by Steven Sora
The Portuguese, too, were disappointed in finding only icy waters and no exotic trading ports of the Orient. Also sailing under the flag of Portugal was Gaspar Corte Real.5 He may have reached Newfoundland, but records of his journey are sparse and inexact. Both the date and the length of time of his expedition are debated. On his second voyage his entire expedition was lost. A brother, Miguel, set sail to find him but was also lost. If the rich fishing banks off Newfoundland and Labrador had ever been a secret, they were no longer. Bretons, Basques, French, and English fishing ships did their own unrecorded exploration. Fishermen did not keep logs, but they did leave behind certain clues. Some historians claim the Portuguese were there much earlier than the accepted dates and point to the native North American name for the Grand Banks—baccaloes, which is the Portuguese word meaning “cod fish.”6
By the time another Italian, Giovanni Verrazano, sailing under the French flag, reached the New World, fishing fleets and fishing shacks could be seen along the rivers and bays the Europeans would “discover.” His expedition took place in 1524 and lasted for only a few short months. Verrazano received credit for giving Nova Scotia one of its earliest names, which he is said to have put on the maps as “Arcadia.”7 This name will feature prominently in the tale of just how an ancient treasure reached the New World and the Money Pit. While its modern meaning holds little of interest to the uninitiated, for a certain few, the theme of Arcadia and the transmission of an underground stream of knowledge passed through generations is of paramount importance.
Giovanni Verrazano, too, might have been part of an elite group, as were several of the important world explorers. He lived in a world still dominated by the terrifying hold that the Inquisition exerted. New ideas, including the possibility of undiscovered lands, were suspect and could earn a man of science prison and torture as easily as a reward. Explorers, and men of science, had a need to attach themselves to the several societies (which we will meet later) that are known to have existed at this time and that allowed a certain degree of insurance against persecution. Verrazano’s family crest included a six-pointed star, which some believe indicated he was not the Christian he was purported to be. Religion played an important role during the Inquisition, and a non-Catholic would be disqualified from leading a mission of such importance. The religion of Columbus is still a matter of nagging debate.8
Just where did Verrazano place the name Arcadia? Reports of the early explorers and mapmakers do not always agree. One mapmaker shows Arcadia as being north of the Hudson River. Others say it was the Outer Banks of North Carolina and correctly state that Verrazano derived the name from a very popular piece of literature by Jacobo Sannazaro, set in Greece.9 Sannazaro’s Arcadia had been printed fifteen separate times before Verrazano reached America. Because Verrazano correctly noted the latitude, Morison for one believes Maine and the Canadian Maritimes are Arcadia.10 Arcadia, as defined by Sannazaro, was the idyllic world, a Garden of Eden lost to the modern (medieval) world. It was life in a pure state, where thought and deed were free to wander away from the threat of official punishment by church and state. The English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon and others believed this world could exist only outside Europe and carried the theme further. They believed in the creation of a new country in which certain freedoms would be guaranteed and all religions would be tolerated. Bacon described this country in his New Atlantis. Interestingly enough, the French name for Nova Scotia was L’Acadie, a label they applied from the native Micmac word for the “land.” Mapmakers may have made the two names into one, and Nova Scotia was for a while called L’Acadie and Arcadia.
Verrazano’s trip to America in 1524 had been short compared to other such European voyages. He left the Madeira Islands off the coast of Africa on January 17th and was back in France by mid-June of the same year. The only place he had spent any time was in the area of what is now Rhode Island, where he described the natives as “the most civilized in customs” and “inclining more to whiteness”—a description that might indicate both previous contact and intermarriage with earlier European explorers.11 Verrazano was fond of Greek place-names and gave Rhode Island its name after his coastal visit, again taking the name from Sannazaro’s work.
The French navigator Jacques Cartier was next to sail to the New World, with a higher purpose than fishing in mind.12 In 1534 Cartier’s fleet encountered a large French fishing vessel, which Cartier claimed was “lost,” obviously annoyed that he was not the first to reach the region. He explored the coasts of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and the Gaspé Peninsula. In his travels he met up with two fleets of Micmacs, each consisting of forty to fifty vessels. They wanted to trade with the single French ship, but being outnumbered Cartier was cautious. Finally, he did permit a small convoy of nine large canoes to dock near enough to the French to exchange goods. The incident seems to give evidence of a native understanding of trade that was developed from past experience. As Cartier sailed farther up the Saint Lawrence River, he encountered another fleet of canoes, this time carrying Huron natives. He thought the Huron were like the Micmac, but in appearance they seemed much poorer; he wrote that their only homes were overturned boats. It is more likely that he encountered a Huron fishing fleet far away from home and making temporary camp. Cartier’s trip back to Europe took only three weeks, demonstrating just how easy it is for experienced sailors to cross the North Atlantic.
