The High Missouri Read Online Free PDF

Indians—there was no thought of conquering them, a million people upon their own land! No, they befriended them, and lived among them and learned their language and their ways, and became leaders among them, and taught them ways of herding and farming and metalworking, and married them, and raised up children with two races in their veins, the breath of two ways in their nostrils.
    “Madog came back to get more men. He left, and returned once more, ten years later—for more men.
    “At that point, about the year 1200, he became one of the Triads, the Three Who Made a Total Disappearance from the Isle of Britain.
    “Aye, laddo, he disappeared. Of course, there are those who scoff. The British, ever the subjugators, would rather see an Italian Colombo and an Englishman Raleigh, better those than a Celt. When it suits them, though, as when they want to lay claim to this vast land, they remember Madog, and his priority, and try to trump the French and Spanish with their sovereignty. Welsh sovereignty, there’s a truth it is.”
    The Druid chuckled at the thought. “When I was your age, some rich Welshmen expatriates in London sent John Evans, said to be a good man of Y Cymry, to the New World to find the Welsh Indians. What he found we shall never know. Evans traveled in the interior, then went to New Orleans, and there he died.
    “Yet even before we find the Welsh Indians, what a legacy, what a legacy Madog left. On not one continent, but two.
    “First here on Turtle Island. He left signs everywhere. I have seen with my own eyes burial mounds such as the Celts made. I heard from a Methodist minister’s own lips how his grandfather, a missionary, was saved. The good man was captured by Hurons and was about to be tortured at the stake when he cried out in his native Welsh tongue for God’s mercy. And the elders of the tribe answered him in that language, called him friend, cut him free, and made him their honored guest for some months.
    “Blue-eyed, red-haired, fair-skinned Indians—Turtle Island is alive with reports of them, among the red people and the white people. They were supposed to be the Mandans, but they are not, to my grief. But everyone has seen them or heard of them—the Snake Indians of the far western deserts report fighting them. The Aztecs knew of them. The Blackfoot say they once were great enemies. Somewhere, around some corner on this continent, we will find ourselves among them.
    “And words, laddo, words everywhere, we Welshmen are word men. They say the Mandan words for ‘valley,’ ‘hill,’ and ‘blue’ are identical to the Welsh words for these enchantments, cym , prydferth , and glas . They say the words for one through ten in the Kutenai language are the same as the Welsh.
    “It is like the smell of spring, laddo, or the signs of spirit—everywhere, in the air, the earth, the rain, manifest in the very feel of things, save to those who will not smell, breathe, feel. The strains of the Welsh Indians of Turtle Island are everywhere. One day I will find a small band of their descendants still speaking the Cymraeg, and I shall live with them forever.”
    “Remember, laddo, I said on two continents. For Madog brought back to Wales on his second journey the mixed-blood children of his men. He left them to marry among the Cymry. He married one lass to his nephew and a lad to his niece. Through them the blood of red men runs in the veins of the House of Gwynedd and the House of Tudor. Through them you and I are those creatures of legend, the Welsh Indians.
    “As I hope you were raised to know, Welshmen are natural Indians anyway. Both are conquered peoples, both stepped on by the bloody Britons, not only then but now. Both are thought barbarous by the conquerors. Both are attuned to nature, which is why I am called the Druid. Both give high place to the poet, the singer of songs. Both are trying to keep their ancient and holy places and their ancient and holy ways. Both are, well, the