Clark County, Indiana - Chapter 1: Traditional Earliest Inhabitants of Clark County, 1909

That the country north of the Falls of the Ohio and adjacent to the river was inhabited by a strange people many years before the first recorded visit of a white man, there can be no doubt. The relics of a former race are scattered throughout this territory, and the many skeletons found buried along the banks of the river below Jeffersonville are indisputable evidence that a strange people once flourished here. Of all the legendary stories told of pre- Columbian visitors to the American continent, the Madoc tradition takes precedence. The Atlantis tradition, twelve thousand years old; the Phoenician tradition, dating from three quarters of a century before the Christian era; the Chinese tradition of the Buddhist priest in the fifth century; the Norse tradition of the tenth century ; the Irish tradition of the eleventh century ; and the ]Madoc tradition of the Welshmen in America near the close of the eleventh centurv, all lay claim to the honor of being accounts of the first visit of white men to the North American continent. The greatest probability of truth seems to attach to the Aladoc tradition, and the evidence from many different sources gives it a greater credibility than any of the other accounts.

This tradition is to the effect that a colony of Welshmen, who had emigrated to America in 1170, found their way finally to the Falls of the Ohio, and remained there for many years, being finally almost exterminated in a great battle with "Red Indians."

Owen Gwyneth, Prince nf \\'ales, died in 1167, and left seventeen sons. Disputes and contentions arose among them as to who should succeed the father, and Aladoc, one of the sons, thinking it better prudence to try his fortune elsewhere, set sail with a good company of Welshmen and traveled westward until he reached the shores of another continent. The new land ofifered such a fair and alluring prospect that JNIadoc returned to Wales and brought back a considerable number of Welsh to join his colony in the "New World." \Miere they landed is conjecture, but the testimony of many authorities, and the stories and traditions of manv of the early settlers of this west- em country prove to a greater or less degree of probability that white Indians, who spoke an almost pure ^^'elsh tongue, existed in several localities.

In 1582 the first account of this Welsh emig-ration to America appeared in "Hakluits's Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America," etc.. and his authority was Gutton Owen, a \\'elsh bard, who flourished during the reign of Henr\- VII. The account also appears in an addenda to Caradoc's "Histoiy of \^"ales," which was translated into English in 1584. In America the first mention of the Madoc tradition belongs to Captain John Smith, who gives it as the only discovery prior to that of Columbus (See "Generall Historie of Virg-inia, New England and the Summer Isles," London, 1624, page i), but the personal evidence corroborati^-e of this tradition begins with a statement by the Rev. Morgan Jones, in 1685. ( See Gentlemen's Magazine. London, 1740, page 103). The Rev. Mr. Jones was sent out by Governor Berkeley, of Virg'inia, as chaplain of an expedition to South Carolina. Arriving at Port Royal on April 19, 1660, they lay at a place called Oyster Point for about eight months, at which time, being almost starved by their inability to procure provisions, he set out with five companions through the wilderness. His narrative continues as follows : "There the Tuscarara Indians took us prisoners because we told them we were bound for Roanoke. That night they carried us to their town, and shut us up close, to our no small dread. The next day they entered into a conversation about us, which after it was over, their interpreter told us that we must prepare ourselves to die the next morning. Thereupon being very much dejected and speaking in the British (Welsh), tongue, 'Have I escaped so many dangers that I must now be knocked on the head like a dog?' His words were understood by one who seemed to be a war captain, and through his intervention the six prisoners were spared." These men remained with the Indians for four months, and, the minister states, "During which time I had the opportunity^ of conversing with them familiarly in the British (W'elsh) tongue, and did preach to them three times a week in the same language."

Captain Isaac Stewart, an officer in the Provincial Cavalry of South Carolina, in 1782 was captured by Indians and taken westward of Fort Pitt. He and a \\^elshman named John Davy were kept in bondage for over two years and were finally taken up the Red river to an Indian settlement. Davy understood and conversed with this tribe of white Indians in his native tongue. (See American Museum, Vol. 2, page 92, July, 1787).

The Rev, John LL. D., in a book entitled "An Inquiry into the Truth of the Tradition Concerning the Discovery of America by Madog," published in London in 1796, gives the testimony of numerous persons who had been among the ^^'elsh Indians in America. These incidents are too lengthy to relate here, but they show that enough testimony relating to \\'hite Indians who sixike the Welsh language lias been collected l)v writers in the past to give the story more weight than attaches to the Norse, the Chinese, the Irish or the Phoenician traditions of pre-Columbian discovery.

