5 posts tagged “gold”

I found an interesting story about another lost land while doing my web analytics research. This legend surfaced in Canada during French colonization in the the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. French colonists in North America learned from Algonquin Indians that somewhere in the north, there was a mythical kingdom which is inhabited by blond men rich with gold and furs. Algonquin Indians even had a name for this land - Kingdom of Saguenay. One of the Indian Chiefs named Donnacona also told a lot of stories about this kingdom while being imprisoned in France in the 30s of the sixteenth century. Donnaconna claimed that blond inhabitants of the kingdom also have in their posession great mines of silver and gold.

French colonists tried hard to find kingdom of Saguenay, but all their attempts ended in vain. Up until now, specialists speculate about the source of this legend. Some even say that it was an ancient pre-Colombian settlement of Europeans. They believe that Indian oral tradition referred to Viking settlements in America, although this has not been definitely proven.

Nevertheless the name Saguenay exists in many modern canadian placenames. One of the regions in Quebec even refers to itself as Kingdom of Saguenay trying to attract tourists and for other marketing purposes.

Viceroy of New Spain organized an expedition headed by the Franciscan monk Marcos de Niza, who thought that the castaways’ stories were related to seven cities of Cibola and Quivira. The expedition failed. And Marcos de Niza returned to Mexico City and claimed that they had seen a city very far away and greater than the great Tenochtitlan; in this city, the people used dishes of gold and silver, decorated their houses with turquoise, and had gigantic pearls, emeralds, and other beautiful gems.

This news fueled new expedition.The Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza immediately organizing a second large military expedition to take possession of the riches that the monk had described so vividly. New expedition was going more slowly. It went through the state of Sonora and arrived in present day Arizona. There, conquistadors discovered that Marcos de Niza’s stories were lies and that there were in fact no treasures as he had described. They also found that, contrary to the monk’s account, the sea was not within view from that region, but many miles away.

While researching myths and legends of the Renaissance period in archives of local funeral home directory, I found a new one - about cities of Cibola and Quivra. According to the legend, around the year 1150 when the Moors conquered Merida, Spain, seven Cathlic bishops fled the city, not only to save their own lives but also to prevent the Muslims from capturing sacred religious relics.

Many years later rumor appeared, that in an unknown place these bishops found the cities of Cibola and Quivra. Then new details appeared in this newborn myth - these cities grew rich mainly from gold and precious stones. Myth kept on growing, and soon instead of 2 cities, there were seven - for each bishop who had left Merida. And all seven cities were magnificent and made of gold.

Surprisingly, this naive myth fueled many expeditions in the Old World in search of the mythical cities during the following centuries. In 1528 Spanish four survivors of unsuccessful expedition to Florida said that they had heard from Native Americans stories of cities with great riches somewhere in the north.

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The second interesting case is the mysterious disappearance of the complete national treasury of Romania. During World War I Romania was on the side of the Entente Powers. At the beginning of the military campaign Romania was heavily losing to Germany. The situation turned out to be so bad that very soon German troops occupied Romanian capital Bucharest. Romain administration had no other choice but to send its Treasure abroad. There were heated discussions related to which Entente country would safekeep the Treasure until bad times are over. In this hard situation the decision had been made to send Romanian Treasure to tsarist Russia and keep it there until the end of the war.

So, one night almost hundred tonnes of gold bars and coins with the total cost of 1.25 billion dollars were sent to Moscow and safely got there. However, Romanian military situation was not improving and got even worse after the departure of the first transport. This was the reason why the second transport left for Russia. It included priceless items, like jewels of Romanian royalty, jewels of ancient rulers, jewels dated to the time of Roman empire and antique jewels of the pre-Roman epoque. But this was not all.

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When I was going through my web analyst archives, I found two interesting cases, when major governments of Europe were cheated and lost their treasures to Bolsheviks. The first case is related to the Civil war in Spain in the thirties of the twentieth century. It is called infamously Moscow gold case.

Short lived Spanish Republic desperately needed arms and military equipment but other European countries did not want to get involved in the civil war and did not sell anything to the Spaniards. The only country that ignored this embargo was the Soviet Union. That is why in 1937 the Spanish republic sent most of the gold reserves from its national Treasure to Russians. One must say, that at the time Spain was on the fourth place in the world for its stored gold. And the USSR got most of it, which amounted at the time to five hundred million dollars.

When Franco and his supporters learned about it, they heavily protested this transaction, stating that this gold belongs to the people and not to the Spanish government. But the transaction turned sour for the republicans because Soviets sold them all kind of military junk stored since World War I. Besides, prices were extremely inflated for each rifle and each bullet. This outdated equipment, part of which was malfunctioning right from the start, turned out to be one of the huge factors that impacted the defeat of the Spanish Republic.