In 1604 the French explorer Samuel de Champlain reached Nova Scotia and established a temporary settlement at La Have in Nova Scotia, fifteen miles away from Oak Island.13 He later moved to another settlement on the Bay of Fundy, where he stayed for three years. Champlain’s settlements in Nova Scotia were for the most part short-lived, and little activity took place apart from fur trading with the native population. The relationship between France and England in Europe was hostile, and such hostility was carried to the New World. The ownership of the area was contested by the British and the French, but no major military operations took place apart from the building of a fort at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, far from the Oak Island area, in 1644. Engineers were imported for the construction of the fort, which gave rise to a theory that an “underground bank” might have been constructed on Oak Island. Military payrolls would often be in the form of gold and silver, and the threat of raids on land and piracy on the seas formed the basis for the need of such a repository. The theory is further based on the availability of labor. It can thus be said that the first suspect, the French military, had both a motive and a means to construct such a complex “bank” as the Money Pit. The theory has merit, but since there is no precedence for such construction, its merit is only that it simply cannot be ignored. The French who built Louisbourg were not in control of Oak Island and the Mahone Bay region for long, however, leaving it to the British in a later treaty.
Between 1606 and 1749 most of the southern half of Nova Scotia was uninhabited. On the northern coast along the Bay of Fundy and the Minas Basin, sixty French Acadian families settled. In 1632 several of these families crossed the southern part of the peninsula and settled at La Have; present day Lunenburg is not far from Oak Island. The continuing hostility between France and England led to the Treaty of Utrecht, which transferred Nova Scotia to England in 1715. It did not stop the growth of the French settlements already in place. Nova Scotia became more rapidly populated by the English after Halifax was founded in 1749, forty miles from Mahone Bay. The British, however, were concerned that the Acadian population was possibly as high as ten thousand, so they induced British colonists to settle in the area. Many of these settlers came from American colonies in New England. Ten years later, in 1759, the Shoreham Grant gave land to these settlers from New England. At that time, Oak Island, one of 350 islands in Mahone Bay, was divided and deeded but not settled. By 1795, when the three adolescents went digging for treasure, it was still uninhabited. Interestingly enough, to those who believe pirates built the Money Pit, the name Mahone derives from the French word mahonne, meani
ng a low-lying pirate ship mostly used in Mediterranean waters.
In 1755 the hostilities between the English and French continued. The British concern about being outnumbered by the French caused them to forcibly remove six thousand French Acadians to points from Georgia to Louisiana. The poem entitled Evangeline by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalizes this forced exodus. Many stayed in the American South, where “Acadian” became corrupted to “Cajun.” Others found their way back to their Nova Scotia home. Along with the skirmishes between natives and colonists and the wars between the French and the English, there were pirates. With France and Britain almost always at war, privateering and piracy did not cease.
The list of possibilities of just who could be responsible for burying a treasure on Oak Island is not a short one. From the nineteenth century to the present, those who searched for the treasure during the summer would spend their winters rooting out leads to what they might eventually bring up from the depths of the Money Pit. Theories of who hid the treasure are as numerous as the islands in Mahone Bay: the crown jewels of the royalty of England and France, pirate banks, Viking hoards, the original manuscripts of William Shakespeare, and even the booty of a Mayan ship are said to be buried there. There are even theories that declare that the pit was not dug to hold a treasure trove at all but was used as an elaborate hydraulic lift to clean and repair ships. The tunnels and drains were employed simply to raise and lower the level of water.
This theory, not unlike Oak Island itself, has a few holes in it. The first is that most reasonable estimates of the time required to construct the Money Pit say it took more than a year as well as an immense amount of labor. Since the Bay of Fundy is within close sailing range of Mahone Bay, and this bay may have the greatest difference in sea level between high tide and low tide of any location in North America, there existed a much simpler method of what is called “careening” a ship. A ship can be beached and repaired at low tide and carried back out to sea at high tide. No elaborate structure would be necessary. Another hole in the theory is that no such complicated structure similar to the Oak Island Money Pit exists anywhere else in the world. No precedent for such a complex ship-cleaning device exists, and the area would be a very unlikely place to invent one.
There are also claims that the pit was a natural occurrence—a sinkhole that sucked in logs or one in which stones and logs were simply thrown in to close the hole. Michael Bradley, an author discussed in Fanthorpe’s Secrets of Rennos-le-Chateau, proposed the theory of a “limestone blowhole” created by nature. These theories ignore the fact that the flagstones were brought from the mainland, that the oaken platforms were evenly spaced, that cove drains with foreign fibers were put in place, that a false beach was built, and that stones were inscribed. The theory also overlooks the fact that the island was uninhabited before the earliest digging started and that the need to fill in a sinkhole on an uninhabited island would be minimal at best. The Money Pit was clearly man-made.
