group, Madoc returned to Wales with tales of the warm, luscious land he had found. He picked up supplies and more ships full of like-minded fellow countrymen and was never seen again.
Advisers to Henry Tudor’s granddaughter, Elizabeth I, used the tale of Madoc to assert British sovereignty over American territory already claimed by Spain. The house of Tudor was proud of its Welsh roots and had ample evidence to argue its case. Explorers, including Sir Walter Raleigh, had written about a tribe of Native Americans who spoke Welsh. In 1669 the Reverend Morgan Jones of Jesus College, Oxford and a party of five were taken prisoner by Native Americans. One of the tribe heard Reverend Jones praying in Welsh, whereupon the men were released unharmed by the braves, who claimed descent from Madoc. Around a hundred years later French fur trader Jacques d’Eglise found a tribe of Native Americans who lived in beehive-shaped lodges similar to those found in Wales and fished in round skin and wickerwork boats exactly like Welsh coracles. Clerics, traders, missionaries and anthropologists such as George Catlin all came into contact with the tribe, who referred to themselves as the Madogwys – men of Madoc. In 1782 Oconosto, chief of the Cherokee nation, stated that a series of pre-Columbian forts on the shores of the Alabama River were built by ‘a people called Welsh and they had crossed the Great Water’. Chief Oconosto called their leader Madoc. Archaeological research has shown that one of the forts was identical in setting, layout and method of construction to Dolwyddelan Castle in Gwynedd, the still-standing birthplace of Prince Madoc.
One pamphlet claimed that Madoc, on his second visit, landed and settled in Mexico; there were several Welsh words in the Aztec language. One of these was the name of a strange new bird, the
penguin
, Welsh for ‘white head’ (
pen gwyn
). Atthis point I took a break from my research to smoke a spliff. I thought of penguins and realised they had black heads. My heart fell. I had been reading a complete load of bollocks. I drifted asleep, weary and depressed.
I woke up with a crystal-clear mind. The penguin problem had provoked doubts about the existence of Welsh Native Americans but the rest made perfect sense. Back online, I searched for ‘white-headed penguins’ and came across the great auk (
Pinguinus impennis
), a big, northern hemisphere penguin with a white patch on its head. Great auks, extinct for over 150 years, had lived in great numbers on islands off Britain, Iceland and Greenland and were sources of food and down, especially for mariners crossing the Atlantic. Almost all seabirds had black heads, so the great auk could be distinguished by its white patch. When Welsh settlers came across southern hemisphere penguins, the striking similarity in shape between these and great auks resulted in the name penguin being used for both. I felt relieved. Until this moment I had been inclined to dismiss Great-Aunt Afon Wen’s story of Welsh Red Indians as a flight of fancy, possibly her own, but here it was confirmed in works of scholarship. Could she also have been right about the Incas? That would just be too much to take. Within minutes, I was back in the attic.
In 1908 the Reverend John H. Parry of the University of Durham published
Manco Capac the First Inca of Peru, Being a Critical Inquiry into the Pretensions concerning the Discovery of America by Prince Madawg Ap Owen Gwynedd with Reflections upon the Final Discovery of that Continent by Christopher Columbus; and upon some of the Historical Antiquities of America
, which argued that Madoc became known as Manco Capac. Accompanied by Mama Ocello (a corruption of
Mama Uchel
– ‘High Mother’), Manco Capac had arrived on the shores of Peru a few weeks after Madoc’s disappearance from Wales. The couple are the progenitors of the Incas. Thenatives saw them as children of the sun because they had come from the east. Manco Capac
Advisers to Henry Tudor’s granddaughter, Elizabeth I, used the tale of Madoc to assert British sovereignty over American territory already claimed by Spain. The house of Tudor was proud of its Welsh roots and had ample evidence to argue its case. Explorers, including Sir Walter Raleigh, had written about a tribe of Native Americans who spoke Welsh. In 1669 the Reverend Morgan Jones of Jesus College, Oxford and a party of five were taken prisoner by Native Americans. One of the tribe heard Reverend Jones praying in Welsh, whereupon the men were released unharmed by the braves, who claimed descent from Madoc. Around a hundred years later French fur trader Jacques d’Eglise found a tribe of Native Americans who lived in beehive-shaped lodges similar to those found in Wales and fished in round skin and wickerwork boats exactly like Welsh coracles. Clerics, traders, missionaries and anthropologists such as George Catlin all came into contact with the tribe, who referred to themselves as the Madogwys – men of Madoc. In 1782 Oconosto, chief of the Cherokee nation, stated that a series of pre-Columbian forts on the shores of the Alabama River were built by ‘a people called Welsh and they had crossed the Great Water’. Chief Oconosto called their leader Madoc. Archaeological research has shown that one of the forts was identical in setting, layout and method of construction to Dolwyddelan Castle in Gwynedd, the still-standing birthplace of Prince Madoc.
One pamphlet claimed that Madoc, on his second visit, landed and settled in Mexico; there were several Welsh words in the Aztec language. One of these was the name of a strange new bird, the
penguin
, Welsh for ‘white head’ (
pen gwyn
). Atthis point I took a break from my research to smoke a spliff. I thought of penguins and realised they had black heads. My heart fell. I had been reading a complete load of bollocks. I drifted asleep, weary and depressed.
I woke up with a crystal-clear mind. The penguin problem had provoked doubts about the existence of Welsh Native Americans but the rest made perfect sense. Back online, I searched for ‘white-headed penguins’ and came across the great auk (
Pinguinus impennis
), a big, northern hemisphere penguin with a white patch on its head. Great auks, extinct for over 150 years, had lived in great numbers on islands off Britain, Iceland and Greenland and were sources of food and down, especially for mariners crossing the Atlantic. Almost all seabirds had black heads, so the great auk could be distinguished by its white patch. When Welsh settlers came across southern hemisphere penguins, the striking similarity in shape between these and great auks resulted in the name penguin being used for both. I felt relieved. Until this moment I had been inclined to dismiss Great-Aunt Afon Wen’s story of Welsh Red Indians as a flight of fancy, possibly her own, but here it was confirmed in works of scholarship. Could she also have been right about the Incas? That would just be too much to take. Within minutes, I was back in the attic.
In 1908 the Reverend John H. Parry of the University of Durham published
Manco Capac the First Inca of Peru, Being a Critical Inquiry into the Pretensions concerning the Discovery of America by Prince Madawg Ap Owen Gwynedd with Reflections upon the Final Discovery of that Continent by Christopher Columbus; and upon some of the Historical Antiquities of America
, which argued that Madoc became known as Manco Capac. Accompanied by Mama Ocello (a corruption of
Mama Uchel
– ‘High Mother’), Manco Capac had arrived on the shores of Peru a few weeks after Madoc’s disappearance from Wales. The couple are the progenitors of the Incas. Thenatives saw them as children of the sun because they had come from the east. Manco Capac
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