Madoc

Madoc, son of Owen Gwynnedd, a Welsh prince, is believed by his countrymen to have discovered America about 300 years before Columbus. Compelled, it is said, by civil strife, to abandon his native land, he sailed westward in 1170 with a small fleet, and, after a voyage of several weeks, reached a country whose productions and inhabitants were quite unlike those of Europe. Here he lived for a long time; then, returning to Wales, he gave an account of the new land that he had discovered, equipped another fleet, set sail again, and was never more heard of. The story will be found in Lloyd and Powell's Historie of Cambria (1584); but see the essay by Thomas Stephens written in 1858 for the Eisteddfod, and published in 1893. There is no foundation for this Welsh tradition; even if it were, the Northmen have a prior claim to the discovery of America, for it is beyond doubt that Greenland and the New England States were visited by them at a much earlier period. Catlin in his Letters on the North American Indians (1841) hazardously describes the Tuscaroras as a mixed race descended from Madoc's Welshmen and the aborigines. Southey has chosen the story of Madoc as the subject of one of his so-called epics.