A buried treasure is an important part of the popular beliefs surrounding pirates and Old West outlaws. According to popular conception, criminals and others often buried their stolen fortunes in remote places, intending to return for them later, often with the use of treasure maps.
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In reality, pirates burying treasure was rare: the only pirate known to have buried treasure was William Kidd,[1] who is believed to have buried at least some of his wealth on Long Island before sailing into New York. Kidd had originally been commissioned as a privateer for England, but his behavior had strayed into outright piracy, and he hoped that his treasure could serve as a bargaining chip in negotiations to avoid punishment. His bid was unsuccessful, however, and Kidd was hanged as a pirate.
In English fiction there are three well known stories that helped popularize the myth of buried pirate treasure[2]: "The Gold-Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe, "Wolfert Webber" by Washington Irving and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. They differ widely in plot and literary treatment but are blood kin from the common ancestor of the William Kidd legend.[3] Stevenson's Treasure Island was directly influenced by Irving's "Wolfert Webber", Stevenson saying in his preface "It is my debt to Washington Irving that exercises my conscience, and justly so, for I believe plagiarism was rarely carried farther... the whole inner spirit and a good deal of the material detail of my first chapters... were the property of Washington Irving."[3]
David Cordingly states that "The effect of Treasure Island on our perception of pirates cannot be overestimated," and says of the idea of treasure maps leading to buried treasure that, "[I]t is an entirely fictional device."[4] The narrative trope of the treasure chest was identified in the James Bond novels by Vivian Halloran, particularly in Goldfinger.[5]
There are a number of reports of supposed buried pirate treasure that surfaced much earlier than these works, which indicates that at least the idea was around for more than a century before those stories were published. For example, some underground passages and structures on Oak Island (in Nova Scotia) have supposedly been excavated extensively since 1795 in the belief that one or more pirate captains had stashed large amounts of loot there. These excavations were said to have been prompted by still older legends of buried pirate treasure in the area. No treasure has ever been found.
The only authenticated treasure chest in the United States, once owned by Thomas Tew, is kept at the Pirate Soul Museum in Key West, Florida.[6]
In 2009, the Staffordshire Hoard was discovered by a metal detector enthusiast, and is the largest collection of gold Anglo-Saxon discovery ever in Britain.[7] There are 1,500 pieces in gold and silver, most of them war artifacts adorned with precious stones, which experts believe dates from the seventh century.[8][9]
In 2010, a bricklayer from Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, found a collection of 8,352 historic coins in his backyard.[10] Are exemplary of the time of réis, through cruzeiro, cruzado to cruzado novo.[11][12]
In 2011 an Austrian man found a treasure buried with hundreds of precious objects and jewels, in Neustadt district, south of Vienna.[13]
In July of 2011 a treasure of gold and silver jewelry, with a value of billions of dollars, was discovered in a temple in India.[14][15]