When will we ever learn …?

  A week or so ago I made fun of the coincidence that Welsh settlers had named a village they established in the Tennessee Valley with a word that hinted at the name “Dollywood.” That passage dated in the 1170s appeared in the book “Children of the First Man” By James Alexander Thom. Today as I’m reading toward the end of the book I came across this passage written about a Mandan tribe’s village on the Missouri River just south of the Yellowstone in 1837:

This is the frontispiece of the book. It is a drawing of Four Bears done in 1832 by George Catlin. Their relationship is described in the book. (National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

“(Four Bears) remembered that Red Hair (George Rogers Clark ) had tried to prevent this. (Most of the village dead or dying). He had encouraged the chiefs of all the Peoples along the Muddy River to have a scratch on their skin which would keep them from getting this disease (smallpox)! Yes, Red hair had tried that and sent soldier doctors everywhere to make the scratches. …

“But most of the chiefs had not trusted the soldier doctors. They had warned their Peoples that the doctors were probably bringing death in little bottles to kill Peoples and get them out of the way. The chiefs had all learned not to trust the white men or anything they said and did.

“Four Bears himself had forgotten his trust of Red Hair and had not let his People go and get the scratches. Now, he thought, we will all die ….”

— ”Children of the First Man” was published in 1994.

As they say what goes around …

Here is an account of that incident from the official page of the State of North Dakota, it includes a day by day account written by Francis A. Chardon. In 1837 he was superintendent at Fort Clark just across the Missouri from this village.

Here is the first post from facebook:

I am reading a book called The Children if the first Man by James Alexander Thom. If you are not familiar with him he writes massive tomes of historical fiction. In this one so far a group from Wales journeys across the Atlantic in the 1170s seeking to establish a colony on the east coast of North America which their leader had visited on a previous voyage. A hurricane blows them off course into the Gulf of Mexico. Mind you he does not use modern place names, rather a cumbersome collection of what he imagines are Welsh grunts and sighs and I had to figure out where they were from his descriptions. They spent a year stuck in the Mobile Bay swamps as best I could figure. Then they followed a great river north looking for suitable ground. They went north until they reached hilly country and solid ground. But still wanting that east coast place they eventually turned off the river and headed to the east across a low ridge of mountains. At the peak of the ridge they look out across a large valley with another river running through it and a bluish cloud lingering near the far edges of it. Now, as I figured the first river was the Tennessee. When they turned east I figured them somewhere along the now northern Louisiana border. I wasn’t sure but I had a suspicion. They built a castle and a village in that valley. In their best Welsh Thom had them name it Dolwyddelan. Then I knew where they were. I literally laughed out loud. Try to say that word out loud and see if you get it. If not, think of whom you might have heard of who came from the mountains of Tennessee.

It turns out this was just a coincidence that the names of the t3wo places sounded similar. It was the name of the original castle in Wales. Sorry Dolly!