Joel Alonso
HIST 1120­01
Website Evaluation
15 February 2015
On Prince Madoc and the Discovery of America
In order for a website to be reliable on a particular subject, the information the website displays must be accurate and verified using the author’s credentials. The DSCC website contains many forms of scholarly research engines, one method and strategy is the use of
IXQUICK. The IXQUICK search engine has become the Google for educational research, where it is possible to search topics using keywords with the use of boolean operators to accurately pinpoint a specific amount of articles on a particular subject. The first plan included searching in
IXQUICK using the general term: Prince Madoc. Using this method generated a wide range of articles, mostly generic articles on Madoc and a brief description.
There was a problem, however, with the amount of Wikipedia hits that were also generated. The conflict between credible websites and websites that were off tangent was troubling. Once returning to IXQUICK, it was possible creating a more satisfying search method, or, in other words, a revised search method. In this revised strategy, the boolean operators “and” and “the” were used to word the key phrase:
Prince Madoc and the Discovery of America. There was one important modification, however, since the advanced search option allows one to filter out “.net” to allow for the best scholarly experience. After the usage of this particular key phrase and the application of the filter, an interesting source was found. Ben Johnson, from the London
University, became the author of an article in an February 13, 2013 edition of Historic UK

magazine as a possible theory of Welsh tribal establishments along the Alabama river that could be evidence of Madoc’s arrival before Columbus. According to Johnson,”
Madog (Madoc), one of the illigitimate sons, was born at
Dolwyddelan Castle in the Lledr valley between Betws­y­Coed and Blaenau Ffestiniog”(UK
Historic).
In his theory, Johnson states, “
On the death of the king in December 1169, the brothers fought amongst themselves for the right to rule Gwynedd[..]In 1170 he[Madog] and his brother,
Riryd, sailed from Aber­Kerrik­Gwynan on the North Wales Coast (now Rhos­on­Sea) in two ships, the Gorn Gwynant and the Pedr Sant. They sailed west and are said to have landed in what is now Alabama in the USA”(UK Historic). The author’s focus, however, is not to illustrate the
Prince’s biological background, but to describe Madoc’s supposed legendary voyager to the
Americas. Johnson further goes on to analyze the dates in which the first recorded expeditions of
Madoc to America took place. Richard Halluyt’s 1582 texts named “Voyages” exposes the date of Madoc’s first voyage with a large crew: 1171.
Furthermore, Johnson postulates, “Early explorers and pioneers found evidence of possible Welsh influence among the native tribes of America along the Tennessee and Missouri
River,” which could be hard evidence to the where