First Leif Ericson, now Henry Sinclair? or How late WAS Columbus?

Factual Questions
1

Ok, now we all know how wrong the myth of Columbus was. Even though we were taught in grade school that he was the first to discover America (to say nothing of the millions of people already living here for millenia), we are later taught that no, not only did he probably not realize he’d discovered a new land (which is open to debate), he wasn’t even the first European to land in North America. Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red, had landed in Newfoundland circa 1000 CE, and therefore had laid claim to being the first European explorer in America proper. Hell, there’s evidence that the Vikings had colonies there for several decades afterwards, but later died out.

Just a little bit ago, while purusing some History websites, I trip over the story of Prince Henry Sinclair (St. Claire), as paraphrased from http://www.mids.org/sinclair/who/henry.html

A little history: Henry, it seems, was one of the leading nobles in Europe near the end of the 14th century. He was Earl(Jarl) of the Orkneys, which though settled mostly by Scots, was the most powerful Earldom in Norway, and had the right to crown Kings of Norway. He also had was also Duke of Oldenburg in Denmark, and Baron Roslin and Lord Chief Justice of Scotland. He was also named scottish Lord High Admiral of the Seas, and ruled his island estates like a small private kingdom (He had actual control of the Orkneys, Shetlands, and the Faroe islands).

Now here’s where it gets interesting:

Henry had formed an alliance with the Zeno shipbuilding family of Venice, and built himself a huge private navy. With an Italian navigator, he set sail for points west, and landed in, and mapped, Nova Scotia in 1398 and Massachusetts in 1399. The whole story was apparently recorded by his grandson William, Earl of Caithness, at Rosslyn Chapel in Edinburgh in 1446.

Now here’s my question(s)

  1. Is this story verifiable? That is, did Henry Sinclair really “discover” America some 100 years before Columbus (though also 300 years after Leif Ericson and some tens of thousands of years after some Siberian nomads). If it is in fact true, why do schools not teach of the exploits of Henry Sinclair. Schools still gloss over the Ericson story, and spend all that time with Columbus and teh flat earth and all that stuff.

  2. If it is true, why did Columbus not know about it? Sinclair was certainly well connected in his own time, and only 100 years seperated from Columbus himself. Certainly a powerful noble who had sailed a large fleet across the Atlantic and mapped much of the coast of the Maritimes and New England ought to have made the notice of other explorers who were heading in largely the same direction? Certainly, we can forgive Chris for forgetting about Lief Ericson, whose own exploits would have been obscured by time, but Henry Sinclair seems to have been forgetten by Columbus. Did people really believe that Columbus could reach Cathay when a large landmass had been explored and mapped within recent memory, and such voyage recorded in stone some 50 years before Columbus’s own voyage.

So what have you historians, is this more evidence that our Columbus myth is wrong in more ways, did Columbus and everyone else know what he was getting into, or why was Henry Sinclair largely forgotten?

2

I am not sure what your point is or what you call the “myth of Columbus”.

Columbus was well aware the land he discovered was inhabited and so has all humanity after him. Nobody thinks Columbus discovered uninhabited land.

The argument that he did not “discover” such land because it was inhabited is nonsense. He discovered it for Europeans who learnt about its existence. Maybe he did not discover it for Asians or Africans or Americans but that does not diminish the fact that he discovered it for Europeans.

(Can you say you discovered your wife was cheating on you? Or would that be wrong because she and the mailman already knew about it? Can you say the police discovered who was the killer? He already knew it so it is no “discovery”.)

The fact that some northern Europeans may have been there before him is also of little consequence. Their voyages had no effect and were not precursors of Columbus.

Columbus’s voyage of discovery, on the other hand, had the greatest consequences and lead to the colonization of America by Europeans which changed history. But this was not only Columbus. Columbus was a great navigator and that’s about it. He was very bad at handling men and had serious problems in that department. The Discovery and colonization of America was spearheaded by Columbus but done by Castile. If Columbus by himself had come over and that was the end of the story, then he would rank with Leif Erikson but that is not what happened.

To sum it up: I do not think Columbus is a myth any way you look at it.

3

I have to admit Henry Sinclair caught me flatfooted. It’s a good story though, and I’ll research it .
If you will pardon a little hijacking, check out Prince Madoc of Wales, who supposedly landed at Mobile Bay in 1170. His group then travelled up the Alabama and Coosa rivers as far north as Chattanooga. After fighting with the Cherokee, the Welshmen went up the Missouri and started the Mandan indian tribe, maybe. See
http://www.tylwythteg.com/fortmount/Ftmount.html
Another Celt who may have made it to America is the Irishman St. Brendan in 545. There are ruins of an Irish fort in Connecticut, and Celtic runes carved on a cliffside in West Virginia. See http://www.heritage.nf.ca/exploration/brendan.html

4

Prince Henry Sinclair was the subject of a book by Frederick J. Pohl (not to be confused with the SF author of the same name). A monument supposedly carved by his party is in Westford, Massachusetts.

