Hi,
I just ran across this article online while searching for information on the Doegs. I wanted to inject some information that you did not mention in your article, about another plausible connection to the welsh and Indians on Turtle Island(North America).
The Lost Colony of the late 1500’s here in North Carolina is to me, the most plausible source of English blood, given the fact that there were several Welsh colonists involved with the expedition. The Morgan Jones reports were only about 80 years after the Colony became “lost”, which is not 500 years when you are thinking about the Prince Madoc theory mentioned in your article.
I know that later writers attributed the Doegs with the Algonquin, but their associations with the Susquhanna(Iroquois) seems to contradict the algonquin theory.
Interesting conjecture, roskerah, and plausible to some degree because many Native American tribes assimilated children and women from conquered tribes or, later, even captured Europeans. The Roanoke Island colony, however, only had 117 colonists. Even if every one of them was assimilated into the local tribes, there’s no way they would have founded a tribe over 1,500 miles away.
You need to expand on this. What associations with the Susquehanna? What contact could they have had with other Welsh travelers before 1686? (We know they had extensive contact with John Smith.) What evidence exists in the first place that they have any Welsh words in their languages? What evidence exists for any knowledge of their language?
The tribe that’s supposed to be descended from the Welsh is the Mandan tribe, although ther have been other candidates. The supposed Columbus of this bunch is Prince Madoc, a supposed 13th century Welsh prince, who’s strangely absent from Welsh chronologies. But there were 18th and 19th century pioneers who said they saw “white Indians”, sometimes speaking Welsh, sometimes with Bibles. None of this is adequately attested anywhere. This hasn’t stopped people from putting up markers to Madoc:
There have been entire books written about this phenomenon. I’m too lazy to dig mine out right now. Suffice it to say, it’s incredibly unlikely.
Yeah, right, some Welsh dude sailed waaaay up into bumf*ck Alabama in 1170 and his boys hooked up with Indians. There’s no evidence of this occurring.
Basically, this is more “Lost Tribes of Israel” B.S. (all the rage in the 1800s) and there’s absolutely nothing to it; intriguing as the possibility of pre-Columbian European contact may be.
Many of the insertions of references to this type of thing were really just attempts to establish prior English presence in North America or some weird sort of attempt at white christian supremacy.
You’re right; I should have said there’s no verified adequate evidence that a Welsh explorer named Madoc came up into Mobile Bay, Alabama in 1170, and followed the Alabama and Coosa Rivers a few hundred miles inland, built a bunch of stone forts, etc.