CHAPTER X. CAPTAIN ISAAC STUART—GOVERNORS SEVIER AND DINWIDDIE—GENERAL MORGAN LEWIS—THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF THE WELSH INDIANS.
Captain Stuart was an officer in the Provincial Cavalry of South Carolina, and the following sketch was taken from his own lips by I. C., Esq., an intelligent gentleman, in March, 1782. Lieutenant-Colonel Conger, of South Carolina, regarded Captain Stuart as a man who could be implicitly trusted in what he said.
"I was taken prisoner about fifty miles to the westward of Fort Pitt, about eighteen years ago, by the Indians, and was carried by them to the Wabash, with many more white men, who were executed with circumstances of horrid barbarity. It was my good fortune to call forth the sympathy of what is called the good woman of the town, who was permitted to redeem me from the flames by giving as my ransom a horse.
"After remaining two years in bondage among the Indians, a Spaniard came to the nation, having been sent from Mexico on discoveries. He made application to the chief for redeeming me and another white man, who was in like situation, named John Davey (David), which they complied with.
"And we took our departure, in company with the Spaniard, to the westward, crossing the Mississippi near Rouge, or Red, River, up which we travelled seven hundred miles, when we came to a nation remarkably white, and whose hair was of a reddish color, or mostly so. They lived on the banks of a small river which is called the river Post. In the morning of the day after our arrival, the Welshman informed me that he was determined to remain with them, giving as a reason that he understood their language, it being very little different from the Welsh. My curiosity was excited very much by this information, and I went with my companion to the chief men of the town, who informed him, in a language I had no knowledge of, and which had no affinity to that of other Indian tongues that I ever heard, that their forefathers of this nation came from a foreign country and landed on the east side of the Mississippi, describing the country particularly now called Florida, and that on the Spaniards taking possession of Mexico they fled to their then abode.
"And, as a proof of the truth of what he advanced, he brought forth a roll of parchment, which was carefully tied up in otters' skins, on which were large characters written with blue ink. The characters I did not understand; and, the Welshman being unacquainted with letters, even of his own language, I was not able to know the meaning of the writing. They are a bold, hardy, and intrepid people, very warlike, and the women beautiful when compared with other Indians."
John Sevier, at one time Governor of Tennessee, in a letter dated October 9, 1810, and published by Major Stoddard in his "Sketches, Historical and Descriptive, of Louisiana," Philadelphia, 1812, p. 483, says that in 1782 he was on a campaign against the Cherokees. Observing on his route traces of very ancient fortifications, he afterwards took occasion, on exchange of prisoners, to inquire into their origin, of Oconostoto, who for sixty years had been a ruling chief of the Cherokee Nation, and particularly as to the origin of the remarkable fortifications on the branch of the Highwasse River. The venerable chief replied, that it was handed down by their forefathers that those works were made by white people who had formerly inhabited the country. When the Cherokees lived in the country now South Carolina, wars existed between them, and were only ended when the whites consented to abandon the country. Accordingly, they ascended the Tennessee to the Ohio, then to the big river Mississippi, then up the muddy Missouri to a very great distance. They are now on some of its branches, but are no longer white people; they have become Indians, and look somewhat like the other red people of the country. "I then asked him," continues Governor Sevier, "if he had ever heard any of his ancestors say to what nation of people the whites belonged. He answered, 'I heard my grandfather and other old people say that they were a people called Welsh; that they had crossed the great waters and landed near the mouth of the Alabama River, and were finally driven to the heads of its waters, and even to the Highwasse River, by the Mexican Spaniards.'
"Oconostoto also said that an old woman in his nation had some parts of an old book given her by an Indian living high up the Missouri, and thought he was one of the Welsh tribe. Unfortunately," observes Governor Sevier, "before I had an opportunity of seeing the book, her house and all its contents were destroyed by fire. I have conversed with several persons who saw and examined it; but it was so worn and disfigured that nothing intelligible remained."
Governor Sevier was informed by a Frenchman, a great explorer of the country west of the Mississippi, that he had been high up the Missouri, and traded several months with the Welsh tribes, who spoke much of the Welsh dialect. Although their customs were savage and wild, yet many of them, particularly the females, were fair and white. They often told him that they had sprung from a white people; and that they had yet some small scraps of books remaining, but in such a tattered and mutilated order that they were unintelligible.
The very year that Robert Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, sent a letter of remonstrance to M. de St. Pierre, the French commander, complaining of the hostile movements of The Ohio Company, George Washington, then a young man of twenty-two, being chosen bearer of the dispatches, the Governor received a letter from a gentleman named George Chrochan, showing that the French knew of the Welsh Indians. This was in 1753. The original letter was deposited in the Foreign Office in London, and several gentlemen were enabled to obtain copies of it through Maurice Morgan, Esq., secretary to Sir Guy Carleton. It is as follows: