Exotic Visitors: "the last of the Mohicans" Come to England, 1766

by Jacqui Reiter

An unexpected visit 
 
The summer of 1766 was especially wet. The five children of British politician William Pitt were staying at the seaside town of Weymouth for their health, but the relentless rain kept them from doing much sea-bathing.

The children had been in Weymouth less than a week before an unexpected adventure broke the rain-sodden monotony. On 24 July, four men and three women from the Wappinger tribe of Mohecannuk in New York landed at Weymouth after a month-long journey across the Atlantic. Edward Wilson, the Pitt children's tutor, described what happened:

A message came from the Chiefs themselves to inform the Ladies & Gentlemen [Hester, John, Harriot, William, and James Pitt] that if they had known that any of Mr Pitt's family was in town they wou'd have paid their respects to them first; and that now they wou'd absolutely see nobody till they had done themselves that honour ... At their coming into the room, the Chief of the Mohecaunnuck [sic] Tribe made a speech to Master Pitt [nine-year-old John, the eldest son] in the Indian tongue, & at the conclusion, presented him with a written translation of it in English.[1]

The seven natives made a tremendous impression on the Pitt children, who ranged in age from ten and a half to six and had never travelled far from home. Their mother, in London, could well imagine "the surprise of honest little John at being so extraordinarily addressed ... an odder event I think cou'd not well happen".[2] At least two of the children, Hester and William, wrote letters about it to their parents (seven-year-old William's was in Latin), and the other three probably did so too. "We found by talking to them that they had Christian names the same as the English," Hester wrote to her mother.[3]

The Mohecannuk of Stockbridge

 

Statue of Daniel Nimham by Michael Keropian (Wikimedia Commons)

The "Christian names" of the four Mohecannuk men that so surprised Hester Pitt were Daniel Nimham (or Ninmaham), Jacob Cheeksaunun, John Naunaphtaunk, and Solomon Uhhaunauwaunmut. (The names of the three women are not recorded). They had come all the way to Britain out of sheer desperation: their ancestral lands had been taken from them, and they wished to petition the King in person to have then restored.[4]

The name "Mohecannuk", occasionally written "Mohican", is almost certainly familiar to many from James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans. In 1766 the Mohecannuk weren't quite as badly off as Cooper made them out to be, but, like many North American tribes, they were very much under threat from colonial expansion.

Land belonging to the Mohecannuk tribe in the 18th century

 (Wikimedia Commons)

The Wappinger were a subset of the Mohecannuk. The name possibly came from the Algonquian "Wapani", or "Eastern People", since they were the easternmost Mohecannuk people: their lands lay along the east bank of the Hudson River, across the border between New York and Connecticut, over 200,000 acres in all. The tribe was small but well-established: at the start of the 17th century they numbered about 1000, and their number had grown considerably by the mid-18th century.[5]

After initial struggles with the early Dutch and British settlers in the 17th century, the Wappinger decided the colonists were here to stay and they might as well do business with them, although culturally they kept themselves aloof. The problem was they had always been hunters and farmers, and they soon found their land parcelled up and sold, or simply taken, by the European arrivals.[6]

The Philipse family
 
By the time Daniel Nimham became chief, or Sachem, of the Wappinger tribe in 1760, much Mohecannuk land had already been lost to Dutch and British settler families such as the Van Renssalaers and the Livingstons. The real threat, however, came from a family called Philipse.

The Philipses were originally Dutch. Vrederic Felypsen had arrived in New Amsterdam in 1674, but he soon took an oath of allegiance to the British Crown and anglicised his name to Philipse. He and his son Adolph set about establishing themselves as one of the most powerful landowning mercantile families in New York. Through marriage alliances and strategic purchases the Philipse lands soon extended twenty-four miles in three counties, from Croton River to Spuyten Duyvil Creek, including parts of New York City.[7]

Frederick Philipse III (Wikimedia Commons)

 Felypson's great-grandson, Frederick Philipse III, took over the estate in 1751. He had considerable local clout: he represented Westchester County in the New York Assembly from 1751 to 1775, where he was well-known for supporting and proposing measures friendly to the British Crown.[8] When he decided to absorb the ancient Wappinger hunting grounds into his lands, therefore, he probably did not expect much resistance.

