod, a paper laying out all the reasons why the Madoc legend couldn’t possibly be true.  But his argument fell on deaf ears, and his paper was not accepted by the 1858 eisteddfod committee.  It was not until after Stephens’s death that Llywarch Reynolds published the debunking attempt in 1893.

            Stephens’s argument against Madoc was simple.  At least two Madocs are mentioned by contemporary sources—the Annals Cambrae and the famous Brut y Tywysogion.  These sources indicate some sort of relation to Owain Gwynedd in relating the life histories of the two Madocs.  However, David Williams pointed out, one Madoc “was a member of the prince’s body guard and not of his family,” and the other Madoc “is of unknown parentage and is associated with Owain Gwynedd only by the editors of The Myvyrian Archaiology”!³⁶ 

In regards to the Myvyrian Archaiology, at least some of the literary evidence for Madoc and his voyage seem to have been fabricated by Iolo Morganwg, who was a rather colorful individual working as an editor under Owain Myfyr. 

Prior to the publication of The Myvyrian Archaiology, Iolo Morganwg had been involved in an attempt in the 1790s to form an expedition to find the remnants of Madoc’s colonists, who were now considered, at least in part, to be the Welsh Indians.  Working closely with a Welshman called John Evans, Iolo attempted to rouse interest in London to find the lost colonists.  A paper was circulated throughout England and Wales to this purpose³⁷, and one can only assume that Iolo Morganwg may have been involved, especially given his work with the Caradogion literary society’s publications.

            President Thomas Jefferson, himself a Welshman, was, therefore, apparently referencing The Myvyrian Archaiology when he suggested to Lewis (who was also of Welsh ancestry) and Clark four years after the publication of The Myvyrian Archaiology that the explorers find the Welsh Indians or a linguistic American culture similar to the peoples the stories spoke of.  Today, although there is little more than legend in face of the hard evidence supporting the St. Brendan and Prince Madoc stories, there are still those who would believe that Madoc did indeed land in what is now Mobile Bay, Alabama.  These same individuals would also believe that Madoc’s fellow colonists probably influenced the “White Indian” stories (or at the very least, Jefferson’s “Welsh Indians”) that arose with the European colonists some four centuries later. 

            As previously mentioned, among the many American Indian groups identified as the American descendants of Madoc and his colonists (called the Madocians for the purposes of this paper) are the Doegs and the Mandans.  If these American Indian groups, then, have been identified with the Madocians, there should have been some sign in the archaeological record that the Madocians had existed.  This is the thought of many who are in support of the Madoc legend, and cite numerous megalithic structures and archaeological sites east of the Mississippi River as being of Madocian origin.  Archaeologically speaking, there is very little proof that the Madocians were responsible for these legends.  However, the legends abound with links to the Madocians.  As previously stated, of particular interest is the recurring variations of the place name Thule.  For example, William L. Traxel wrote that:

In 1942, young Gene Andress, age fourteen, visited relatives near Gadsden, Alabama.  Nearby lived his friend, Doug Davis.  The two boys met with a talkative old Muskogee Indian Chief named Tappawingow who told them ancient legends about White Men sailing up the nearby Coosa River, trading in wood, furs and metal.  He told them of a nearby cave at a place named Tulla [sic] where relics could [be] found.  They located the cave and began to dig, discovering six vases and enough broken pieces of pottery to fill a box.  Roman coins that had been minted in Britain were also found.  These coins were in circulation in Wales long after the departure of the Romans.  Madoc is purported to have visited the capital city of the Toltecs in central Mexico.  It was named Tula [sic].  This suggests that Madoc’s group traveled up the Coosa and occupied the site.  It is also suggestive that Madoc had been in central Mexico.³⁸

Other sites that are purportedly linked to Madoc and his people include the Fort Mountain site and the Ladd Mountain site, both in Georgia.  A group of individuals termed by the Cherokee as the “Moon-Eyed People” allegedly inhabited the Fort Mountain site for a time before being run off by the Cherokee.  To date, the Moon-Eyed People seem to have been associated with everything from the Madocians to extraterrestrial aliens.  Stone walls were apparently built at both sites.

            The Madocian links are not limited solely to Alabama and Georgia.  Tennessee also has its versions of the Madoc legend.  Apparently, in 1834 a stone—today called the Brandenburg Stone—was discovered in what appeared to be an undisturbed burial mound.  Writing on the stone was allegedly identified as being of the same language used in twelfth century Wales.  The inscription allegedly reads “Madoc ruler thou art,” and it is thought in some circles that the Brandenburg Stone marked the American grave of Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd.³⁹  However, the writing on the stone is said to have been invented in the 1790 – by none other than the aforementioned Iolo Morganwg.  At the Falls of the Ohio, too, is a site linked to the Madocians.  In 1799, as the story goes, six skeletons wearing armor engraved with Madoc’s coat of arms, the mermaid and the harp, were found in Indiana, near Jeffersonville.  This site, too, has its shortcomings in effectively giving the world an archaeological site associated with Madoc.

