Mat-to-toh-pa, "Four Bears," great chief of the Mandans, watched his tribe, wives, and children die about him, then starved himself, dying on the ninth day, his body prostrate over the remains of his kinsmen. Their numbers are now so reduced that the last statistics give them four hundred only.
When Mr. Catlin made his first entrance into this nation, numbering several thousands, he was struck with their appearance, and at once concluded that they belonged to an amalgam of native and white. He was at a loss for some time how to account for this; and it was only after the most careful study that he reached the conviction that the Mandans were a branch of the descendants of Madoc's colony. He believed that the ten ships of Madoc, or at least a part of them, either entered the Balize at the mouth of the Mississippi, or the colonists landed on the Florida coast and made their way inward. They began agriculture, but were attacked and driven to erect those immense earthen fortifications, and subsequently were driven still farther and farther inward. Mandans was a corruption of Madawgwys, a name applied by Cambrians to the followers of Madoc.
The following brief summary, arranged by the writer of these pages, may be taken as Mr. Catlin's principal reasons why he thought the Mandans were Welsh:
(1.) Their physical appearance.
They were of medium height, and stout. They did not share that high, stalwart physical frame which is so usual with Indians of the forest before they have become degraded by the vices of civilization.
Their complexions were very light-colored, but not uniform in shade.
Their hair was of all colors found in civilized societies. The hair of the unmixed Indian is a straight black. They wore beards,—which Indians do not have. They must have been the people who were called the Bearded Indians. They had different-colored eyes,—hazel, gray, and blue.
(2.) Form of Mandan villages. Here it may be remarked that the Minatarees construct their villages upon the same plan. They sink holes in the ground to the depth of two feet and having a diameter of forty feet, of a circular form, for the foundation of their wigwams, which are built of substantial materials and display more skill than is found among the other Indians.
(3.) Mandan remains. The method of sinking down into the earth for the purpose of obtaining a foundation has, singularly enough, offered a clue as to the authors of all those remains along the Ohio, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio, and along up the Missouri to the present abode of the Mandans. Their earthen works and huts, built in Druidic circles, are exact counterparts of those along the paths of their migrations. Of course the larger works have no modern counterparts, for those were erected when they were more numerous and able to cope with their foes.