During the French and Indian War in North America, Daniel Nimham and his Wappinger joined forces with the British commander Sir William Johnson and fought against the French. Because most of the men were away fighting, the remaining Wappinger moved, temporarily (or so they thought), to Stockbridge, Massachusetts.[9]

While they were away, however, Frederick Philipse took possession of the empty Wappinger lands. His claim to the lands was, ostensibly, legitimate: in 1697, Adolph Philipse had engaged in a treaty with the Wappinger to purchase part of their lands in northern New York. The problem lay in interpreting the treaty. Nimham claimed the treaty had only sold a part of the Wappinger lands; Philipse claimed his ancestor had been granted the whole lot by the Governor of New York.[10]

The matter went to court. New York's legislature rejected the Wappinger case. They appealed to the Governor, who (on the advice of the Council – of which Philipse was a member) dismissed them out of hand in February 1765.[11] This left the Wappinger with no recourse but to take their complaint to the highest level: the King himself.

The Wappinger in England
 
Alien and exotic as they were, Nimham and his party attracted much interest, and considerable sympathy, among the English. They arrived with no money, but an official order was issued to look after them at government expense and local society fell over themselves to host and entertain them.[12]

After their visit to the Pitt children, the Wappinger travelled by coach to the Duke of Kingston's ball, where they "danced according to their manner, with the war whoop", and practised English country dances. They were taken on a tour of Stonehenge and Wilton House on their way to London, which they reached in early August, where their host (a Mr Lowe) showed them off at Marylebone Gardens.[13]

"The Sachems are remarkably tall and stout," the newspapers reported gleefully, "one of them six Feet and an Half high without Shoes, which they don't wear, of a brown shining Complexion, and bold manly Countenance, dressed in the Indian Manner. The Women, who are Ladies of Fashion, were of the same Complexion with the Men".[14]

Nimham had spent some time living with an English family as a child, and so could talk a little English. The Pitt tutor, Mr Wilson, noted that "one of them ... is a kind of Interpreter to the rest", presumably Nimham. Despite this, they travelled with an unnamed "Major", who acted as a barrier between the Wappinger and the curious crowds.[15]

They spent some weeks in London, waiting. They never did see the King, but they did receive a favourable response from the Lords of Trade, recently appointed under the new ministry of William Pitt (now Earl of Chatham). The Secretary of State, Lord Shelburne, instructed their lordships to report "there is foundation for further examination into the state of the facts and proceedings upon which the Complaint [of the tribe] is grounded". The Lords of Trade concluded the Governor and Council of New York had acted with "unreasonable Severity, the Colour of great Prejudice & Partiality and ... an intention to intimidate these Indians from prosecuting their claims".[16]

Unfortunately, the Lords of Trade did not have the last word. The King did not review the petition, and a second court case in the Colonies reached the same conclusion as the first. Philipse exemplified the old adage that possession was nine-tenths of the law.

Aftermath
 
Karma works in strange ways, and Philipse did not get to enjoy his spoils for long. He chose the wrong side in the American Revolution, and in 1776 was proscribed as a traitor to his country. New York appropriated all his land in much the same way as Philipse had dispossessed Nimham's people. Philipse died in exile in 1786.[17]

Nimham's story was no happier. Alienated by the inattention of the British Crown to his people's plight, he joined the rebel side during the Revolution. He and fifty Wappinger warriors were surrounded and killed by British and Loyalist troops at the Battle of Kingsbridge in August 1778.[18]

The remaining Wappinger were eventually absorbed into the Oneida Nation. They never, of course, recovered their land, and eventually moved west. Today their descendants live on a reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin.[19]

It's a sad ending to a rather romantic tale. I wonder whether the Pitt children ever discovered what happened to the Mohecannuk Indians who visited them on that rain-swept July day in Weymouth.