Modern literature is keeping this legend alive today. Books like Circle of Stones, by Anna Lee Waldo, as well as A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L’Engle, may tell different versions of the story, but they contribute to introducing a quietly pervasive Welsh mythology to new generations.  The Madoc legend may never be fully explained, nor effectively proven.  As discussed, much of the legend has a base in cultural appropriation by the English for political purposes, with reclamation attempts of varying success by numerous Welsh bards and scholars. 

Yet the fact remains that it did play an important part in American history.  Because of the Madoc legend, allegedly first mentioned in writing in the 1400s by a simple vicar, England had a claim to America, and was able to procure territory there.  Thus, America became a British colony, and Madoc unexpectedly became the reason one of the main European languages spoken in America throughout its history is English.  In the 1600s, another minister provided the world with the beginnings of the Welsh Indian legend, which undoubtedly became entwined with the scores of captive narratives emerging from the American frontier in later centuries.  One must ask—where would American history be today without the Welsh Prince Madoc?

References

¹   Michael Senior, Did Prince Madog Discover America? An Investigation.  Llanrwst, Wales: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2004, p. 47-48.¹²

² Senior, p. 74-75.

³James Axtell,  Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America.  (Oxford University Press: 2000), p. 145.

⁴ Maredudd ap Rhys in a letter c. 1450.  Roberts, Enid.  Gwaith Maredudd ap Rhys a’i Gyfoedion, (Aberystwyth: Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru, 2003).

⁵John Davies,  History of Wales.  (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 135.

⁶ Owen M. Edwards,  The Story of the Nations: Wales (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), 128.

⁷ Davies 135.

⁸ Edwards 128.

⁹ Davies 137.

¹⁰ Edwards 131.

¹¹ Edwards 154.

¹² Davies 136.

¹³ Davies,  139.

¹⁴ Edwards 130.

¹⁵ Roger Turvey. The Welsh Princes: The Native Rulers of Wales 1063-1283 (London: Pearson Education, 2002), 88.

¹⁶ Edwards 130.

¹⁷ Davies 145.

¹⁸ Davies 145.

¹⁹ Davies 145.

²⁰ Davies 146.

²¹ Edwards 170.

²² Edwards 171.

²³ Davies 158.

²⁴ Davies 160.

²⁵ Davies 160.

²⁶ Vincent H. de P. Cassidy.  “The Voyage of an Island,” Speculum, vol. 38, no.4 (Oct. 1963), pp. 595-596.

²⁷ Cassidy, pp. 599.

²⁸ Mario Esposito.  “A Ninth-Century Astronomical Treatise,” Modern Philology, vol. 18, no. 4 (Aug. 1920), pp. 189.

²⁹ Dicuil, as quoted in Vincent H. de P. Cassidy.

³⁰ Edwin Swift Balch.  “Evolution and Mystery in the Discovery of America,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 58, no. 1 (1919), p. 59.

³¹ G. J. Marcus.  “The Norse Emigration to the Faeroe Islands,” The English Historical Review, vol. 71, no. 278 (Jan. 1956), p. 57.

³² Timothy Severin.  The Brendan Voyage.  New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company (1978), p. 10.

³³ Peter J. French,  John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus.  (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 197.

³⁴ Peter C. Mancall,  Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

³⁵ David Williams.  “John Evans’ Strange Journey: Part II.  Following the Trail,” The American Historical Review, vol. 54, no. 3, (Apr. 1949), pp. 508-529.

³⁶ Williams, 281.    

³⁷ Senior, 88.

³⁸ William L. Traxel, Footprints of the Welsh Indians: Settlers in North America before 1492.  New York: Algora Publishing, 2004.73-74.

³⁹ Traxel, 77.

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A. Brainard

A. Brainard has been studying Welsh history and its language ever since finding a relative who was a "direct descendant of Prince Llewellyn of Wales" in her family genealogy in 1999. Naturally, the question immediately became "which Prince Llewellyn and how are we related"–a question still being studied. She has degrees in history and social work and once attempted a Master's degree in cultural anthropology before deciding social work was the better career option. She has coordinated burials for a community in her hometown for nearly ten years. Brainard makes her home in the Jamestown, New York area. She has a passion for the local archaeology and history of western New York State as well as medieval Welsh history prior to 1300.