History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 6

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198

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HISTORY OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

finally, and with devout sincerity, concluded to unite their destinies with these strange barbarous people, and with them spend the remainder of their days, taking Indian wives, and adopting Indian customs so far as necessary, and teaching the better customs, methods and religion of the whites to the Indians. This may have been 700 years ago, and somewhat in confirmation of this is the story that a Welsh ship, on a voyage of discovery was lost on the southern Atlantic coast near the close of the twelfth century. In any event these whites or their descendants were seen and conversed with later by missionaries and explorers, and through the medium of their language it was ascertained that these whites were of Welsh extraction. As time passed the Mandans, with all other aboriginal peoples, were crowded back from the coast by the aggressive and increasing forces of civilization, and as the Mandans would abandon a country where one or two generations had been born and lived and died, it would be discovered that they were not like the other Indian nations: that they pos- sessed a knowledge of many arts not common to the children of the forest ; that they had erected substantial log buildings for residences, and their cultivated fields were far in advance of any agricultural knowledge possessed and practiced by Indians generally, and occasional instances of the construction of substantial fortifications were encountered. The story goes that there was always a sort of reticence or backwardness on the part of the members of this tribe, when asked a question that concerned their history, as though they knew a tradition of a singular character concerning themselves, but which they did not fully believe and felt that those who pressed them to relate it would brand it as an invention pure and simple.

It is conjectured by some of the missionary writers that they fully realized a radical difference between their nation and other Indian nations, and even after the lapse of centuries their speech disclosed a foreign ingredient that they explained had been imparted by intercourse with a strange people in the remote past. The physiological characteristics of many of them denoted a blended organ- ism. In its migrations west the tribe finally reached the Valley of the Missouri. They seem to have made a settlement at certain points where they have remained a half or a full century, perhaps longer, then would follow a removal and the founding of a new village or fort hundreds of miles away. We believe it was the Mandans who built and occupied the Bon Homme fortifications which excited so much interest in the mind of Captain Lewis, and that he would have found the colony there had his exploration occurred a century or two earlier. They had passed on long anterior to his time, had built and abandoned another cen- tury old home, near Fort Thompson, and were beyond the reach of civilization by a half century at least when he formed their acquaintance. In numbers they had become reduced to a fragment of a tribe, still possessing, however, traits of character, customs and an unIndian appearance that placed them in a class by themselves. They are a survival of the fittest, perhaps, of what can be produced by the union of the Anglo Saxon and native American under fairly favorable circumstances, and seem to demonstrate that no advantage has come to either race as a result of their long centuries of experiment.

George Catlin, a famous painter and authority on Indian traditions gathered by himself during years of patient labor among them, from 1850 up, while visit- ing with the Mandans, came to believe that they had descended from a company of Welsh explorers who landed on the shores of North America about two hundred years before the arrival of Columbus. Of the ten ships which left Northern Wales some time about 1290, in charge of Prince Modoc. no tidings were ever heard, but Catlin was of opinion that they planted a colony in the region of Ohio, coming inland from the southern shore or coast ; and after his sojourn with them in their fortified village on the Upper Missouri he had no difficulty in tracing them back, and down the river, and up the Ohio to the immense fortifications of that country. Thus finding constant tracks of those ruins, he became convinced that the Indians, with whom he had passed so much

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time, were descended from those ancient builders. In some instances those forts had walls twenty and thirty feet high, with carefully covered passages leading to the water. Again the similarity can be traced in the Mandan canoe, which was an exact counterpart of the "coracle of the Welsh," made of buffalo hides stretched over a frame of willows, and fashioned as round as a tub. Catlin found the Mandans living in a massive stockade, with convenient portholes, on two sides of which their city was fortified by standing back upon the edge of precipices that struck down a rock ledge to the river's brink. Their lodges were circular in form, and from forty to sixty feet in diameter. The Mandans were good farmers and believed in diversity of crops; raising corn, squashes and pump- kins. Their cellars for storing their dried vegetables and corn in winter were dug six or seven feet deep, smaller at the top in a sort of jug like shape, and no matter how severe the winter nothing ever froze. Their homes were clean, comfortable and commodious. ( Here is where the Welsh intermixture is revealed. ) Many of the women were almost white, with gray. hazel or blue eyes; hair of every shade but auburn, which they delighted to spread out, its long folds reaching to their knees. Many of the Ohio specimens of pottery dug from those archaic fortifications were like the utensils used by the Mandans, who spent much time in moulding pitchers, vases, pots and cups ; baking the clay in kilns built in the hill sides; and from those ingenious artisans the fur hunters tised to get a beau- tiful and durable blue glass bead, of their own manufacture, but the process was never revealed by them to the whites.