__________

References


[1] Edward Wilson to Lady Chatham, 26 July 1766, National Archives Chatham MSS PRO 30/8/67 f 3

[2] Lady Chatham to Edward Wilson, 29 July 1766, in Lord Ashbourne, Pitt: Some Chapters of his Life and Times (London, 1898), p. 3

[3] Lady Hester Pitt to Lady Chatham, 21 August 1766, National Archives Hoare MSS PRO 30/70/5/330a; William Pitt to Lord Chatham, [August 1766], in J.H. Rose, William Pitt and National Revival (London, 1911), p. 44

[4] Alden T. Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 176-8

[5] Patrick Frazier, The Mohicans of Stockbridge (Nebraska, 1992), pp. xi-xv, 2

[6] Frazier, pp. 9, 12

[7] State of New York, An American Loyalist: the ordeal of Frederick Philipse III (NY, 1976), p. 6

[8] An American Loyalist, pp. 8, 13-4

[9] Vaughan, pp. 176-8

[10] Report of the Lords of Trade on the Petition of the Wappinger Indians, 30 August 1766, in J.R. Brodhead (ed), Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, VII (Albany, 1856), 868-70

[11] Report of the Lords of Trade, 868-70

[12] New Daily Advertiser, 8 August 1766

[13] Caledonian Mercury, 11 August 1766

[14] Public Advertiser, 8 August 1766

[15] Edward Wilson to Lady Chatham, 26 July 1766, National Archives Chatham MSS PRO 30/8/67 f 3; New Daily Advertiser, 8 August 1766; Public Advertiser, 8 August 1766

[16] Report of the Lords of Trade, 868-70

[17] An American Loyalist, pp. 26, 31

[18] "Daniel Nimham" (Wikipedia), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Nimham (accessed 8/1/2015)

[19] Frazier, p. xi

This is an Editor's Choice and was originally published January 8, 2015

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Jacqueline Reiter has a PhD in late 18th century political history from the University of Cambridge. A professional librarian, she lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children. She blogs at www.thelatelord.com and you can follow her on Facebook (www.facebook.com/latelordchatham) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/latelordchatham). The Late Lord: the Life of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, a non-fiction account of John Pitt, was published by Pen & Sword Books in January 2017. Her novel about John and William Pitt, Earl of Shadows, was published by Endeavour Media in October 2017. 

A 12th Century Welsh Prince in America: The Legend of Prince Madog

by Kristin Gleeson

In Washington, D.C. in 1801, a Lt Joseph Roberts, a Welshman, was seated in a hotel restaurant and spoke in Welsh to the waiter he knew to be from Wales. To his astonishment a Native American chief of some minor tribe in Washington to sign a treaty, approached him and asked Roberts in Welsh, “Is that thy language?”
Roberts told him it was and the Native American said that it was his language too. Roberts questioned him and discovered that the whole tribe, located about 800 miles southwest of Philadelphia, spoke the language and it had been their language stretching back generations.

Mandans by Geoge Catlin

The account was published in a Welsh publication in 1805, Y Greal Neu Eurgrawn and in the Public Advertiser in 1819 and was one of many reports that fostered the legend of Prince Madog (or Madoc as it is sometimes spelled) sailing to America in 1169 and landing in Mobile Bay near what is now Alabama.

According to the legend, Prince Madog’s father, Owain ap Gruffydd ap Cynan, King of Gwynedd, died leaving ten sons from several different marriages.  In Welsh tradition the eldest wasn’t automatically the heir, so the throne was up for grabs.  The oldest son, Iorewerth, couldn’t claim the throne in any case, because he had a deep scar across his face. In Welsh tradition anyone one with such a physical blemish wasn’t allowed to be king.  Another son, Howel/Hwyel, who was something of a poet and had an Irish mother, Pyvog, seized the throne and held it precariously for two years. He went to Ireland to claim his mother’s property and found on his return his brother Davydd had claimed the throne.

