Note 334 — Chapter XXV · ACCOUNT OF THE MANDAN INDIANS (continued 3)

A tradition of white-bearded Indians living far to the westward was rife among the French traders and explorers in the early eighteenth century, and when he visited the Mandan in 1738 La Vérendrye sought "that nation of whites so much spoken of." The variation in color of complexion, hair, and eyes among the Mandan (see note 215, ante) led to various theories of their origin. Among these that of Welsh derivation gained much currency. The alleged American adventure in the twelfth century of Prince Madoc from Wales, and the consequent blending of his followers with the aborigines was a current theory among English ethnographers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Catlin enthusiastically adopted it to account for Mandan peculiarities; see his North American Indians, i, pp. 205-207; ii, pp. 259-261. For a bibliography of this theory, which Maximilian's scientific sense rejected, see Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (Boston, 1889), i, pp. 109-111; see also B. F. Bowen, Welsh in North America (Philadelphia, 1876), especially chapter xi.—Ed.