Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

[sabre15]

Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

I have decided to look at this from a sarcastic point of view as many of our naysayers believe most treasure does not exist. I want to here what everybody thinks and how they think some of these "Legends" get started. I am going to give a couple examples, please feel free to prove them right or wrong, I have done some research and cannot find anything that would lead me to believe these stories exist.
I wan't to know where people get the information, library, word of mouth, internet, what is the most accurrate way. Here are the stories to start this thread:
The first one by the way I have found that they were British men by way of the Bahamas and hung in 1818
no mention of barrells of coins, just furs and other traded items.

• Eight barrels of English coins amounting to $100,000 were buried near present-day Cross City and State Road 19/98, by two Bahamian traders before they were hung by General Andrew Jackson for selling arms to the Seminole Indians in the 1830's. Reportedly this treasure was buried near the junction of two streams on the northern edge of the town

Steinhatchee River... Three Civil War treasures are buried along the Steinhatchee River, which empties into Dead Man Bay in Taylor County. A Confederate blockade-runner chased by a Union ship was scuttled at the mouth of the river. The crew buried $500,000 in silver close by. Another blockade-runner hiding near the mouth of the river buried $140,000 in gold coins when a Federal gunboat appeared. After the war, members of the crew returned to claim the money, but were unable to find the location because a flood had taken away the markers along the bank of the river. Union Soldiers buried a cache of gold coins five miles from the mouth of the river.

 

[rockhound]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

Most of the ones I put any stock in comes by word of mouth, handed down from father to son, on and on. Most do get blown out of proportion. Its like the game where you tell somone something , and by the time it gets to the end of the line, its something totally different. I always figure the actual amount of treasure is probably 1/4 the size of the tale. The location may be way off too. This accounts for most treasure not being found. They probably looked in the wrong place. So it ends up another hoax as far as everyone is concerned.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

Good question Sabre, and rockhound is right. Most are just fanciful legends, embelished stories, etc.... But you'd be hard to convince the believers, because human psychology doesn't want to be "left out". That's why get-rich-quick schemes rope in so many people. The lure of easy riches. Why hunt mercury or barber dimes, when you can hit "the mother load" by going after caches? The human psyche wants so hard to believe in them, that we don't question the possible alternative explanations, and just believe the "he said she said" things as if they were fact.

I had firsthand experience with this when finally taking the plunge to go to Mexico with an employee of mine, who insisted that "back where he's from" he knows where a treasure or two is certain to be, because he has firsthand info, etc... (I guess in Mexico treasure superstitions are real strong in the culture). Before taking the plunge, I inquired as to each "lead" he was suggesting we go after, and one by one, they sounded very convincing!

But once we got there, and had endless piles of junk, and no luck, I began to re-inquire about the "leads" we were chasing, and they began to un-ravel. If someone had supposedly "seen" some coins or gold bars from a site or cave, of course they were never available, and the bars or coins were gone now. Or it was someone who told someone that someone else saw the coins or bars. Or treasures that were sure to be in a cave, turned out to be based on dreams someone had, or visions of the virgin mary, or smoke coming from a hole, or glitter in the sand, or other such nonsense.

It occured to me that American treasure lore could be on the same vein. Starts from kernal of truth, and pretty soon the "phone game" of "selective memory" takes over, and you've got a whopper! I mean c'mon! How many dying miners, the lone survivor of an indian attack, can come stumbling into a saloon, spouting tales of a lost mine, can you stomach? How many tales of desperados robbing a bank, being chased by a posse, and all but one get shot. The remaining one gives a few clues, but no one ever finds it can you stomach? Don't they all sort of sound the same after awhile?

 

[Saturna]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

It doesn't take much to be branded a negative naysayer around here, so strong is the need/want to believe in these stories.

Harmless fun I guess, as long as you don't take them too seriously.




Jay

 

[Massbaycolonist]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

I think most of these treasure "legends" are cooked up around the campfire. Lots of creative storytellers out there.

 

[Old Dog]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

Research, research and MORE research.
always pays in the end.

 

[sabre15]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

people always say research research research, but what if you have come to an end, where do you go from there? Is there a mysterious place people go that some of us just don't know about, I is edjumicated but shucks, dis stuff sure am hard!

