The Brandenburg Stone Mystery
THE BRANDENBURG STONE
DID EUROPEANS VISIT MEADE COUNTY 300 YEARS BEFORE COLUMBUS SAILED WEST?
BY G. KEMPF, C. LUEKEN, R. BRIGGS & C.L. DAWSON
There is compelling evidence that Europeans reached North America hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus sailed west attempting to reach the orient. Controversial evidence suggests the Phoenicians (from the coastal regions of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel) may have reached the east coast of North America – perhaps penetrating as far west as present Michigan. There is little doubt among scholars that the Vikings (Norsemen from Scandinavia) arrived in North America 300 years before Columbus. Controversy arises regarding how far west the Vikings explored from their landing on the east coast. The most controversial evidence and speculation involves the claim that the Welsh (Wales, England) reached North America and penetrated north from Alabama to the Dakota’s in the twelfth century. The Welsh explorer who is believed by some to have accomplished this feat was Madoc. There is evidence, though controversial, that Madoc penetrated from the Gulf Coast to Kentucky and was forced further north by Native Americans (Shawnee, Cherokee and others) in a battle at the Falls of the Ohio at present Louisville, Kentucky; and eventually settled in North Dakota generations later.
This brings us to Meade County, Kentucky where a stone was unearthed that had upon it an inscription believed to be in Welsh script and left by members of the Madoc northern migration following defeat at Falls of the Ohio. Craig Crecelius made a curious discovery in 1912, while plowing his field in Meade County, Kentucky near Battletown. He had unearthed a limestone slab that had strange symbols chiseled onto the rock face. Knowing that he had made an important historical find, he sought information about the origins of the stone from the academics.For over 50 years, Crecelius inquired of anyone with academic credentials about the significance of the carved symbols. Disheartened and tired of being made fun of by the locals and academics alike, Mr. Crecelius finally gave up his quest for finding out the rock's secrets. In the mid-1960s, he allowed Jon Whitfield, a former trustee of the Meade County, Kentucky Library and member of ATHS, to display the stone in the Brandenburg Library. This could very well have been the end of the story, had it not been for the observant Mr. Whitfield.
Whitfield attended a meeting of the Ancient Kentucke (that’s the way they spelled it) Historical Society (AKHS) and saw slides of other, similar-looking carved stones. He learned that the carvings were a script called Coelbren, used by the ancient Welsh. Whitfield was informed that similar stones had been widely found across the south-central part of the U.S. Pictures made of the Brandenburg Stone were submitted to two Welsh historians helping the AKHS in deciphering the scripts.Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett, specialists in the study of the Coelbren script in Wales, immediately were able to read the script. The translation is intriguing; it appears that the stone may possibly have been a property or boundary marker. The translation read:
"Toward strength, divide the land we are spread over, purely between offspring in wisdom."The stone was on public display from 1999-2000 at the Falls of the Ohio State Park Interpretive Center in Clarksville, Indiana. The display has since been moved to the Charlestown Public Library, Clark County, Indiana.
The History of the Brandenburg Stone
1965 - Jon Whitfield (a former trustee at Meade County Library) took possession of the stone.
1973 - The stone was put into storage at the Brandenburg Library after some archaeologists examined it and said the marks were natural scratches.1995 - The stone was moved to the Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center in Clarksville, Indiana where it was put into storage and later displayed.
1998 - New studies were preformed on the stone. Alan Wilson and Bram Blackett, who are professional historians with the Arthurian Research Foundation in Cardiff, Wales, translated the writing from the Welsh language of Coelbren. According to them the stone reads: "Toward strength (to promote unity), divide the land we are spread over, purely (or justly) between offspring in wisdom."1999 - The Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center decided to put the Brandenburg Stone on display as part of their Myths and Legends exhibit.
2000 - The stone was moved to the Charlestown Library in Charlestown, Indiana and is on display in the Indiana Room. It is on loan from the Meade County Library in Brandenburg, Kentucky.There have been 55 stones with similar markings on them found in numerous states.
So Who Was This Explorer Madoc?
Madoc was, according to folklore, a Welsh prince who sailed to America in 1170, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492. According to the story, he was a son of Owain Gwynedd, a Welsh King. Madoc took to the sea to flee violence at home. The saga attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era, when English and Welsh writers made the claim that Madoc had come to the Americas as a ploy to assert prior discovery, and hence legal possession, of North America by the Kingdom of England. The story remained popular in later centuries, and a later development asserted that Madoc's voyagers had intermarried with local Native Americans, and that their Welsh-speaking descendants still lived somewhere on the American frontier. These "Welsh Indians" were accredited with the construction of a number of natural and man-made landmarks throughout the American Midwest, and a number of white travelers were inspired to go look for them.Madoc's father, Owain Gwynedd, was a reality during the 12th century and is widely considered one of the greatest Welsh rulers of the Middle Ages. His reign was fraught with battles with other Welsh princes and with Henry II of England. At his death in 1170, a bloody dispute broke out between his heirs. Owain had at least 13 children from his two wives and several more children born out of wedlock but legally acknowledged under Welsh tradition. According to the legend, Madoc and his brother Rhirid were among them, though no contemporary record attests to this.