Pohl’s book is fascinating and well-researched and ingenious. But ultimately, it’s not convincing to me.

A book entitled “They All Discovered America” by someone named Boland lists a huge collection of putative Pre-Columbian “discoverers” of America. I am perfectly willing to believe that America has, in fact, been “discovered” many times over. The argument that “none of these voyages came to anything” is beside the point. The argument that the Indians were not immune to European diseases doesn’t prove anything – the Norsemen undoubtedly reached and tried to colonize Newfoundland, and encountered the Indians there. You can visit Aux-Aunse-Meadows and see the archaeological remains. But the Norse visits didn’t bring devastating diseases to wipe out all natives or to confer resistance to disease. On the other hand, Boland’s proofs aren’t very convincing, and many of them – such as the Kensington Rune Stone – have, I think, been effectively discredited.

The bottom line is that there are plenty of claimants to the title “discoverer of North America”, and even plenty of monuments built to them (Sinclair has a monument in Westford, Leif Ericson has one in Boston, Prince Madoc of Wales has one in Kentucky!!!), but there doesn’t seem to be convincing evidence for any of these.

5

If you believe this fellow, then there may have been some europeans who beat Columbus by over ten thousand years to the New World. I’m hard pressed to think of who might have come before them…

6

Hey, TNTruth, you stole my post! I was going to mention Brendan the Navigator…

Brendan, holy Brendan! he sailed uncharted waters, her discovered lands unknown,
Brendan, holy Brendan! He was a saintly sailor, and he steered us safely home.

um, ahem, sorry about that.

7

In 1558, there was a book published in Venice about the Zeno brothers. In it, they had been shipwrecked in 1380 on the island of Frislandia (actually the Faroes) where they met an old fisherman who had, 26 years earlier been blown west to an island named Estotiland, where the people spoke Latin, next he visited a place called Drogeo where he was chased off by cannibals and finally a third region which had towns and temples.

The Zeno brothers interested the local prince, named Zichmni in the fisherman’s story, and together they sailed off “exploring the whole coast with great diligence.” The Zeno brothers sent the story and a map back to a third brother in Venice where the manuscript sat until published in 1558.

In 1780, Johann Forster identified Zichmni as Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, who apparently was in the Faroes at the same time as the Zeno brothers and saved them from being murdered by the natives. His biography is well enough known to indicate he did not go off exploring with them.

A more likely explanation is that Zichmni was the Ventian pronunciation of Wichmann, a Baltic pirate who was killed in 1401. It is possible that the Zeno brothers were out pirating with him and covered it up with the tale of exploration.

There is a rock in Westford, MA which everyone else believes to be a pecked pictograph of an iron tomahawk but in which defenders of the story see a knight in armor, carrying a shield bearing the arms of the Sinclairs.

Much as I love a good story, this one is undoubtedly BS, perpetuated by patriotic Venetians and Scots.

The story of Madoc, although dissed by Samuel Eliot Morison, is more plausible to me (although I never heard that he came back after his second voyage as the above cite quptes.) I have visited the Old Stone Fort above the Duck River and it is very odd. However, I have also visited Late Hopewell “forts” in Ohio that also have laid stone walls (they apparently were under pressure from migrating Cherokee/Iroquois). So while the string of “forts” north of Mobile Bay are unusual, they are not unique.

Besides, Mobile Bay, give me a break. Madoc would have had to skirt the Bahamas, fight the Gulf Stream and Florida Current and zig-zag thru the Florida Keys. If he landed, it would most likely have been on the East Coast. However, at the museum at Old Stone Fort, there have flint “swords” which I have never seen anywhere else with the exception of smaller Aztec obsidian daggers. Hmmmmm

8

Although the usual explanation of “Zichmni” is that it is a slightly deformed “Wichmannus”, Pohl makes a laborious if fascinating case that “Zichmni” is a misreading of “d’Orkeney” – and the brothers Zeno would probably have addressed Prince Henry Sinclair as the Prince of Orkney, as he was ruler of the Orkney islands.

It’s not as farfetched as it sounds. He finds examples of “d’O” in period manuscripts that look very much like the capital lette “Z”. The “r” that follows would, after the “Z”, be seen as “i”. Italian has no "k, so replacing it by “ch” makes sense, etc.

Even so, I remain unconvinced – but just barely.

9

More pre-Lief contact theories…

Berbers from North Africa, up to about 500 CE. This complex theory from the Kingdom of Talossa proposes many crossings of the Atlantic from about 3000 BCE until about 500 CE, with a significant effect on North American history.

