"An instant astonishment glowed in the countenances, not only of the council, but of his Shawanese companions, who clearly saw that he was understood by the people of the country. Full confidence was at once given to his declarations. The king advanced and gave him his hand. They abandoned the design of putting him and his companions to death, and from that moment treated him with the utmost friendship. Griffith and the Shawanese continued eight months in the nation, but were deterred from prosecuting their researches up the Missouri by the advice of the people of the country, who informed them that they had gone a twelvemonth's journey up the river, but found it as large there as it was in their own country.
"As to the history of this people he could learn nothing satisfactory. The only account they could give was, that their forefathers had come up the river from a very distant country. They had no books, no records, no writings. They intermixed with no other people by marriage: there was not a dark-skinned man in the nation. Their numbers were very considerable. There was a continued range of settlements on the river for fifty miles, and there were within this space three large watercourses which fell into the Missouri, on the banks of each of which they were likewise settled. He supposed that there must be fifty thousand men in the nation capable of bearing arms. Their clothing was skins well dressed. Their houses were made of upright posts and barks of trees. The only implements they had to cut them with were stone tomahawks; they had no iron. Their arms were bows and arrows. They had some silver which had been hammered with stones into coarse ornaments, but it did not appear to be pure. They had neither horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, nor any domestic or tame animals. They lived by hunting. He said nothing about their religion.
"Griffith and his companions had some large iron tomahawks with them. With these they cut down a tree and prepared a canoe to return home in; but their tomahawks were so great a curiosity, and the people of the country were so eager to handle them, that their canoe was completed with very little labor to them. When this work was accomplished, they proposed to leave their new friends, Griffith, however, having promised to visit them again.
"They descended the river with considerable speed, but amidst frequent dangers from the rapidity of the current, particularly when passing through the white mountains. When they reached the Shawanese Nation, they had been absent about two years and a half. Griffith supposed that when they travelled they went at the rate of about fifteen miles per day. He stayed but a few months with the Indians after his return, as a favorable opportunity offered itself to him to reach his friends in Virginia. He came with a hunting-party of Indians to the head-waters of Coal River, which runs into New River not far above the falls. Here he left the Shawanese, and easily reached the settlements on the Roanoke.
"Mr. Childs knew him before he was taken prisoner, and saw him a few days after his return, when he narrated to him the preceding circumstances. Griffith was universally regarded as a steady, honest man, and a man of strict veracity. Mr. Childs has always placed the utmost confidence in his account of himself and his travels, and has no more doubt of the truth of his relations than if he had seen the whole himself. Whether Griffith be still alive or not he does not know. Whether his ideas be correct or not, we shall probably have a better opportunity of judging on the return of Captains Lewis and Clarke, who, though they may not penetrate as far as Griffith alleged he had done, will probably learn enough of the country to enable us to determine whether the account given by Griffith be fiction or truth.
"I am, sir,
"Your humble servant,
"Harry Toulmin.
"Frankfort, December 12, 1804."
With regard to the exploring expeditions of Lewis and Clarke, to which Judge Toulmin refers, it was found in their published records that although they pursued a different branch of the Missouri from the one which was supposed to lead to the Welsh Indians, they discovered straggling Indians similar to those mentioned by Griffith, Vancouver, and many others. They belonged to those who had a tribal existence in other localities.
However, they describe long lines of embankments which they saw before leaving the main channel of the Missouri, some of them enclosing an area of six hundred acres. They found them as high up as one thousand miles from the junction with the Mississippi. Captain Lewis was a Welshman. In their long and perilous journey, extending to the Columbia River, they lost but one man, William Floyd, also a Welshman, and who was buried on top of one of these mounds west of the Missouri,—called to this day "Floyd's Mound."
The Missouri, taken in connection with the Mississippi, is the longest river in the world, its length from the highest navigable stream to the Gulf of Mexico being four thousand four hundred and ninety-one miles, and its length to its junction with the Mississippi, three thousand and ninety-six miles. Add to this the immense distance not navigable because of the cataracts and falls, next to Niagara the grandest on this globe, and reaching to the Rocky Mountains, and some idea may be formed of the great extent of this river. The entrance of the Yellow-Stone is nearly two thousand miles above its mouth. A journey of one thousand miles up the Missouri a century or more since, while it was an undertaking of no slight magnitude and attended with many hardships and dangers, did not bring the traveller over more than one-fourth of its length. The course pursued by Griffith and his companions can be marked out with singular accuracy by the use of subsequent knowledge, obtained during the last one hundred years, respecting the country that river traverses.