In the map attached to Du Pratz's Louisiana the "White Panis" are placed at the head of the Arkansas; Panis Mahas, or White Panis, at the head of the south branch of the Missouri; and between those rivers is marked the country of the Padoucas.
During the last two centuries the Indian races have waned so rapidly, their places of habitation have been so often changed, and so many of the tribes have become amalgamated, that names are not an unerring guide by which to determine their early history, or to what stock many of the remnants still surviving belong.
As to the names given by the French travellers cited elsewhere,--Matocantes, etc.,--there is some resemblance to the name of Madoc. A Welshwoman in South Wales calling her son by that name would say Matoc, which is pure Silurian Welsh, the _d_ being changed into _t_: hence there might follow such names as Matociait, Matociaint, Matocantes, as applied to the followers of Madoc. These changes are not arbitrary, but inhere in the laws and euphony of human language.
MAURICE GRIFFITH'S AND HIS COMPANIONS' EXPERIENCE.
The following letter, published in the "Kentucky Palladium" in 1804, by Judge Toulmin, of Mississippi, will be read with keen interest by those who have any desire to study everything relating to this subject:
"SIR,--No circumstance relating to the history of the Western country probably has excited, at different times, more general attention and anxious curiosity than the opinion that a nation of white men speaking the Welsh language reside high up the Missouri. By some the idea is treated as nothing but the suggestion of bold imposture and easy credulity; whilst others regard it as a fact fully authenticated by Indian testimony, and the report of various travellers worthy of credit.
"Could the fact be well established, it would afford perhaps the most satisfactory solution of the difficulty occasioned by a view of the various ancient fortifications with which the Ohio country abounds, of any that has been offered. Those fortifications were evidently never made by the Indians. The Indian art of war presents nothing of the kind. The probability, too, is that the persons who constructed them were, _at that time_, acquainted with the use of iron. The situation of these fortifications, which are uniformly in the most fertile land of the country, indicates that those who made them were an agricultural people; and the remarkable care and skill with which they were executed afford traits of the genius of a people who relied more on their military skill than on their numbers. The growth of the trees upon them is very compatible with the idea that it is not more than three hundred years ago that they were abandoned.