Kingdom Tidings Winter 2000

Alongside a southern Alabama road is a marker erected in 1953 by the Virginia Cavalier chapter of the D.A.R. "In memory of Prince Madoc, a Welsh explorer, who landed on the shores of Mobile Bay in 1170, and left behind, with the Indians, the Welsh language."

A cyriic might understandably be tempted to discount such a startling announcement, boosting Anglo-Saxon accomplishments at the expense of Columbus' voyage 322 years later, when it comes from the offices of the good Daughters. But in its second paragraph, the marker sends the caviler to another source: "Authority is Encyclopedia Americana. . ."

The Americana is rather ho-hum about the matter, telling us that Madoc was a "Welsh Prince who in consequence of some civil dissensions went to sea with ten ships and 300 men in 1170, and discovered America. He made a second voyage to and from this unknown land but finally was lost to the knowledge of his countrymen.. ."

The short entry concludes, rather indecisively spilling the wind out of its brave initial assertion:

"Thomas Stephens, In 'Madoc: An Essay on the Discovery of America in the 12th century' (1893), asserts that the story of Madoc is a baseless fable."

Now 'Madoc and the Discovery of America' by an Englishman, Richard Deacon, to be published in London this month, assembles impressive evidence to support the claim that Madoc made the round trip from Wales to Alabama. He ransacks five disciplines for clues to the mystery; ancient legend and literature, pragmatic testing, ethnology, archeology and linguistics.

Accurate records were rarely kept in the 12th century, so one is thrown on the mercy of bards who sang tales of great accomplishments. There is an impressive number of such references to Madoc, probably the illegitimate son of a powerful warlord. Poem after poem connects him with the sea and puts him on a long voyage across the Western Ocean to a strange land. He remained a symbol of seafaring life under the Tudors. In 1865, a stone tablet from Lundy (whence Madoc may have embarked on his second voyage) was found with a legend in old Welsh carved before the 14th century, according to Deacon, who translates it: "It Is an established fact, known far and wide, that Madoc ventured far out on the Western Ocean never to return."

Epic poems, of course, were written to glorify their subjects and poets are no strangers to fiction, but the fact remains that Henrich Schliemann found Troy with the help of Homer and, more recently, the Norwegian archeologist Helge Ingstad used Scandinavian legends to locate remains from Leif Erickson's visits to America. Ingstad believes the bards to have been comparable to journalists today, men who took some pains to discover facts before they wrote.

There is no doubt that a long voyage in a small boat is possible. Ethnological support for the Madoc landing rests on many reports from early settlers of a tribe of white Indians having European features and speaking a language close to or identical with Welsh. Deacon ventilates the theory that Madoc's compatriots moved inland through western Georgia and southern Tennessee, finally settling near the Missouri River.

Many tribes have been called the white indian but Deacon puts his chips on the Mandans, who were visited in 1738 by the French explorer La Verendrye. They had light complexions and lived in small towns with carefully laid out streets which were kept clean, as were their impressively large and sophisticatedly constructed houses. They had some words in common with the patois of Brittany, in France.

Deacon discredits most of the tales of travellers who claimed to have encountered white Indians, especially those who said they found a tribe possessing Bibles and worshipping Christ, but reports from such men as the painter, George Catlin, who spent eight years among the Mandans, seem unimpeachable.

Deacon cites archeological discoveries to prove his case. Probably the most important is his claim that there are "at least three forts in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee which archeologists have testified are of pre-Columbian origin."

"All three," he says, "are believed to have been the work of the same group of people and built within the period of a single generation. What is most remarkable about these fortifications is that they have outlasted many defense works built by the European explorers of the 16th century."

The author also places in evidence what appears to be a 12th century port record from a place called Aber-Kerric-Guignon which refers specifically to Madoc, names his ship as the "Guignon Gorn" (legend has it as the "Gwennan Gorn") and asserts that it was lost at sea in 1171.

Finally Deacon cites the references in Sir Walter Raleigh's "History of the World" and elsewhere to the prevalent use of Welsh words by Indians and others long before the Welsh came to America in any strength.

The book is constructed as a reply to that Thomas Stephens who called the Madoc tale "a baseless fable." Deacon admits that "no other nation in the British Isles has such a shadowy elusive historical past as Wales. It is almost impossible to say where legend ends and fact begins."

The way to the truth is blocked again and again by manufactured evidence and false reports. Madoc is said by various historians to have landed in more than 15 places and 13 tribes have been called "Welsh Indians".

Estimates of the number of ships used by Madoc and his men vary wildly. Stephen's most basic depreciation of the Madoc legend is that the primitiveness of shipbuilding and navigation in the 12th century would have made the journey impossible. There are no drawings of ships from Madoc's time but critics claim that the voyage would have been 'too arduous without a compass'. Deacon answers that the Norse did very well, thank you, without compasses, and besides, he claims, there is some evidence that Madoc may have had a primitive kind of lodestone to supplement his use of the stars and birds as navigational aids.