There is a legend among them that their ancestors once lived under a great body of water that is far to the northeast; buit that some of the people came out from their homes beneath the seas, and their glowing accounts led others to leave, also, for the outside country, although some were unable to climb out. From the time of leaving their homes under the deep waters, they wandered over the prairies, suffering much, but always delivered by their Good Angel, through some miraculous interposition, and in time they were led by messengers who went south. "to the fertile land of the buffalo and elk, and people who lived in houses and tilled the ground." But still they journeyed, and at length found themselves in the great valleys along the Missouri River ; and there they dwelt and learned many arts. This legend certainly bears indications that give plausi- bility to the Welsh Colony theory.

Bryant, who was not friendly to the claim that a Welsh Colony had discovered America prior to Columbus, and had become miscegenated with the Mandans, makes mention of the tradition in his "Popular History of the United States," discussing the subject substantially as follows :

The tradition that AAmerica was discovered about the year 1170 by a Welsh prince named Madog or Madoc, is still more circumstantial ( referring to a prior claim of the Arabs), and attempts to support it have been made from time to time for the last 200 years. Humboldt, in alluding to it, says :

1 do not share the scorn with which national traditions are too often treated, and am of the opinion that with more research, the discovery of facts entirely unknown would throw much hight on many historical problems.

This tradition relating to Madoc and his voyage had no doubt some actual basis of

truth. * * * The evidence adduced from time to time in support of it has been believed by many, and is curious and entertaining : the tradition itself has found a place in historical narrative fer 300 years; for each and all these reasons, it demands brief consideration. It is evident that much of the narrative following was inspired by a desire to prove that the Welsh were entitled to great credit as the pioneers in the discovery of the American continent-their achievements antedating those of Columbus by two and possibly three centuries. These early writers do not concern themselves with the Mandan story, although confirming it in important particulars.

The tory was first related in Caradoc's "History of Wales," published by Dr. David Powell in 1854. Caradoc's history, however, came down only to 1157, and Humphrey Llwyd ( Lloyd), who translated it, added the later story of Madoc. * * The story is briefly * this: "When Owen Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, was gathered to his fathers, a strife arose among his sous as to who should reign in his stead. Madoc, one of the sons, took no part in this struggle, but got together a fleet and went to sea in search of adventure. He

HISTORY OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

sailed westward and at length came to an unknown country where the natives differed from any people he had ever seen before, and all things were strangs and new. Seeing that the land was pleasant and fertile, he put on shore and left behind most of those in his ships, and returned to Wales. On his return he set forth the attractive qualities of the new land he had discovered with such good effect that enough of his countrymen to fill ten ships determined to go with him."

The number of these emigrants is not given, and it should be remembered that ships in that day were small affairs compared with modern vessels. Colum- bus 300 years later, in his first voyage, had three ships and but 120 men. Madoc probably took with him a number of families, intending to found a colony. There is no account of their ever returning to Wales, but it is said "they followed the manners of the land they came to, and used the language they found there."

