Clark's Expedition

During the summer of 1778, Lt. Col. George Rogers Clark and an expeditionary force of three hundred men reached Corn Island, located above the rapids of the Falls of the Ohio.

Colonel Clark had chosen Corn Island as the base of his operations because the location gave him control of the river traffic and it was an ideal place for storing supplies.

Clark had led his men to the Falls after he had received orders from Patrick Henry to launch an attack on the British installations which were stationed along the edges of America's frontier.

When Clark's men began building their encampments on Corn Island, one of his men made a startling discovery when he came upon a huge pile of human bones which had been stacked up like cords of wood along the northern edge of the island which was mixed in with a lot of drift wood and some of the other natural aspects of river debris.

Some of Clark's scouts reported that they had seen several more of these depositories on the islands of the Falls which were located below the rapids and some of the scouts also noticed that the trees of an old forest had been cut down along the riverbanks and they reported that the crops of a new forest were growing up in its place. These incredible discoveries which General Clark and his men had made convinced them that the first white men to reach the new world had settled at the Falls of the Ohio.

After the Revolutionary War came to an end, General Clark returned to the Falls of the Ohio to establish a settlement which was named "Fort Clark." And the fortification that General Clark and his men built eventually became known as Clarksville, Indiana, USA, which blazed a trail to several more amazing discoveries regarding the legend of Prince Madoc.

Several years later some other fragments of evidence were found regarding the legend of Prince Madoc which included the discovery of a tombstone with the initials of a name and the date of 1186 upon it. The tombstone was allegedly discovered by some men from Clark's settlement while they were hunting along the northern bank of the Ohio River near the mouth of Silver Creek, but the most important fragments of evidence that were found were six skeletons which were unearthed in 1799 in a field near Clark's Fort.

Each skeleton was dressed in a breastplate of brass which was cast with the Welsh coat of Arms. The breastplates were adorned with the mermaid and the harp, and were inscribed with a Latin inscription when translated meant:

'Virtuous deed merit their just rewards'

Many of the residents of Clarksville said that when these skeletons were found, General Clark and some of his colleagues became involved in the investigation. Evidently after some careful study, Clark and his band of scholarly detectives came to the conclusion that the men dressed in armor must have been some of Prince Madoc's standard bearers, who were the descendants of the original members of the lost colony of Welshmen who had left Wales in 1170 A.D.

During the same period of time, General Clark and some of his men discovered a huge Fortification that was built with stone which was found up river from the Falls of the Ohio, at the mouth of Fourteen Mile Creek.

Clark and his men examined the stone works of this gigantic fortress and discovered that the walls had been laid with considerable skill which were made without the use of mortar. Clark's men were experts regarding the American Indians and their native culture and they knew that the Indians did not build stone enclosures of this magnitude which confirmed their theory that the ancient fortification must have been built by Prince Madoc and his descendants.

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