The story claims that Madoc was disheartened by this fighting, and he and Rhirid set sail from Wales to explore the western ocean with a small fleet of boats. They discovered a distant and abundant land where one hundred men disembarked to form a colony and Madoc and some others returned to Wales to recruit settlers. After gathering ten ships of men and women the prince sailed west a second time, never to return. Madoc's landing place has been suggested to be west Florida or Mobile Bay, Alabama, in the United States.Although the folklore tradition acknowledges that no witness ever returned from the second colonial expedition to report this, the story continues that Madoc's colonists traveled up the vast river systems of North America, raising structures and encountering friendly and unfriendly tribes of Native Americans before finally settling down somewhere in the Midwest or the Great Plains.
Madoc's proponents believe earthen fort mounds at Devil's Backbone along the Ohio River to be the work of Welsh colonists.Several Early American explorers/travelers claimed to have found the Welsh Indians, and one even claimed the tribe he visited venerated a copy of the Gospel written in Welsh. Stories of Welsh Indians became popular enough that even Lewis and Clark were ordered to look out for them. Folk tradition has long claimed that a site now called "Devil's Backbone" about fourteen miles upstream from Louisville, Kentucky, was once home to a colony of Welsh-speaking Indians.There have been suggestions that the wall of Fort Mountain in Georgia owes its construction to a race of what the Cherokee termed "moon-eyed people" because they could see better at night than by day. (A competing tradition claims that the wall was built by Hernando de Soto to defend against the Creek Indians around 1540.) Archaeologists believe the stones were placed there by Native Americans. These "moon-eyed people," who were said to have fair skin, blonde hair and opalescent eyes, have often been associated with Prince Madoc and his Welsh band.
There is also a theory that the "Welsh Caves" in Desoto State Park, northeastern Alabama, were built by Madoc's party, since local native tribes were not known to have ever practiced such stonework or excavation as was found on the site.In 1810, John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, wrote to his friend Major Amos Stoddard about a conversation he had had in 1782 with the old Cherokee chief Oconostota concerning ancient fortifications built along the Alabama River. The chief allegedly told him that the forts had been built by a white people called "Welsh", as protection against the ancestors of the Cherokee, who eventually drove them from the region. Sevier had also written in 1799 of the alleged discovery of six skeletons in brass armor bearing the Welsh coat-of-arms.
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 twelfth century; and the Madoc tradition of Welshmen in America near the close of the twelfth century, all lay claim to being accounts of the first visit of white men to the North American continent.The Madoc tradition says that a colony of Welshmen immigrated to America in 1170, found their way finally to the Falls of the Ohio, and remained for many years, being routed from this area and almost exterminated in a great battle with "Red Indians." According to the most popular and persistent version of the legend, the Welsh settlers moved further and further inland from Alabama to Kentucky, and eventually moved in with the Mandan Indians on the Missouri River in North Dakota where they were assimilated into their culture.
According to the legend, Madoc and his brother Riryd sailed west from Wales (see map) in 1170 with 2 boats and a number of colonists, and landed in the area of what is now Mobile, Alabama. One of the boats returned to Wales, fitted out an expedition of 10 ships, and returned to North America to stay. Prince Madoc and his settlers moved up the Alabama and Coosa Rivers to the Chattanooga area. They built a series of forts along the route, one of which at DeSoto Falls, Alabama, is said to have been nearly identical in setting, layout, and method of construction to a Castle in, Wales.Inscribed stones such as that found in Meade County have been found in numerous other locations in North America. Letters and other documents from Early American explorers/travelers/historians are replete with mention of “white” Indians with light hair and blue eyes. Numerous early explorers of the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers have reported Native American tribes whose vocabulary included Welsh words. The evidence for the validity of claims that Madoc truly visited and colonized in North America is compelling but not conclusive.
Many eminent individuals of the past have believed in Madoc and have contributed evidence in support of the truth of the legend of Madoc. An honest observer does not disregard reports brought forth by such people as William Henry Harrison, John Sevier, John Filson, William and George Rogers Clark and dozens of other observant men of integrity. To ignore the accounts of these eminent individuals while professing objectivity is ridiculous.
The truth of the validity of the claims that major portions of the Madoc saga are born out in fact may have at one time come from the Mandan tribe of North Dakota. Lewis and Clark on their voyage of discovery spent months with the Mandan’s before continuing to the Pacific Ocean. It was in the Mandan village that they secured the aid of Sacajawea, who with her newborn child accompanied the expedition to the Pacific. Lewis and Clark were instructed by then President Thomas Jefferson, who authorized the expedition, to attempt to locate the “Welsh Indians” so often cited in reports of earlier explorers. Both Lewis and Clark became convinced that the Mandan’s had some connection to the Welsh. It is here that the most compelling evidence of a Madoc connection to North America lies. It is thought that it was with the Mandan’s that the remnants of the Madoc expedition were assimilated much after their defeat at the Falls of the Ohio (Kerr, in his History of Kentucky, states that he believes this battle took place sometime between 1660 and 1670) and the death of Madoc and his original company. But there are no surviving Mandan’s. An 1837 smallpox epidemic left just twenty-three men, forty women and about sixty-five children alive (Footprints of the Welsh Indians, by William L. Traxel). These were assimilated into neighboring tribes. The last full blooded Mandan passed away in 1993.Fact or fiction, the story of Madoc is interesting and compelling. Much has been written on the subject. It is difficult to separate fact from fiction. The truth may never be known. One can easily study the various claims of fact or fiction of the story as much is available in print and on the internet.