Dolwyddelan Castle

Against this backdrop, Prince Madog, a much younger son, decided to take to the seas. Little is known of his early years. Legend would have it that he was born at Dolwyddelan Castle, rather than at the king’s seat of Aberffraw and that his mother’s name was Brenda.  He was raised in secret, because he had a club foot, by a man named Pendaran and it wasn’t until he was sixteen, on his mother’s deathbed that she told him the truth of his parentage.

He then spent years sailing around France, Spain and into the Mediterranean, trading in various ports. When the king, his father died and the factions formed Owain decided to leave and resume his sea travels. Navigation was still primitive in the 12th century making such a voyage extremely risky, but as a few brave re-enactors of the 20th century have demonstrated, not impossible.

Judging from where he was supposed to have landed in America it is most probable that boarding his ship, the Gwennan Gorn, and with a crew of about 20, he began his voyage in Wales, possibly at Abergwili, sailed around Cornwall to France, then down along the French coast. It was common knowledge at this this time that there were two mighty ocean currents, one that flowed westward from Europe and the other one back again so that it’s entirely plausible that the strong ocean currents caught him up and took him into the Canaries and then eventually to what is now the Alabama and Florida coast. There he sailed up along the coast and ended up in what is now Mobile Bay, Alabama.  He landed, left a few there, and returned to Wales to bring more colonists. Those left behind travelled upriver encountering friendly and unfriendly natives and built stone structures along the way, until they eventually settled in the Great Plains of the Midwest.

There is no mention of Owain’s son in the oldest Welsh chronicles, the Chronicle of Princes or the Annals of Wales, though there were many called Madog whose deeds were recorded. But many of the old records were destroyed by Edward I.There does exist an ancient Welsh manuscript in the Cottonian Collection in the British museum containing a long account of the lineage of Gruffydd ap Cynan, citing him as the father of Owain and the grandfather of “Madawc.”  In the same collection there’s a Latin manuscript that identifies Gruffydd as the son of Cynan and the father of Owain.
Welsh bards of the early 15th century, before Columbus’s voyage, also mention Madog in their works. (Bards were nearly royal in status and their works carried historic significance, mention). One poem described Madog in this manner:

…Madog am I, the son of Owain Gwynedd,
With stature large and comely grace adorned,
No lands at home, nor store of wealth me pleased,
My mind was whole to search the ocean seas.(Maredudd ap Rhys, transl. from Welsh).

The legend attained its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era, when English and Welsh writers wrote of the claim that Madog had gone to the Americas as an assertion of prior discovery, and hence legal possession, of North America by the Kingdom of England.

In the following decades and centuries there were many reported encounters with ‘white Indians’ and a few stating also that they spoke Welsh, before and after Joseph Roberts startling account.
In 1686 a Reverend Morgan Jones, rector of a church in Long Island NY, wrote a letter to a noted Welsh Quaker leader of Philadelphia recounting a journey he took 20 years earlier when he was dispatched from Virginia to South Carolina to be a minister to a newly formed colony. He was there for eight months, but due to stavation he decided to return to Virginia on foot with some of the group. On the way the Tuscarora took them prisoners. A leader of another tribe, called the “Doeg” saw them there, and overhearing Jones and the others converse in Welsh went over to them and, speaking in Welsh, told him that he wasn’t to worry, he wouldn’t die. The leader ransomed Jones and his five colleagues and took them back to the Doeg town where he and the others were entertained for 4 months. Jones preached to them several times a week in the Welsh language. Eventually he and his friends left, fully provisioned by the Doeg people.

In 1753 a Colonel wrote a letter to the governor of Virginia and mentioned that three young French priests had just returned from a missionary trip among the Indians and brought back a man who spoke Welsh. Other Welsh speaking missionaries in the 18th century cited encounters with Welsh-speaking natives,  but it was Morgan Jones’ story that received the most publicity. His account was rewritten and published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1740 and reprinted in the New York Gazette in 1777 as well as various other journals through to the early 19th century.

In the 1790s William Agustus Bowles, Director General of the Creek Nation and also an actor, linguist as well as a liar, adventurer and charlatan, made a flamboyant appearance in London sporting an ostrich plume topped turban and large silver gorget around his throat and a silver tomahawk at his side. The Welshmen present in London society at this time used the opportunity to question him about the Welsh speaking tribe. Bowles confirmed the legend, saying he had encountered them in the presence of Welshmen.

