Chicago, Jan. 1 , 1845
Dear Brother, (Happy New Year!) The following is in relation to an Indian of the Cherokees, a preacher of the gospel. His Christian name is Benjamin Moses Mordecai. He was born in the year 1800.
A few nights ago I was listening to him preaching twice. When he was in the pulpit he complained that he could not speak English as easily as he would - his tongue was too fat.
He said that he was well-versed in 5 different languages of the Indians, that he had visited many different tribes of Indians beyond the Rocky Mountains, and had been in Texas and Mexico, etc.
When the large crowd had gone out, I went to him and asked him, had he not seen any White Indians? He said that he had seen at some time nine or ten of that tribe, and that he knew where they were etc.
That time was not the time to talk to him further about them; he promised to come to my house to give me all the history he could about them; and he fulfilled his promise. I asked two responsible Welsh people from this town to come and listen to him give us the story of the White Indians, or as he called them "Welsh Indians," those, he said, he saw with his own eyes. The story is as follows.
When I was a child, I heard many times about White Indians.
In the year 1832 he saw a man in his father's house who said that he understood Welsh, and said that he had been very far among the various tribes of Indians, beyond the Rocky Mountains, and that he had seen a tribe of White Indians or Welsh Indians.
They had lost their language in almost all; yet they had enough to show (said this Welshman who was speaking with his father) that their language was a corruption of the Welsh language. He stayed among them several days. They told him that if he had been there a few days earlier, he could have seen a ship that had been trading with them. Our historian did not know whether they were on the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean, but he believed that they were on the Pacific at that time.
In 1840 two Missionaries, Mr. Robert B. Canada and his wife, of Georgetown, Kentucky, and Mr Gill and his wife and his wife's sister, from Georgia, came to the Cherokee land in the Arkansas Territory, and informed those Indians of the purpose of their journey - that they intended to cross the Rocky Mountains to visit different tribes of the Indians, to inquire who of them was willing to bring ambassadors among them etc. 16 Cherokees agreed to go with them.
Mordecai (who is our historian) was one of the count. They crossed the Great American Desert in 14 days. On their journey they spent three weeks and four days without bread or salt, and forty-eight hours without water. He lived on meat and honey - mostly Buffalo meat.
After crossing the named Desert they went to the Chemanchian tribe, and from there to Santa Fe; and from there to Pekin, a town on the Pacific Ocean, a 5-day trip from the old city of Mexico; and about 200 miles North West to a town with the name Peckhum, where he saw 9 White Indians and a Spaniard with them as translators.
They had come there on some special occasion with the elder of the place; his name was Antonio.
Hysbans(Hispanics?) are resident there. The missionaries talked to the White Indians as the translator. In this Fellowship or Conversation, the White Indians were all sitting on the ground with their faces to the ground, without looking up in the spirit of the conversation.
Only one of them spoke like an elder among them; and when he asked them for their consent to anything, they signed consent by saying "oom" or "um," without lifting their eyes from the ground.
They said their country was about 400 or 500 miles away.
He did not know for sure which way, but thought it was to the North West. Their costumes were socks (leggings) of deer skin, and a similar type of footwear, and shirts of red flannel, and Buffalo skins instead of antans, and her hair was sleek and golden like women's hair; and they put a flower in their hair to decorate, without one kind of cap on their heads.
Our historian said that their faces were white - as white as white men have in common, and their skins under their clothes by whites and grandmothers etc. - that they lived like other Indians in that zone, on fish, meat, honey, and Indian corn, - that the honey was very abundant there, and the climate was lovely and healthy.
He said that they were very shy, wanted to stay away from other men, and did not look at them in their face, but kept their eyes to the ground.
He knew nothing of their religion, whether they were willing to receive missionaries or not; and he did not know their number; he judged they were not very numerous.
He knew only one name of them but “White Nation." That's their name there, he says.
He said he could find them again, but that it was a very long journey. The manner in which he and his company went before was on horses, and horses that carried the furniture etc. He judged that it would take about 5 months to get from Chicago there, by land.
The missionaries and company returned, after 15 months on their journey. They are present among the Pawnees, and Mordecai then traveled on his journey to North Michigan to the Potawatomis to preach to them the gospel. He plans to return to his family early next summer.
They visited twenty-eight different tribes of Indians, of which only ten were happy to receive missionaries. Mordecai promised to go as a leader to the White Indians, should our nation wish to go search for them.
If any of my countrymen, or of our nation, want to know more history than I have given, I will give it readily through the Missionary. I believe there are truths in the above history.
When I was at St. Louis in the fl. 1819, on asking for the Welsh Indians, I found complete satisfaction there that they were not so much to the North and St. Louis, neither from the East to the Rocky Mountains. I judged then that they were on the trends of Mexico, if they existed.
Stoddard states in his Book, called the History of Louisiana, that in 1807 there had been 20 of them in Natches, and that their country was far to the West from it, and I have seen nothing of their history from that time until now.
My Welsh friends here are eager for the above history to be sent to Wales, and the two who heard the report from the mouth of the Mordecai Indian are sending you $1, asking you to send some number of Verses containing the history, to different zones of Wales.
I end now, Dear Brother,
Yours,
JOHN T. ROBERTS.
Chicago
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After the previous article was reported in the Welsh newspaper, Humphrey Hughes writes in to tell of his own encounter with Benjamin Moses Mordecai, dated March 12, 1845.