In later years historians have delved deep into this subject, and George Catlin, who published "Letters and Notes on the Manners of the North American Indians" in 1857, says that the Mandan Indians, among whom he lived and studied their histoiy and peculiarities, were descendants of the Welsh colony established in America by Prince Madoc in the twelfth centurj'. This entire tribe of Welsh Indians was almost wiped out of existence by the smallpox in the summer of 1838. In 1842 Thomas S. Hinde, an antiquarian of more than local reputation, gave some valuable infonnation touching the Madoc tradition. In answer to inquiries made by John S. Williams, editor of The American Pioneer, he wrote as follows :

"Mount Camiel, Illinois, May 30, 1824. Mr. J. S. W'illiams : Dear Sir - Your letter of the 17th. to Major Armstrong, was placed in my hands some days ago. The brief remark and hints given you are correct. I have a vast quantity of western matter, collected in notes gathered from various sources, mostlv from persons who knew the facts. These notes reach back to remote periods. It is a fact that the Welsh under Owen Ap Zuinch. in the twelfth century, found their way u]) the Mississippi, and as far up the Ohio as the Falls of that river at Louisx'ille, where they were cut ofif by the Indians; others ascended the Missouri, were either captured or settled with and sunk into Indian habits. Proof I. In 1799, six soldiers' skeletons were dug up near Jeffersonville. Each skeleton had a breastplate of brass, cast with the Welsh coat-of-anns, the Mermaid and Harp, with a Latin inscription, in substance, 'virtuous deeds meet their just reward." One of these plates was left by Captain Jonathan Taylor with the late Mr. Hubbard Taylor, of Clark county, and when called for by me in 1814 for the date Dr. John P. Campbell, of Chillicothe, Ohio, who was preparing notes on the antiquities of the \A^est, by a letter from iNIr. Hubbard Taylor (a relative of mine), now living, I was informed that the breast-plate had been taken to Virginia by a gentleman ot that state. I supposed as a matter of curiosity. Proof II. The late Mr. ]\Ic- Intosh, who first settled near this and had been for fifty or sixty years prior to his death, in 183 1 or 1832, a western Indian trader, was in Fort Kaskaskia prior to its being taken b}- General George Rog'ers Clark, in 1778. and heard, as he informed me himself, a Welshman and an Indian from far up the Missouri speaking and conversing- in the Welsh languag-e. It was stated by Gilbert Imlay, in his history of the west, that it was Captain Abraham Chaplain, of L'nion county, Kentucky, that heard this conversation in ^^'elsh. Dr. Campbell, visiting Chaplain, found it was not he. Afterwards the fact was stated by ]\IcIntosh. from whom I obtained other facts as to western matters. Some hunter, manv years ago. informed me of a tombstone being- found in the southern part of Indiana with the initials of a name, and '1186' engraved upon it.

The Alohawk Indians had a tradition among them respecting the Welsh, and of their having been cut off by the Indians at the Falls of the Ohio. The late Colonel Joseph Hamilton Davis, who had for many years sought for infonnation on this subject, mentions this fact, and of the Welshman's bones being found buried on Corn Island."

The early pioneers of Kentucky, in their intercourse with the Indians, who frequently visited the Falls of the Ohio for the purposes of trade, got from them the tradition of Madoc, and Colonel Reuben T. Durrett, the president of the Filscn club, of Louisville, in the 23d publication of that society, gives an account which was related to him by an aged W'elshman named Griffin in the early sixties. Griffin related as follows :

"On the north side of the river, where Jeffersonville now stands, some skeletons were exhumed in early times with armor which had brass plates bearing the Mermaid and Hai^p, which belong to the Welsh coat-of-amis. On the same side of the river, further down, a piece of stone supposed to be part of a tombstone was found, with the date 11 86 and what seemed to be a name -or initials of a name so effaced by time as to be illegible. If that piece of stone was ever a tombstone over a grave, the party laid beneath it must have been of the Welsh colony of Aladoc. for we have no tradition of any one but the Welsh at the Falls so early as 1186. In early times the forest along the river on both sides of the Falls for some miles presented two kinds of g-rowth. Along the margin of the river the giant sycamores and other trees of the forest primeval stood as if they had never been disturbed, but beyond them was a broad belt of trees of a dift'erent growth, until the belt was passed, when the original forest again appeared. This indicated that the belt had been deprived of its original forest for agricultural or other purposes and that a new forest had grown up in its stead. He said, however, it was possible that the most important of these traditions learned from the Indians concerned a great battle fought at the Falls of the Ohio, between the Red Indians and the ^^'hite Indians, as the Welsh Indians were called. It has been a long time since this battle, but it was fought here and won by the Red Indians. In the final struggle the \Miite Indians sought safety on the island since known as Sand Island, but nearly all who sought refuge there were slaughtered. The remnant who escaped death made their way to the Missouri* river, where, by different movements at different times, they went up that river a great' distance. They were known to exist there by different parties who came from there and talked Welsh with the pioneers. Some Welshmen living at the Falls of the Ohio in pioneer times talked with these White Indians, and although there was considerable difference between the Welsh they spoke and the Welsh spoken by the Indians, yet they had no great difficulty in understanding one another. He further said, concerning this tradition of a great battle, that there was a tradition that many skeletons were found on Sand Island, mingled promiscuously together as if left there unburied after a great battle, but that he had examined the island a number of times without finding a single bone, and that if skeletons were ever abundant there they had disappeared before his time."

