8 posts tagged “stories”

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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Lyonesse has been also used as a setting for many modern fantasy stories. J. R. R. Tolkien drew some of his inspiration for the lost kingdom of Numenor from the legends of Lyonesse; one of the kingdom’s many names in his mythos is called Westernesse.

There is evidence that in Roman times the Isles of Scilly were one large island.. According to legend, Lyonesse stretched from Scilly to Land’s End at the westernmost tip of Cornwall, and once had some 140 churches. Its capital was the City of Lions, located on what is now the treacherous Seven Stones reef. The names of the traditional kings of Lyonesse are derived from Welsh and Arthurian myth. It is often suggested that the tale of Lyonesse represents an extraordinary survival of folk memory of the flooding of the Isles of Scilly. Cornish people still believe strongly in a sunken forest in Mount’s Bay. And there is archaeological evidence of the forest. The remains of it is evident at very low tides, where petrified tree stumps become visible.

There are also ancient Greek stories about fierce Thracian pirates who chose the island of Lemnos as their base of operations. They and several other tribes were also threatening and attacking trade ships of ancient Rome. Even great Julius Caesar was the victim of pirates who kidnapped and held him prisoner in 75 BC. Caesar did not look his cool and maintained his superiority towards his kidnappers. And when pirates decided to exchanged him for a ransom, he felt insulted that they were asking so little and told the pirates that they could get for him fifty talents of gold instead. He also promised them that they all would be crucified, but the pirates did not believe him and thought that he was joking.

Well, these pirates surely messed with a wrong man, because as soon as the ransom was paid and prisoner freed, Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the them. He crucified each and every one of them at his own authority, as he promised. And later great Pompey went out with whole Roman fleet to completely eliminate pirates and battled them for three months of full naval warfare.

When we talk about pirates, we usually imagine these boys sailing on the ships under the flag of Jolly Roger. But in fact piracy has always been here since ancient times. In fact, historians the first documented cases of piracy dated as far back as thirteen century BC. Ancient Egyptian chronicled stories about Ramses II fighting mysterious Sea People who came almost out of nowhere and ruled for some time Aegean and Mediterranean seas. In the archives of my local web analytics company I also found stories about dangerous Illirian pirates, who were operating from western Balkans and probably from some parts in the south of modern Italian peninsula. Roman ships were constantly under their attacks, until republic subdued Illirians in the first century BC. It became one of the Roman provinces in the end.

In fact, this is all a hoax, you know. There were several extremely popular books published in nineteen century that popularized the myth of buried pirate treasure. Mind you, these books were written by great authors and they still excite minds of the children and grown-ups. Naturally, we are talking about nobody else, but Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving and Robert Louis Stevenson!

All three famous writers separately learned about one and only one story about buried pirate treasure. It seems that for all those centuries there was only one more or less verifiable story that some pirate buried part of his treasure. It was infamous William Kidd, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. He was an English privateer who went astray. He did not want to die on the gallows for all his sins, so as story goes, he hid some of his wealth on Long Island before sailing to New York.  That hidden stuff was his bargaining chip in negotiations with authorities. But this did not work, they hanged Billy the Kid by the neck for piracy.

As far as I know, nobody found Kidd's treasure on Long Island yet. But as a result, we have great fiction stories: Treasure Island, The Gold-Bug and Wolfert Webber written by the authors mentioned above.

Even now there is a lot of talk about pirate treasure. That talk, naturally, consists mostly of gossip and rumors and nothing else. But still… Would not it be good for us to know that here and there people dig out bags of gold, silver and such, left to us by generous pirates?

For several centuries, people somehow believed that pirates often buried their stolen bounty in remote places. It seems that they searched for pirate treasure since 1795. Why would they do that, you may ask? The popular belief was that pirates had intentions to return for their stuff later. But how would they find the treasure, you may ask again? Well, here comes the great belief in specially drawn, and sometimes heavily encrypted treasure maps!

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