Passing to the evidence since gathered, that a tribe of Indians, some of whom were of light complexion, and spoke a language differing from the Indian language in part, and resembling the Welsh tongue, who were found within the limits of the American Colonies in the seventeenth century, it is found that among the earliest testimony is a letter to Dr. Thomas Lloyd, of Pennsylvania, and by him transmitted to his brother, Mr. C. H. S. Lloyd, in Wales. The letter was written by Rev. Morgan Jones, a Welsh missionary, and was dated at New York, March 10th, 1685. The letter states that Mr. Jones was sent as chaplain of an expedition from Virginia to Port Royal, S. C., in 1660, where he remained . some months ; but suffering greatly for food, he and five others started to return to Virginia. On the way they were taken prisoners by a band of Indians and condemned to die. On hearing the sentence, Mr. Jones exclaimed, in the Welsh tongue: "Have I escaped so many dangers, and must I now be knocked on the head like a hog." Immediately he was seized around the waist by a war captain of the Dogs, and assured in the same language that he should not die. He was taken before the Tuscaroras chief with his companions and ransomed. Their deliverers took them to their own village where they were hospitably entertained. For four months Mr. Jones remained among them, conversing with and preaching to them in the Welsh language. The conclusion is that these Indians were descendants of the Welsh colonists under Madoc. Rev. Charles Beatty, a missionary traveling in the Southwest in 1776, met with people who had seen and conversed with these Welsh Indians. A Mr. Benjamin Slutton informed him that he had visited an Indian town west of the Mississippi, where people were not so tawny as other natives and whose language was the Welsh; these people also had a book which they cherished with great care, which Mr. Slutton stated was a Welsh Bible, probably in manuscript. A Mr. Levi Hicks, who had been among the Indians from a youth, told Mr. Beatty that he had visited such a town west of the Great River, where the language spoken was Welsh, and Mr. Beatty's interpreter. Joseph, had been with the natives of the same tribe, whom he was sure spoke the Welsh language, as he understood it partially himself.

In 1785 appeared a narrative that Capt. Isaac Stewart had been taken pris- oner by the Indians with a Welshman named David, and they were carried several hundred miles up the Red River where they came to "a nation of Indians remarkably white, and whose hair was mostly of a reddish color." The Welshman found that these people could converse in Welsh. Their story or tradition was that their forefathers came from across the seas and landed on a coast east of the Mississippi, supposed to be Florida. These Indians pos- sessed some rolls of parchment covered with writing in blue ink, which they kept wrapped up in skins with great care.

In a book entitled "An Inquiry Concerning the First Discovery of America by the Europeans," by Williams, it is stated that a Welshman, living on the banks of the Ohio River, in a letter dated October 1, 1778. declared that he had been several times among Indians who spoke the old British ( Welsh ) language, and that a Virginia gentleman with whom he was acquainted, had visited a tribe

HISTORY OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

of Welsh Indians living on the Missouri River, 400 miles above its junction with the Mississippi.

( The attention of the reader is called to the fact that the Mandan Indians were in the Missouri Valley at the time mentioned; and further, it should be borne in mind that these Welsh writers make no mention of this name as the tribe which spoke their language : the purpose of the Welsh historians being not to prove what nation these Indians belonged to, but to show that a colony of Welshmen had preceded Columbus to America, and were first discoverers of the new land. )

Further evidence, and the most modern, comes from the famous painter of Indians and Indian scenes, George Catlin, who in the first half of the last cen- tury, spent years visiting various tribes. He studied the Mandans particularly, and believed them to be a cross between the Indians and the Welsh, and is inclined to accept the theory that the Mandans are descendants of the Mound Builders, and that the builders of those works were people originating in Madoc's Colony. Catlin speaks of the boat used by the Mandans in being like the coracle of the Welsh, and in complexion, in the color of their hair and eyes, they seem to be allied with the whites. Albert Gallatin, secretary of war under Jefferson, states that a chief of the Mandan tribe whom he met at Washington, was of a lighter shade of complexion than other red men, and that he was the only full- blooded Indian he had ever met with blue eyes.

Among the Zuns of New Mexico there are Indians of fair complexion, blue eyes and light hair. Among the New Mexicans is a tradition that long ago some Welsh miners wandered into that country with their wives and children, and that the Zuns killed the men and married the women.

Historians properly make a broad distinction between a tradition and an invention. The latter has no basis of truth whatever, while traditions as a rule have a substantial basis of truth, though often embellished by fancy or distorted and amplified in their repetiton from generation to generation.