Farley Mowat’s “The Farfarers”, in which the pre-Keltic inhabitants of Britain flee ever north and ever west across the sea, and end up in what is now Nunavut, Labrador and Newfoundland, where some of their descendants live to this day…

10

sailor spouted off:

I was just wondering if the Europeans DID know of its existence when Columbus sailed. It would seem that the Spanish and Italians would have had ample oportunity to learn of the voyages of Henry Sinclair HAD they occured.

Here is a rephrasing of the question that you, sailor may not find offensive, since I must avoid stepping on your toes:

  1. Did Henry Sinclair in fact explore the coast of the Americas for a full two years and a century before Columbus?

  2. IF such a discovery had occured, what was known of it by his contemporaries. Was it well known what he had done, or was it merely yet another Northern European fishing expedition? As a corrolary, what was known of it at Columbus’s time?

  3. What does this earlier discovery (if in fact it occured) have on the veracity of the standard history of the Columbus story? Did he in fact know he was heading for another continent? Did he have reason to suspect it?

Now since you, sailor, my mostly illiterate friend, did not seem to finish my post, you might have noticed that my question was not a missive to debate the merits of Columbus. I readily concede that Columbus’s voyages were HUGELY important to the viability of future colonial exploits, and that the Europeanization of the New World was due in large part to Columbus’s voyages. I was just trying to establish whether the standard story of Columbus’s voyage of discovery (i.e. that CONTEMPORARIES believed that he was the first person to try sailing west) was open to a critical review, and if Henry Sinclair’s voyages were in any way important to the Europeanization of the Western Hemisphere. Next time, Mr. Happy-go-Lucky sailor, try to not take up a stance of debate with someone who is not looking for a debate.

11

This stuff about Henry Sinclair is quite interesting. It would appear, from what Mipsman and others have noted, that there is a distinct possibility that Sinclair was merely a patron of the sailings of the Zeno brothers, which would have been far more characateristic of a powerful Noble, who would be unlikely to leave his lands for 2+ years on a jaunt for better fishing grounds. Still, it was not unheard of for nobles to do the exploring themselves. Prince Henry The Navigator of Portugal was a near contemporary of Sinclair, and he led several African expeditions himself.

The websites I had read (which were decidedly pro-Sinclair in nature) seemed to indicate that Prince Henry was well known at the time, and that there was near contemporary documentary evidence of the voyages in the form of inscribed stone tablets at Roslin (Rosslyn) Cathedral near Edinburgh. They were put their by the patron of the church’s construction, Henry’s grandson William Sinclair, Earl of Roslin. There is a distinct posibilty that some of Henry’s life would be embelished by his progeny, still why would such a detail be completely invented, given that Henry appeared to have plenty of other vitrues worth extolling.

As for Cal’s theory (well, not HIS theory, but the theory he notes and disputes) over the mistranslation of d’Orkney, it is not as far fetched as it would seem. Apparently the region of Oregon got its name from several consecutive mistranslations of Wisconsin (Ouisconsin…Ouisgonsin…Ouisgon…Oregon was the way I remember the theory going) as well as the VASTLY different ways in which Celtic languages vs. Romance and Germanic languages approach orthography and spelling(Robert Bruce decends from the French “Brix” family, for example, the house of Stuart/Steward, Owain Glyndwr/Owen Glendower, etc. etc.) it IS a possible theory. Still, if you WANT to make it work, I’m sure you can. I’m pretty sure I could make a similar connection between Jayron 32 and Henry Sinclair as easily.

I’m still interested in any other pre-Columbian exploration theories, especially more info on the Sinclair voyages. Keep’em coming.

12

Well, there is no solid archeological evidence he got here, and no traces of the settlements. It is likely that some european was shipwrecked in NA before Columbus, but what counts as 'discovering" is getting the message back. Now, columbus was the only non-viking to do so, and of that there can be no dispute. The Vikings did get their message back, but it was lost, so they get to count as “discoverors” also.

13

>> sailor, my mostly illiterate friend

I find that uncalled for. That’s all I have to say in this thread. Have a nice day.

14

I apologize sailor. You’re entirely correct, and that underhanded remark by me was uncalled for. I was in a bad mood when I wrote it, for no real reason over what you said, and I feel bad reading it much later. You’re point was a valid one, and I’m sorry for belittling it so. I’ve not so big an ego as to let a transgression go unaccounted for. I’m terribly sorry I said what I did, and I wish you would stay involved in this discussion, because I am certain that you have something valuable to say.

15

I just got back from Guatemala, where I saw several long flint “swords” of Mayan manufacture. The presence of flint swords is not, in my view, evidence of European contact.

16

(Sweet) corn from America…???

I didn’t participate in that thread, but I did read several of the Henry Sinclair references that turned up, including this one:
http://www.grandlodgescotland.com/website/zeno.html

and this one:

My opinion after reading all the Zeno notes is that we’re looking at a fraud. (Whether the Zeno brothers and son were frauds or the story attributed to them was a fraud I could not tell from the sparse details I found.)

