I would say more than busy (They were Frenchmen after allkalm wrote:David Thompson and other brits and Frenchmen were already just north of the Mandans 20 years ahead of the Corps of Discovery exploring out from York Factory and Saskatchewan house up all of the river systems. Pretty good chance someone made it south from there and got bizzy.Winterborn wrote:
There is a decent chance that the Welsh beat the Vikings over but they definitely didn't settle here outside of building a couple of temporary camps. There are a few stories based on a early poem that a bastard son of a Welsh prince left before his dad passed ,in order not to cause any trouble and set off West with a crew just to see where the wind would take them and they ran into North America.
Also ran across a report made by some early explorers of Tennessee, in a old book on the history of Tennessee, that stated they found some mummies wrapped in hides in a manner that was indicative of the early Vikings who were blond hair and blue eyed. The book also mentioned a stone fort foundations that was built in the Welsh style that was discovered. I have the book on Tennessee history somewhere on Microfiche, as the library system I ordered it though didn't have a paper copy to loan me so they gave me a Microfiche version.
There is also Lewis and Clarks reports of blue eyed natives among the Mandan Indians when they came up the Missouri.
) but the reports that Lewis and Clark mention were not so recent as that. There were other factors such as the buffalo hide round boats they used for fishing which had a nearly identical design as to some early Welsh fishing boats and a few other items.I don't doubt that there were multiple periods of contact over centuries, most of which were lost in the annals of time. My guess is that North America/South America have been discovered and re-discovered multiple times. Some people just like to wander and see what is over the next horizon.
