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Contributor
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: London UK
Posts: 16,024
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Oak Island
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Chapter 2
The Problem of Legend And History
“This site also demonstrates one of the great dangers of archeology, not to life and limb, although that does sometimes take place, I'm talking about folklore…” - Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark
The most problematic aspect of research into tales such as Oak Island involves the level of historicity, or historical authenticity, that can be deduced from available sources. If the existence of an event, person, or place is unsupported from a historian’s point of view – i.e. little or no reliable evidence can be found in the historical record to confirm whether an event occurred, it may be considered ahistorical.
It should be noted that, while laypersons use the terms myth, legend, and folktale almost interchangeably, folklorists consider each a specific subtype with identifiable characteristics. The Oak Island tale falls most closely into the legend category, which is identified as follows:
Legends are prose narratives that, like myths, are regarded as having happened in some historic or remembered time by their narrators and the audience.
· legends are set in a less remote period than myth, when the world was something like we know it today
· they tend to be more secular than sacred (though there are many legends about religious figures like saints)-their principal characters are human
· legendary topics include migrations, wars and victories, tales about past heroes, succession in dynasty or family, and so forth
· they are the verbal counterpart of written history, but also contain unverifiable elements like buried treasure, fairies, ghosts, saints, and other topics[1]
It must also be remembered that none of these terms are in any way pejorative or insulting. While someone may use the phrase "oh, that's just a myth" conversationally when making a disparaging remark about a story, the folklorist makes no such judgement. It is not necessary for a legend or myth to be false, and indeed many such tales contain kernels of fact and verifiable detail. This is what makes legends believable – the listener identifies known locations, people, or events that lend credence to the story. But as mentioned above, a legend nearly always contains unverifiable and frequently fantastic elements. The Oak Island story also contains elements of folklore, such as the claims that "strange lights and fires" gave the island a reputation of being haunted, and that men who rowed to investigate such sightings failed to return.
The story also contains kernels of fact, such as the "artificial beach" (a real and interesting feature that deserves proper study by qualified industrial archaeologists) and many of the documented events occurring after roughly 1865. It is the earlier material (from 1795 to 1860) that is problematic and currently ahistorical, as will be demonstrated below. As this is the core of the legend upon which all later elements depend, the whole premise of the treasure hunt is placed on shaky ground.
The first problem is that no primary sources – contemporary, first-hand evidence such as letters, plans, sketches, journals, or even news articles – have been discovered that describe the initial events said to have occurred prior to 1860. As will be discussed in subsequent chapters, the first evidence of a treasure hunt on the island does not emerge until 1849 – a single document involving the grant of a treasure hunting license. Detailed accounts of events prior to 1860 were not published until 1861-63. This is disturbing, since an event as unusual as the discovery of a deeply excavated shaft with a mysteriously “inscribed” stone at the bottom and wooden platforms every ten feet should have found its way into news articles or other media soon after the first major excavation allegedly occurred circa 1804-05. Its failure to make such an appearance is not damning on its own, but it is unusual.
The delay in publication also presents an additional problem. A significant time lag between an event and the creation of a written account describing it introduces the need for caution, since observers’ memories are certain to change over time. Details are lost or jumbled, others are added as the tale is passed from one person to another. First person, eyewitness accounts are just as likely to become confused over time; only if multiple accounts containing similar details are available (that hopefully match the physical evidence) can these be trusted. Even if the event did occur in some form, an account written decades later is certain to contain fabrications, errors, omissions, and other flaws.
The probability of invented evidence being introduced into the Oak Island tale is high for other reasons. Many authors, especially those who produced early accounts of the treasure hunt, had a vested interest in preserving and perpetuating the tale. It is also likely one or more men invented the story out of whole cloth in an effort to hoax or swindle unsuspecting investors, since treasure related hoaxes were very popular in the early 19th century.
The subject matter itself – a supposedly vast buried treasure – is one that invariably involves wild claims and invented details unsupported by objective evidence. It also involves romanticized notions of hidden wealth, secrecy, and discovery that lend the topic to even more invention of detail. Fantastic tales, whether related to treasure, the supernatural, or other events, must always be treated with suspicion by the historian unless a great deal of confirmatory evidence is available. Large portions of the Oak Island tale are also peculiar or unique – in particular, the claim that an extensive set of excavations and flood tunnels was constructed there, and that no other site exhibiting similar features is known to exist elsewhere.
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The attached chapters present current research into the infamous Oak Island, Nova Scotia Money Pit legend, which has intrigued treasure seekers and others for many years. A great deal of original work was conducted in libraries and archives throughtout the eastern United States, Canada, and England in order to produce this site, which offers a very different viewpoint than most works on the subject. Other writers have made the mistake of largely accepting the original tale as true without researching its early development; had they done so, it is unlikely the legend would have persisted as long as it has.
The primary objective of this work is the dissection of the legend in order to analyze each part on its own merits. It grew out of an effort in the late 1990s to review the available material and remove bogus elements added by later writers, thus exposing the core story. It had been noted the earliest available news articles (circa 1860) were very different from the tale found in modern books, most of which are poorly researched and rely solely on one another as supporting material. The progression of the legend emerged as sources from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were uncovered, showing that each generation added, altered, and removed details as it saw fit. Thus it was decided to find the earliest available material while simultaneously analyzing the historical context in which the events of 1795 (plus 1849 and 1860) occurred.
The results were startling; no documents earlier than 1849 could be found. A review of the historical context and frequency of treasure tales in New England showed a marked propensity toward belief in the presence of buried gold in every locale. This, in conjunction with certain elements found in the Money Pit tale itself, indicate the story known to us today most likely started not in 1795 or even 1804, but in the 1840s. It likely began as a scam that used the massive California gold strike of 1849 as its basis, or perhaps as a mining operation gone wrong. It is also possible an early episode of treasure-digging near Chester N.S. in the late 18th century became the foundation for the story after it was altered and enhanced by others in the 1840s. Once published as newspaper articles in the 1860s the tale took root over the next half century, finally evolving into a legend that fed off its own history and artifacts. Each generation added its own twist to the tale while certain central themes remained intact.
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http://www.criticalenquiry.org/oakisland/index.shtml
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11-15-2009, 10:06 AM