Stephens makes much of the fact that there were six different Madocs in 12th century poems. Deacon believes that his Madoc was the son of Owain Gwynedd, that he was handsome, courageous and probably a bastard. There are references to a Madoc who, like Oedipus, was sent by his father to be killed in infancy but miraculously escaped. Certainly he would have had a motive for fleeing his patrimony.

But Stephens is unpersuaded and asks repeatedly: Why did he make the trip? Why did he sail west with no prospect of finding land? Deacon answers that he went because he was curious, the reason why people explore anything unknown, and that there were many rumours of a fabulous land across the sea.

Another of Stephen's challenges and a very fair one is that the Madoc legend was the product of self-serving Tudor historians who wished to extol their monarchs' Welsh heritage at the expense of the Spanish claim that Columbus had discovered America.

The first published Tudor account of Madoc's exploits, by Sir George Peckham, appeared in 1583 when England and Spain were bitter foes. It said in part: "Whereupon it is manifest that that country was long before by Brytaines discovered, afore either Columbus or Americus Vesputius led any Spaniarde thither."

Deacon's rebuttal that the English were disinterested historians because they made no plans to use their claim to gain territory from the Spanish is quite flimsy. Exploration had an enormous hold on the Tudor imagination: Englishmen worked hard to prove themselves first with the most, and the fact remains that much of Deacon's evidence about Madoc in Wales comes from partial sources.

Critics also cite evidence contradicting the existence of welsh Indians. Luis de Rojas, writing to the King of Spain in 1625, said soldiers and sailors had combed the Georgia-Carolina interior for 150 leagues but "found no traces of the rumored gente Minco y cabella."

Stephens asserts that the contradictory nature of the reports about white Indians, with their many obvious fabrications, leaves the claim wholly unproved. But Deacon answers that many of the reports came from men of unquestioned integrity, and that if we accept only a third of those, we must believe that such a tribe existed and was probably the Mandan nation, which was finally obliterated by war-like tribes early in the 19th century.

Finally, Stephens argues that what words some Indian dialects had in common with Welsh were accidental and rightly points out that no common grammar or syntax have been found. He believes that whatever traces of Welsh ancestry or words were found in America came over with EIizabethan colonists, not with Madoc. Deacon, answers that practically no Welshmen came to these shores until well after the reports of Welsh Indians had become a commonplace.

The details of the linguistic enigma lend credence to Deacon's thesis. What George Catlin learned during his stay with the Mandans demolishes Stephen's flat assertion that Indians were ignorant of pronouns and abstract words. The Mandans had a full complement of pronouns and their pronunciation was markedly similar to the Welsh equivalents.

Another visitor to the Mandans found other striking similarities between the languages. The word for "water" and "river" were identical, as were the words for "blue", "estuary" and "bridge", all terms perhaps left from a sea-faring heritage.

In addition, Catlin found a complete phrase, mentioning Madoc, used by the Mandans as an exclamation. The Mandans would commonly call upon the "Great Spirit of the Race" (Madoc Maho Paneta am byd), which in Welsh would be "Madoc Mawr Penarthur am byth" (Madoc, the Great Spirit forever).

Deacon tells us that when the Spaniards settled In Alabama in 1559, they found hidden in a cave a number of ancient eggshell-shaped boats called "coracles" which are used today by the Welsh to fish small streams. Catlin reported that the Mandans used such boats while he was their guest and that the vocabulary associated with them was almost identical with Welsh, which he didn't know at the time.

Deacon cites compelling ethnological considerations in favour of his case. Fourteen reports of white Indians refer to them as bearded or white haired or both, which would make them unique among Indians, who are beardless and have no white hairs. Lewis and Clark, during their search for a Northwest passage, stayed among the Mandans, who told them they regarded all other Indians as foreign enemies.

Catlin, who agreed with many others that Mandan women were of exceptional beauty, told of blond and reddish hair among members of the tribe and said they told stories of having been descended from white men across the sea. A 20th century scientist, Rued Hjalmer Holand, declared flatly that "all archeologists are agreed that the Mandan Indians have been in prehistoric contact with Europeans. Their frequently recurring blue eyes and their blond complexions prove this."

But there have been similar theories, discounted by Deacon, that Mexico's Indians are descended from white men. The Spanish explorer Cortez supported a legend that Montezurna was directly descended from a race "very far, in a little island in the North. . ." (the quotation is from a letter, supposedly by Cortez, which quotes Montezuma). Peter Martyr, writing in 1493 from the court of Spain just after Columbus' return from the Arnericas, said that the natives of Guatemala "celebrate the memory of one of their ancient heroes whom they call "Matec".

In the London Sunday Times recently, an article about the darkskinned Melungeons of northern Tennessee, a people of strange customs, said that "some authorities even suggest that the community was started by Prince Madoc, the Welsh chieftain, whose party sailed west In the 12th century and moved into the continent up the Mississippi." The Melungeons are dark, but have the thin-faced features of Europeans.

But the Madoc legend rests finally on a massive accumulation of suggestive evidence rather than on anything as tangible as a Vinland Map. If one can believe George Catlin, one can believe that the Mandans had some knowledge of the Welsh language and that they differed in appearance and traditions from other Indians. No objects remain to support Deacon's thesis except the fortification sites mentioned above, and they have been built over recently.