 

[Old Dog]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

people always say research research research, but what if you have come to an end, where do you go from there? Is there a mysterious place people go that some of us just don't know about, I is edjumicated but shucks, dis stuff sure am hard!

Look at all sources.
In one case of a legend I was following ...
Kid Curry and a partner had robbed a train of som 30,000 in gold payroll.
when in all actuality the train carrying the payroll didn't stop.
The two robbed the next train that came along.
I followed up on the insurance company and railroad records for the next eleven years,
before I found that the railroad bigwigs had been charged with fraud.
The insurance company got most of their money back.

Kid Curry made a mad dash for Rifle Colorado where he was cornered and both ended up dead.
The actual take from the robbed train was $15.40,
That is the exact amount the Kid had on him when he was examined.

Folks around here still look for that payroll.
The Kid was burried in Glenwood springs
a year after he was burried he was exumed and confirmed to be the Kid.
This was to put to rest a rumor that the Kid had gone to Bolivia with Butch, Sundance and the rest of the Wild Bunch.

Nothing at all like the movie
It took a few years to get all this together .
But in the long run saved me a lot of wasted time.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

A lot of time the "research research research" simply only puts you at the reliability of the "facts" you are reading, in the first place. For example: if you're "researching" an article from an 1890s newspaper (usually available on microfilm at the library, right?), that gives a story of a store being robbed, the posse catching up with the theives, yet the loot not being there, etc.. etc...

You might conclude that you are doing your due diligence by getting these "facts" in your research, right? But wait a minute! Who do you think wrote that story? Just some guy (reporter) who HIMSELF is getting his "facts" from whomever he talked to, or whatever was the "word on the street" at the time. I mean, he's not infallible, and as a reporter, is subject to interpretation, and is subject to the reliability of wherever his information came from.

So for example: If there's an "inside job" at a store robbery, and the truth is that an employee took the days receipts, and merely fingered the local hoodlum, the newspaper may report it as if it was a "robbery with missing loot", and some geek in a library 120 yrs. later is somehow thinking that a newspaper article is infallible, and it simply MUST be God-inspired truth, since it was in a newspaper.

Or if a loot was recovered by someone searching for it the very next day, what's to have stopped him from pocketing it, but never advertising it around town? So the geek researching it today, doesn't find any stories about it ever being recovered, so he assumes "Aha! It's never been recovered! Therefore it's still out there somewhere waiting to be found!" etc...

 

[Kentucky Kache]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

So for example: If there's an "inside job" at a store robbery, and the truth is that an employee took the days receipts, and merely fingered the local hoodlum, the newspaper may report it as if it was a "robbery with missing loot", and some geek in a library 120 yrs. later is somehow thinking that a newspaper article is infallible, and it simply MUST be God-inspired truth, since it was in a newspaper.

Or if a loot was recovered by someone searching for it the very next day, what's to have stopped him from pocketing it, but never advertising it around town? So the geek researching it today, doesn't find any stories about it ever being recovered, so he assumes "Aha! It's never been recovered! Therefore it's still out there somewhere waiting to be found!" etc...

That's a lot of supposing for someone who don't believe in supposing.
Now, what would be so bad about supposing that the loot is still there?
But, I agree that most treasure stories/legends are bogus. Still, there is treasure in the ground.

 

[Lowbatts]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

If one in a ten of the stories I hear from folks I meet while detecting and at work, etc. are true, Mexico has gold buried in every posthole, behind every outhouse and along the old roadways. More gold (and some silver) than the rest of the world!

You simply have to cross the border with your detector and your dreams come true! Yeah especially in Nuevo Laredo or Nogales, eh?
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2008/10/16/20081016nogales1016.html

 

[SHERMANVILLE ILLINOIS]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

Always keep in mind:
For the most part, these legends are born, not made.

all have a good un......
SHERMANVILLE

 

[savant365]

Re: Wher do these "Legends" come from? Treasurelore?

I noticed that the stories/leads you mentioned both happen to be near streams/rivers. I think that these types would be so much harder to find due to the fact that the water changes course, possibly several times over long periods of time. Finding accurate maps from the same time as the story with the water course in the right place seems a little hard. Then you also have to consider flooding moving the stash. I would say that the majority of these type stories that were true to begin with are still out there. Also I would think that even with a tremendous amount of research you would need an equal amount of luck if you are going to find them.

Good luck an HH Charlie.