The theory that has gained some credence in more modern times, that this was not the decaying ruins of an oldl fort, but due to the natural causes produced by the river in periods of high water, is much more difficult to explain and believe, than the testimony of Captains Lewis and Clark, who were qualified by educa- tion and experience to form a sound judgment in a matter of this character. The natural action of the river would not build stone walls six feet high, with stone transported overland for some distance; nor does it lay the foundations for large fortifications with the skill and precision that was required in laying out this abandoned fortress. It is much more irrational, and difficult. to believe that this ruined fort was the result of natural causes, and so skilfully built as to deceive not only Lewis and Clark, experienced and educated military men, but the crew composed of men of ripe experience in the army. who accompanied them, than it is to accept the well-grounded opinion of the explorers who came upon the ruins before they had been disturbed by the white pioneers of a half century later, whose opinion, formed after painstaking examination and measure- ments, pronounced them the ruins of an abandoned extensive fortress that had been constructed by a people who possessed considerable knowledge of the architecture of defensive works and who had built the fortress with the view of protection against powerful foes.

The testimony of the earliest settlers of Bon Homme, while lacking any evi- dlence that they had made a careful examination of the ruins, but had frequently visited and inspected them, was in a general way corroborative of the theory or conclusions of Lewis and Clark.

CHAPTER IV LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION (Continued )

DEPART FROM BON HOMME ISLAND-PRAIRIE DOG VILLAGE-FLANNEL SHIRTS DIS- TRIBUTED TO THE MEN-A SINKING SANDBAR-LOISEL'S FORT-TETON INDIANS -INDIANS NOT FRIENDLY, MAKE EFFORTS TO DETAIN EXPLORERS-PLAIN TALK FROM CAPTAIN CLARK-DOG FEAST-TETON CUSTOMS, APPAREL, NATIVE WOMEN -OFFICER OF THE DAY-AGAIN UNDER WAY AGAINST DETERMINED OPPOSITION.

The journal continues :

The next morning, passed at sunrise three large sandbars and at the distance of ten miles reached a small creek about twelve yards wide coming in from the north above a white bluff ; this creek has obtained the name of Plum Creek (Snatch Creek) from the number of that fruit which are in the neighborhood and of delightful quality. Five miles farther we encamped on the south near the edge of a plain; the river is wide and covered with sandbars today. The banks are high and of a whitish color; the timber scarce, but an abundance of grapes. Beavers' houses, too, have been observed in great numbers on the river, but none of that animal themselves.

September 4th, at one mile and a half, we reached a small creek called White Lime Creek, on the south side. Just above this is a cliff covered with cedar trees, and at three miles a creek called White Paint Creek of about thirty yards wide; on the same side and at 41/2 miles from White Paint Creek, is the Rapid River, or as it is called by the French, La Riviere Qui Court (Niobrara). This river empties into the Missouri in a course S. W. by W., and is 152 yards wide and 4 feet deep at the confluence. It rises in the Black Mountains and passes through a hilly country with a poor soil. Captain Clark ascended three miles to a beautiful plain on the upper side where the Pawnees once had a village; he found that the river widened above its mouth, and was much divided by sands and islands, which, joined to the rapidity of its currnet, makes the navigation difficult even for small boats. We camped just above it on the south, having made only eight miles. We saw some deer, a number of geese, and shot a turkey and a duck. The place in which we halted is a fine low ground, with much timber, such as red cedar, honey-locust, oak, arrowwood, elm and coffeenut.

On Wednesday, the 5th, at five miles, we came to Pawnee Island in the middle of the river, and stopped to breakfast at a small creek on the north which has the name of Goat Creek (Chotean Creek) at 812 miles. Near the mouth of the creek the beaver had made a dam across so as to form a large pond. in which they built their houses. Above this island the River Poncara ( Ponca Creek ) falls into the Missouri from the south, and is thirty yards wide at its entrance. Two men whom we had dispatched to the village of the same name returned with the information that they had found it on the lower side of the creek. but as this is the hunting season the town was so completely deserted that they had killed a buffalo in the village itself. This tribe of Poncaras ( Poncas), who are said to have once numbered 400 men, are now reduced to about fifty, and have associated for mutual protection with the Mahas ( Omalas), who are 200 in number.