Bowles confirmation fuelled a determination of a small group of Welshmen to launch an expedition to document conclusively the presence of the Welsh speaking tribe. Back in Wales, a similar interest had been fostered. One such person was John Evans who went to America and in 1793 set out on his own from Philadelphia, disillusioned by the lack of interest and funds from his Welsh counterparts in America, to find the fabled tribe. He arrived in St Louis at time when it was the centre of a four-power political struggle. The USA was anxious to expand westward; Britain threatened to push southwards from Canada with their trading organisation; France, in eastern Canada also threatened with their trading companies and Spain struggled to maintain control of this land it owned west of the Mississippi. Jones was arrested as a spy and imprisoned for 2 years. He was eventually released and became a Spanish agent. In the company of two Scotsmen, Jones set out on his expedition. He reached the Omahas and traded with them and ended up spending the winter there. While there, he received word that the British had established a fort in the Mandan territory where it was now speculated that the Welsh speaking tribe lived.

After a difficult journey Evans reached a Mandan village and he handed out gifts to the welcoming people. The British were already present, but Evans ousted them within five days and took possession of their fort. Spain declared war on Britain a few days later. Jones was thereby technically a traitor. He spent the next 6 months in the Mandan territory, questioning the natives closely. He made another perilous journey back to St Louis and delivered his journal and maps to the Spanish. He then wrote a note to a Dr Samuel Jones in Philadelphia saying that the Welsh Indians didn’t exist. Perhaps embittered and angry against his countrymen and a country where he would now be branded a traitor, Jones, many years later is supposed to have bragged drunkenly to his friends that he had been handsomely paid to keep quiet about the subject of the Welsh Indians who were to carry their secret to their graves because disease would soon carry them off.

Mandans by George Catlin

There were other attempts in the 19th century to document the existence of a Welsh speaking tribe by visiting the Mandan. They were found to be different in many respects from neighbouring tribes. They weren’t nomadic hunters; they lived in fixed villages and farmed. Their villages were laid out in squares made up of bee-hive shaped earth-covered lodges.  They fished in a boat that was unlike other tribes, made of will or flexible boughs in a tub shape and covered with buffalo skins (like a Welsh coracle).Their oral history said they had lived much farther south, but had been driven north and west by their enemies. The men grew beards and their hair grew grey with age and many had blue eyes with fair complexions and blonde or reddish hair. In 1833-34, the renowned painter of various tribes, George Catlin, mentored by the famous explorer William Clark, stayed among the Mandan with a German nobleman. He saw no reason to disagree with previous statements about the Mandan. Catlin emphasised in his own reports that their hair was finer, more dark brown than black, and that a few had fair hair. Their eyes weren’t black, but brown or sometimes even grey.  His portraits show the women with beautifully chiselled faces, large bright blue eyes, long noses and thin cupid bow lips.

Plaque at Mobile Bay

Were the Welsh really in America in the 12th century? There is no apparent strong archaeological proof of this voyage in any part of America, but there exist in Alabama, Georgia and Tennesee at least three heavy stone fortifications which archaelogists agree were built a few hundred years before Columbus arrived and are unlike any known Native American defence works. All three are thought to be the work of one group of people within a single generation. These forts are located close to the Dog River (formerly known as the Mad Dog River) that other rivers that connect to the entrance to Mobile Bay.

There are many legends and even some petroglyphs that suggest the presence of Europeans before Columbus and even before Eric the Red, but the Legend of Prince Madog of Wales has all the elements of romantic tale that never seems to die.

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Kristin Gleeson has a Ph.D. in history and a Masters of Library Science. She writes historical novels and non-fiction history.One of her novels, Along the Far Shores features the Welsh legend and is told through the eyes of an Irish woman who is washed ashore on the gulf coast and must try and find her way back to Prince Madog and his crew. You can find more about Kristin Gleeson on her website.