Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| From Sedwick Associates Current Auction Catalog. (link below). |
Treasure, World Coin & Paper Money Auction 40 - Sedwick & Associates, LLC
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Yesterday I gave a little of the history of treasure hunting in colonial America. Today I'll give you some excerpts and a little commentary on an interesting and extensive article entitled The Persisting Idea of American Treasure Hunting by Ronald W. Walker. The article was published in the BYU Studies Quarterly. The connection with BYU is not coincidental. Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism, was known to have done some treasure hunting, some of which led directly to his founding documents.In 1823, he [Joseph Smith] said he was visited by an angel who directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published the Book of Mormon, which he described as an English translation of those plates (From Wikipedia).
The article provides some interesting history of both treasure hunting and colonial America more generally. It was a struggle for me to keep my commentary brief.
But back to the article on the history of treasure hunting in America.
Here is the first excerpt from the article that I'll comment on.
From colonial times to at least the age of Jackson, Americans dug for magical treasure. There were hundreds and probably thousands of these money diggers all seeking troves of fabled coins, mines, jewels and other valued prizes. They worked from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi hinterlands, and in a few localities heaped up tailings that rivaled those of the later forty niners. Yet for all this prodigious toil their finds were as rare as Merlin's transmuted gold. What made them persist relying on an immemorial but now forgotten world view, the money diggers placed faith in conjuring elemental spirits, thrice spoken dreams, seeric gifts and enchanted treasure that could slip and rumble through the earth as easily as a fish moving through the deep. The modern age will probably never fully understand the diggers strange compound of treasure seeking, religious feeling and intense psychological devotion to an old but fading way of life. Theirs was another world which we can speak of but hardly enter.
It is always difficult to know how many finds are actually made. Treasure digging can be a private or clandestine activity, so there is not always a lot of sharing and there is often a good bit of hearsay or rumor. There are always enough verified examples, though, to generate excitement.
People generally don't understand life in other historical times. It isn't easy. In fact, it might be impossible. You can gather some facts or stories, but that only gives a very small sliver of the picture. People impose their own reality onto previous times.
Take for example how the young of today complain that they don't expect to ever have it as good as their parents. But they don't understand how long or what it took for their parents to get what they got. They didn't get there from the start. They built it. And what the new generation expects includes a lot that didn't even exist in the past. AI and Starlink to just name a couple.
It is extremely difficult to imagine today going outside to go the bathroom in the middle of the night or using a chanber pot! Gone With the Wind didn't show how Scarlet O'Hara went to the bathroom with a cage hoop skirt, multiple petticoats, corset, chemise and pantaloons. That would be a problem if you were in a real hurry. All I'm trying to say is that we don't think of everything (actually very little) and can't realistically imaging life in historic times. It is difficult enough to understand our own times.
But getting the treasure was always difficult and harrowing. If not recovered quickly the trove sank into the earth's depths until its next far-in-the-future blooming...
Faced with these obstacles, the European treasure seeker tried to narrow the odds to facilitate his search. He listened carefully to the treasure dreams of a pure or innocent youth, who it was believed had special powers to discern and recover the subterranean bounty, earth mirrors, seer stones, or divining rods crafted from hazel or mistletoe were also thought to be useful searching tools. Many seekers used a magic manual like the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses...
The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is a magical text allegedly written by Moses and passed down as hidden (or lost) books of the Hebrew Bible. Self-described as "the wonderful arts of the old Hebrews taken from the Mosaic books of the Kabbalah and the Talmud", it is actually a manual of sorcery or text of magical incantations and seals, that purports to instruct the reader in the spells used to create some of the miracles portrayed in the Bible as well as to grant other forms of good fortune and good health. (See Wikipedia)
Today we put a lot of faith in our treasure finding detectors that seem almost magical in "seeing" treasure buried beneath the earth in measured inches. Outside of our more scientific technical worldviews, it doesn't seem to me things have changed as much as a superficial analysis might suggest.
Many treasure hunters saw themselves as working close to the sacred presence. Such religious feeling made their practices tenacious and enduring...Folklorist Harry Hyatt observed that treasure hunting is something more than monetary value. It is a part of eternal hope, a mystical quest, the satisfaction of an unfulfilled dream. Magical treasure hunting was something more. It was part of the culture and religion of the folk. For people who were untutored in the emerging new science it helped to give their everyday life meaning. Theirs was the higher and hidden truth, a blend of humankind's deep myths and Christian ideas. The old way that eventually faltered before the onslaught of modern science and the triumph of a new world view.
Here is the link for the rest of the article that I liberally exce
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| From Fort Pierce South Jetty Beach Cam Tuesday Evening. |
Surf Chart for Fort Pierce Area from Surfguru.com.
The surf is near flat, but you can see that the effect of the high tides on the beach.
Good hunting,
Treasureguide@Comcast.net