John Filson, the author of the first history of Kentucky, published in 1784, was a believer in the Madoc tradition, and while in Louisville collecting material for his history, discussed the subject with such men as General George Rogers Clark, Major John Harrison, Colonel Moore and others. At a meeting of a club of prominent citizens in that city about this time Filson was invited to attend, and the subject of the Madoc tradition was brought up for discussion. General Clark spoke first, and confined himself to what he had learned from a chief of the Kaskaskia Indians concerning a large and curious- Iv shaped earthwork on the Kaskaskia river, which the chief, who was of lighter complexion than most Indians, said was the house of his ancestors. Colonel Moore spoke next, and related what he had learned from an old Indian about a long war of extermination between the Red Indians and the White Indians. The final battle, he said, between them, was fought at the Falls of the Ohio, where nearly the whole of the \\'hite Indians were driven upon an island and slaughtered. General Clark, on hearing this statement by Colonel Moore, confinned it by stating that he had heard the same thing from Tobacco, a chief of the Piankeshaws. Major Harrison spoke next, and told about an extensive graveyard on the north side of the Ohio, opposite the Falls, where thousands of human bones were Ijuried in such confusion as to indicate that the dead were left there after a battle, and that the silt from inundations of the Ohio had covered them as the battle had left them.

The testimony of many living men of Clark county today bears out the statement about the number of skeletons to be found in the vicinity of the Big Eddy. The late Dr. Beckwith, of Jeffersonville, had in his possession a skull from this graveyard at the Falls, and he pronounced it not the skull of an Indian. The White Indians, or, as some of the other Indian tribes called them, the "Stranger People," were possibly the builders of the mysterious fortifications on the hill crest, two hundred and fifty feet above the river, at Fourteen Mile creek. It is without doubt the most elalaorate and extensive work of defense erected by the vanished race. It is the only one of its kind in the United States. It has an area of about ten acres and has the remains of strong fortifications along its exposed front. These fortifications consisted of a wall with watch mounds or towers at intervals, five of which can yet be traced. Students and antiquarians have shown that it was not built by North American Indians, but its origin, like the battle at the Falls, is made obscure by the hazy lapse of centuries, and we can only surmise as to what it was and who built it, whether by the Stranger People or the Mound Builders; but that it was of a race previous to the Indians is certain. Bones of a race ante- dating the Red Indians are frequently found in the mounds in this vicinity. As an historical and antiquarian curiosity its ruins are far more remarkable and interesting than the dilapidated castles along the German Rhine.

Among the traditional or semi-traditional accounts of early white explorers to the Falls of the Ohio, the visit of the French explorer, La Salle, may be mentioned. The Indiana country was claimed by the French by virtue of his discovery of the Ohio river. The account of this voyage is as follows :

Robert Cavelier Sieur de la Salle in i66g started on a voyage of discovery down the Ohio, and it is said that he floated as far down as the Falls of that river, where his guides and crew deserted him. Not daunted by this misfortune, he made his way back to the French settlements to the north. An iron hatchet which he left here in a small tree on the bank of the river is said to have been found imbedded in the tree one hundred and thirty-nine years afterward. La Salle is credited with being the earliest white man ever in this vicinity, but his discovery amounted to nothing. From shortly after his supposed visit other explorers began to periodically discover the river, until the settlers came and the "Beautiful river" became a highway for travel, rather than an entrance into a mysterious land.

Xote : I am indebted to Colonel Reuben T. Durret, President of the Filson Club, of Louisville, Kentucky, for much of the material in this chapter.