Prince Madoc?

doctorsparkles · Post by **doctorsparkles** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 3:33 am

I was reading peoples' complaints about the lack of medieval castles in America in another thread (found here: viewtopic.php?t=79 ), and it got me thinking:

What does everyone think of the story of Prince Madoc? Madoc was a Welsh prince who apparently sailed to what is now the U.S. in the mid-to-late 12th century. There he and his followers integrated with local native tribes to form the Mandans. There's a wealth of information on the internet... you can find some sites in the link below:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=prince ... p=mss&tab=

I don't know if it's true or not (nor do any historians know for sure). My 10th grade history teacher certainly thought it true, as he made sure to make it part of the curriculum. Either way, I think it's a really neat story. Your thoughts?

David Girard · Post by **David Girard** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 8:43 pm

Very intesresting information.

I didn't know about Madoc. Is there artefact about this ? I'd like to visit this site one day !

Post by **Bruce N H** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 9:45 pm

Hey,

I have no idea of any truth to these, but Madeline L'Engle works it into the third (and best, IMO) book of her Time series, A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

Bruce

Post by **Formendacil** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 11:58 pm

Actually, this sounds not that unfamiliar. I was just shelving a book at work today regarding some theory about Scottish Knights Templars founding a colony in Acadia in the late 1300s.

Really wierd.

doctorsparkles · Post by **doctorsparkles** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 4:01 am

My teacher mentioned something about what seems to be the remains of the foundation of a Welsh style castle in the Southern U.S., but I can't seem to find any mention of it in any of those sites. I don't think there is any doubt that Madoc did exist (there are records of him... I don't have a specific link at the moment though) and that he did sail somewhere, but the question is whether or not it is possible that he could have landed in the New World.
To Formendacil: I'm having a bit of trouble finding a good atlas, so I'm not completely sure where Acadia is. Where is it in relation to Newfoundland, as there was certainly a Viking presence there. A Viking settlement (dating back to some 500 years before Columbus' voyage to the New World) was found at L'Anse-aux-Meadows in the early-to-mid 1960s.

Post by **Formendacil** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 5:21 pm

doctorsparkles wrote:To Formendacil: I'm having a bit of trouble finding a good atlas, so I'm not completely sure where Acadia is. Where is it in relation to Newfoundland, as there was certainly a Viking presence there. A Viking settlement (dating back to some 500 years before Columbus' voyage to the New World) was found at L'Anse-aux-Meadows in the early-to-mid 1960s.

Acadia is modern-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the two mainland maritime provinces. It was settled by the French, starting in 1604-ish, and fought over for the following one and a half centuries by the British and French, until it was permanently made a British colony, I believe in 1754. (Thereafter named Nova Scotia. New Brunswick was carved out of it after the influx of Loyalists following the American Revolution.)

In addition to this weird theory about Knights Templars (and there is supposed to be the remains of a castle in Nova Scotia that bears a resemblance to late-14th century Scottish-Scandinavian architecture...), and the concrete evidence of the Norse at L'Anse aux-Meadows, there is also a fairly widespread belief that St. Brendan, an Irish monk in the 500 or 600s, made one or more voyages to the New World. No evidence that I know of, though...

David Girard · Post by **David Girard** » Wed Aug 25, 2004 6:56 pm

That's interesting. I didn't heard about Scottish Knights too. Nothing is confirm if I undesrtand well. The presence of Viking at L'Anse-aux-Meadows is confirm by the discovering of a lot of artefact.

Something more. I know too that many Basque fisher come in St-Laurent Gulf to fish many years before the first coming of Jacques Cartier and Christopher Colombus in 15th century.

So there was a lot of travelling here in North America before Christopher Colombus.

Very very interesting...