These two nations are allied by a similarity of misfortunes; their common enemies, the Sioux and the smallpox, drove them from their towns, which they only visit for purposes of trade. At 316 miles from the creek we came to a large island on the south, along which we passed and encamped on the head of it at 4 o'clock. Here we replaced our mast ; some bucks and elk were procured today and a black tailed deer seen near the Poncaras' village.

lligh wind and rapid current obliged us to use the towline the next day. We made but 816 miles and encamped on the north after passing high cliffs of soft blue and red colored stone on the south. We saw some goats and great numbers of buffalo, and the hunters fur- nished us elk, deer, turkeys, geese. a beaver, and a large catfish was caught. The next day at 516 miles we reached and encamped at the foot of a round mountain on the south, having passed two small islands. This mountain, which is about three hundred feet at the base. forms a cone at the top, resembling a dome at a distance, and seventy feet or more above

HISTORY OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

the surrounding highlands. As we descended from this dome we arrived at a spot, on the gradual descent of the hill, nearly four acres in extent and covered with small holes. These are the residence of a hitle animal called by the French petit chien (little dog), who sit erect near the mouth and make a whistling noise, but when alarmed take refuge in their holes. In order to bring them out we poured into one of the holes five barrels of water without tilling it, but we dislodged and caught the owner. After digging down another of the holes for six feet, we found, on running a pole into it, that we had not yet dug half way to the bottom; we discovered, however, two frogs in the hole, and near it we killed a dark rattle- snake, which had swallowed a small prairie dog; we were also informed, though we never witnessed the fact, that a sort of lizard and a snake live habitually with these animals. The petit chien are justly named, as they resemble a small dog in some particulars, though they nave also some points of similiarity to the squirrel. The head resembles the squirrel in every respect, except that the car is shorter ; the tail like that of a ground squirrel, the toe-nails are long, the fur is fine and the long hair is gray. [This prairie dog town is a little above Fort Randall, on the opposite side of the river.]

On Sunday, the 9th, at seven miles, we reached a house on the north side, called the Pawnee House, where a trader named Trudeau wintered in the year 1796-97; behind this, hills, much higher than usual, appear to the north about eight miles off. (Bijou Hills.) We came by three small islands before reaching this house, and a small creek on the south, and after having reached another at the end of seventeen miles, on which we camped and called it Boat Island. We here saw herds of buffalo, some elk, deer, turkeys, beaver, a squirrel and prairie dog. We passed two small creeks on Sunday coming in from the north ( Pratt Stone ). Saw large herds of buffalo on the south, some of them numbering as many as 500. Encamped on the south at 1414 miles.

On the 10th, at 1012 miles, we reached Cedar Island, two miles long and covered with red cedar. Just below this island on a hill to the south is the backbone of a fish, forty-five feet long, tapering toward the tail, in a perfect state of petrification, fragments of which were collected and sent to Washington. On both sides of the river are high, dark colored bluffs. About a mile and a half from the island on the southern shore we discovered a large and strong impregnated spring of water; and another not so large half way up the hill. Camped on Alud Island, elk and buffalo abundant.

The next day we passed a prairie dog village and a number of islands and camped on the south side at the distance of sixteen miles. In the morning we observed a man riding on horseback down towards the boat, and were much pleased to find it was George Shannon, who left us on the 20th of Angust to search for the horses which had strayed. After he had found them he attempted to rejoin us, but seeing some other tracks, which must have been of Indians, he mistook them for our own and concluded we were ahead, and had been for sixteen days following the bank of the river above us. During the first four days he exhausted his bullets and was then nearly starved, being obliged to subsist for twelve days on grapes and a rabbit which he killed by making use of a hard piece of stick for a ball. One of his horses gave out and was left behind, the other he kept as a last resource for food. Despairing of overtaking us he was venturing down the river in hopes of meeting some other boat and was on the point of killing his horse when he was so fortunate as to join us. All the following day, the 12th, the water was rapid and shallow and sandbars so numerous that the men were in the water much of the time. Encamped after traveling four miles. lligh, dark bluffs on the south containing a mixture of slate and coal. Sandbars were very numerons on Thursday ; we made twelve miles. Hills on east side are high, separated from the river by a narrow plain. Great quantities of ripe grapes on the north and plenty unripe plums. We encamped on the north, opposite a small willow island; and the next day at two miles we reached a round island on the northern side ; at 71/2 miles a small creek, and at nine miles encamped near the month of a creek on the south. Sandbars numerous. Searched all day for an ancient volcano which we heard at St. Charles was somewhere in this neigh- borhood, but found nothing even remotely resembling it.

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 6

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920 Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1198

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198