I ignored the “minor” details such as a months-long outbound journey vs a days-long return: the Gulf Stream is not that fast and the return trip was made more quickly than a nineteenth century ship could accomplish it, much less a fourteenth century ship.

On the “major” details, there was no better reliability, however. The lands where the fleet is supposed to have spent the most time interacting with locals are drawn to appear as Cape Breton Island and Labrador (and were so identified by the earliest “researchers”), but Labrador has never held the population required for the story to be true and has no similar architectural ruins.

Later “researchers” moved the journey down to the Caribbean to find more people and get in touch with the more tropical vegetation reported. Unfortunately, there are still no islands that had (at that time or later) both the population and the buildings described in the narrative.

Even the early date of the text is open to challenge, with the earliest genuine provenance dating to the eighteenth century.

Have Europeans, Africans, and Asians made it to the Americas between the rise of the Nile and Yangtze River cultures and Ericson’s journey? Quite possibly. At this point, however, most of the tales that have come to us about specific voyages appear to me to be pure invention.

Moderator’s note: I fixed the links. -manhattan

[Edited by manhattan on 07-06-2000 at 05:04 PM]

17

Sorry about the messed up links. I’ll remember when to omit quotes one of these days.

18

To be honest, I’d be surprised if the Americas had NOT been discovered many times prior to Columbus. It’s remarkable how much history has been ignored until relatively recently if it did not involve the upper, literate, classes. I find it significant that there are clear records of enormous European fishing fleets working the Grand Banks by 1506 - eight years after Columbus discovered the West Indies. I find the most parsimonious explanation of this to be that at least some Europeans had been fishing there for a long time, but kept it hushed up so as to maintain a competitive advantage. Once the cat was out of the bag about new lands to the west (because of C.C. and because nothing lucrative stays secret forever), we start to see records of their activity. But could a bunch of peasant fishermen really make a claim of precedence for discovering the lands around their fishing grounds? Would they make such a claim? Of course not, even though they had explored the shoreline a fair amount, putting in to take on supplies. Since this was not a literate class of people, no records would surround such activities.

I am aware that this is one hundred percent unfounded speculation, and I fully expect it to be pooh-poohed, but I thought I’d toss it in anyway.

19

jayron 32, apology accepted and matter forgotten.

My post was sort of tangential, as you could see, and not intended to address the main point about Henry Sinclair about whom I know nothing.

I would guess that if that was common knowledege at the time of Columbus we would probably know about it.

My take is that Columbus was a great navigator who knew a lot about winds and currents and such but was very bad at dealing with people and this caused him a great many problems.

To diminish his feat by saying he was so dumb he was looking for Asia etc, is (IMHO) pretty dumb in itself. He had a vast knowledge and intuition and he thought he might find Asia. Instead he found something else.

Well, discoveries are made like that all the time. A chemist is investigating along a path that he thinks might lead him to make a better plastic but ends up making a better glue. Is this dumb? NO! He found something no one else had found and which required a lot of knowledge nobody else had.

A drug company is developing a drug that looks promising in treating pain and find out it is better suited to prevent heart attacks. So what? That group of people found something useful using a knowledge which is in very short supply and they have great merit. Would you be sorry you gave them the grant in the first place? Of course not!

Columbus was a great navigator who probably learnt much of his knowledge from others but he was the one who put it all together for something useful.

(I do realise I am taking a tangent here, sorry about that)

It was that expedition that lead to the colonization and development of America. He bears the name because he was the leader but it was a huge joint effort. We just like to put a tag on things and events.

Columbus was Italian but Italy did not discover America, Castile did. To say (as I have heard many times) that Italy discovered America is equivalent to saying Germany put a man on the moon. Yes, the person in charge of the Apollo project ws German but so what? It was the USA who did it and who employed him to do it.

Columbus was the genius who opened the door and showed the way but it was Castile who made something of that information (unlike earlier “discoveries”).

Anyway, just my two cents on this. And to add a lighter note. It is Spanish and Italian folklore that Christopher Columbus was the first man to make an egg stand on its end. If you ask anyone there “Columbus was the first man to…?” the answer is “to make an egg stand on end!”

I used to think that this was just a children’s story but I have just found out the origin of this story goes back to the sixteenth century.

Si non e vero e ben trovato.

20

I always thought that the story of the upstanding egg was attributable to Bertolucci - the builder of the dome on the cathedral at Florence.

Thats if I got any of the details right at all.

He was supposed to have challenged the leading architects of the day. who had questioned his ability to carry out what had been regarded as an impossible commission, to do said feat and when they failed he did the deed.

Please feel free to correct me or illuminate the dark bits of my mind a little.