Understandably, Deacon makes a great deal of these forts. He quotes a Col. Bennett H. Young (without providing us with dates or the Colonel's qualifications): "A remarkable prehistoric stone fortification in the State of Kentucky is situated in Madison County about three miles east of Berea." After commenting on their sophisticated layout and construction, Young concludes: "The old forts in Kentucky were not built by Indians but by a past people greatly skilled in arts."

Archeologists digging at Old Stone Fort in Tennessee in 1819 found moats and intricate walls, but most significantly they found a large tree growing out of a hollow in one of the walls. They theorized that in the long ago, some seeds must have been dropped in a small open space in the wall. They cut the tree down and dendrochronologists calculated that it dated back before 1482, probably much before.

But that does not, of course, prove that Madoc or the Mandans built the fort. Perhaps the Norse journeyed farther south than we now believe. Whatever the truth, Deacon has converted at least one sceptical reader to a celebrant of Madoc Day.

The Medical Correspondent of the 'Times', June 6, 1916, in an article on 'The similarity of English and Scottish Heads,' says: 'An extensive investigation on some 700 skulls from a disused Clydeside graveyard reveals the fact that these are in all essentials identical with the English type of skull.'

The 'Edinburgh Evening Dispatch', quoting the British Medical Journal says: 'The more we dig into the physical characters of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish peoples, the more do anthropologists become convinced that ALL FOUR nationalities are compounded out of exactly the same racial stock of mankind.'

Prof. W J Ripley, in 'The Races of Europe', states: 'The shape of the head is now held to be one of the best available tests of race known. The most remarkable trait of the population of the British Isles is its headform, and especially the uniformity in this respect which is everywhere manifested.

The (cephalic) indices all lie between 76 and 79 with the possible exception of the middle. and western parts of Scotland, where they fall to 76. These facts indicate a remarkable invariability of cranial type compared with the results obtained elsewhere in Europe ... in the British isles the headform is practically uniform from end to end.'

Researchers at the university of Ottawa have linked pork consumption with cirrhosis, a chronic degeneration of the liver.

In a study of 16 nations with readily available statistics for consumption of pork, beef, fat and alcohol, Dr. Amin Nanji and Dr. Samuel French found a correlation between eating pork and the incidence of cirrhosis of the liver - an even higher incidence when both pork and alcohol were consumed. No connection was found between cirrhosis and beef consumption.

According to Dr. Nanji, writing in The Lancet: "The mortality rate from cirrhosis was directly related to per-capita pork consumption in these countries, [Sweden, Norway and Finland]. In Canada the mortality from cirrhosis in each province also correlated with pork consumption but not with alcohol intake."

The researchers said that the way in which pork consumption "might cause or enhance" cirrhosis remains a mystery. Yet the team concludes that cirrhosis mortality directly relates to the amount of pork consumed.

"English history, from the first day till now is as full of instruction as the history of Israel from Egypt even to Babylon. Did you ever hear Cowper's wonderful description of the care which God has taken of this little island - how He has favoured and protected it?"

"When all the nations joined in arms against it they could not touch its shores, for God was there .... Our nation has been as much under the peculiar and especial providence of God as were the descendants of Jacob themselves; and therefore, God deals with us as He does not deal with other nations."

STOP AND THINK!

God is the God of our NOW, and we miss a great deal because of fear and regret. This little saying has been repeated many times, but we really can't change the past, and tomorrow is not here yet!

"We crucify ourselves daily, between two thieves, "Fear of Tomorrow" and "Regret for yesterday."

Every chapter contains its own revelation of Jesus Christ. Summarizing these thoughts, we see Him in:

CHAPTER 1	As the all-sufficient Sacrifice and ministering Priest.
CHAPTER 2	As the wonderful and sympathetic Reprover of the churches.
CHAPTER 3	As the Creator, who shares His throne with men.
CHAPTER 4	{As the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world and the centre of adoration.
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6	As the Leader of the church that goes forth conquering and to conquer.
CHAPTER 7	As the Lamb among the blood-washed multitude.
CHAPTER 8	{As the One who receives the prayers of the saints and restrains the powers of evil.
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10	As the Angel encompassing land and sea, announcing "that there should be time no longer."
CHAPTER 11	As the One who receives from His Father the kingdoms of this world.
CHAPTER 12	As the promised Child who conquered death and ascended to the throne.
CHAPTER 13	As the Author of the Lamb's book of life, which contains the names of the true worshippers.
CHAPTER 14	As the Lamb of Mount Zion sending His last message of mercy to the world.
CHAPTER 15	{As the Lamb receiving praise, but whose judgements destroy the apostate {kingdom.
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17	{As the Lamb who calls His people from spiritual Babylon.
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19	As descending King of kings and Lord of lords.
CHAPTER 20	As the Angel who binds and destroys the devil.
CHAPTER 21	As the Re-creator who Wipes away all tears.
CHAPTER 22	As the Judge who brings the final rewards and sends the last invitation to a doomed world.

Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."