Category Archive 'Discovery of North America'

11 Nov 2014

Before Lewis & Clark

, , , , , ,

Mobile_1953_Madoc_plaque
In 1953, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a plaque commemorating the discovery of America by Prince Madoc on the shores of Mobile Bay, Alabama. The plaque was removed by the Alabama Parks Service in 2008 and put in storage.

Roads and Kingdoms notes the rediscovery of the pre-Lewis-and-Clark Western journey of discovery by John Evans in search Welsh-speaking Indians via Evans’s descendant Gruff Rhys’s book, album, film and “investigative concert tour.”

In 1792 John Evans, a 22-year-old farmhand and weaver from the village of Waunfawr in the mountains of Snowdonia, Wales, responded to a plea from the great Welsh cultural mischief-maker Iolo Morganwg to settle, for once and for all time, the quandary of whether there was indeed a tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans still walking the Great Plains, descendants of Prince Madog, who was widely believed (especially by Welsh historical revisionists) to have discovered America in 1170. With the aid of a loan from a gullible friend, Evans set sail to Baltimore to begin the greatest of adventures, whereupon he set off on foot and disappeared into the Allegheny Mountains with one dollar and seventy-five cents to his name, in search of the lost tribe.

Hat tip to Vanderleun.


Your are browsing
the Archives of Never Yet Melted in the 'Discovery of North America' Category.











Feeds
Entries (RSS)
Comments (RSS)
Feed Shark