In this light, it is necessary to compile a list of candidates who could be responsible for burying the treasure and to more closely examine the time frame. While official and state-sponsored voyages of exploration are often a starting point, there are also unofficial and unsponsored journeys. Our first suspects then are the Vikings.
The Vikings
The Norse travelers can be considered suspects because they are one group that we now can say with certainty crossed the Atlantic before Columbus. Evidence in favor of the Vikings must start with their reputation as marauders of the sea. As such, it is no stretch of the imagination to believe that they might have had treasure to bury. While it was once a matter of debate, we now know that the Vikings had reached North America by A.D. 1001 at the latest. That this date is no longer in question is testament to the persistent effort of the respected team of Helge Ingstad (a former governor of East Greenland and Spitsbergen) and Anne Stine Ingstad, an archeologist.14 Basing their belief on an Icelandic map dated to 1590 and directions in the Norse sagas, they decided to explore Newfoundland. There they uncovered Norse ruins on that province’s northern coast. After lengthy excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows, the Ingstads proved that a farming community had existed there, able to sustain one to three hundred hardy souls.
The remains of the five- to six-room sod houses, a smithy, a kiln, a bathhouse, and several boat sheds have been excavated. Numerous artifacts, including iron nails and rivets, a soapstone spinning wheel, an oil lamp, and bronze cloak pins, were also recovered. The excavation, begun in the 1960s, firmly established that the Vikings had at least one settlement in the New World five hundred years before Columbus. L’Anse aux Meadows has been reconstructed to show what life was like for the Norse settlers, and the area is now a Canadian historic park. The discovery of other Norse artifacts in New England, farther north and west in Canada, and as far west as Minnesota in the United States (the authenticity of these artifacts remains questionable) do not merit the acceptance that the Newfoundland farm does, although there is little doubt that the Viking ships could have reached Nova Scotia.
The Vikings, however, lacked the means and motivation to construct the Money Pit. Those who reached the New World, by island-hopping through the North Atlantic, were not plunderers, but farmers.15 Unlike their Norse cousins—the invaders who traveled and raided the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the navigable rivers of Europe, and the coasts of nearby Ireland—these Vikings were poor even by European standards of their time. They did not have any treasure to hide, nor did they have the ability to construct such complicated facilities and complex hydraulic systems.
Native North Americans
Another theory is that native North Americans may have been responsible for the Money Pit. Certainly they were capable of much more than the Europeans have given them credit for. They had complex governments, established trade, and advanced scientific knowledge that went beyond the ability of early explorers to comprehend. Only now are we able to understand the rock structures that served as solar and lunar calendars, found in the Southwest and northern Mexico. Similar structures, with grander designs, have been discovered in New England but are still dismissed since they do not fit into our understanding of the native peoples who populated most of North America before Columbus.16 While we now accept the idea that trade took place between native tribes from Florida and those of New England and that southeastern tribes traded as far away as the Rockies, stone calendars as sophisticated as Stonehenge are dismissed because many historians are afraid of the implications. Still, there is no record of native North Americans having prized a monetary treasure enough to commit to such a great amount of labor to constructing a hiding place for their prize. Indeed, nomadic peoples would often find hoarding an inconvenience. The opposite extreme, their custom of potlatch, exhibits the belief in giving rather than receiving.17 Despite the complicated calendars and mounds found across North America, none have shown evidence of a knowledge of advanced hydraulics. With a lack of motive and means, Native Americans can be eliminated from our list.
Spanish Marauders and Incan Defenders
The Spanish may have been the first settlers in America to amass a great deal of wealth for their efforts. Spanish treasure ships laden with gold and silver would often fall victim to shipwrecks and pirates that sought the treasure for themselves. The excavators of the Money Pit left few stones unturned in their search for answers. In their desperation they went to any lengths to further their knowledge. Psychics and dowsers were consulted along with scientists and engineers. In one of their less conventional attempts, Frederick Blair and Mel Chappell hired a psychic known as an “automatic writer,” a medium who allows the dead to communicate with the living. According to this medium, the treasure hidden deep in the Money Pit was Incan gold.
The story told was that about 1524, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro reached the Incan city of Tumbes in Peru.18 He did not yet have the authority to loot their treasure, so he left two men to guard the city. Four ye
ars later, after finally receiving authorization from King Charles V of Spain, Pizarro returned to find the city empty and in ruins. It had fallen victim to a civil war between King Atahualpa and his half-brother, Huáscar, the pretender to the throne. In the course of Huáscar’s bid for victory the city had been plundered. Through the medium, John Wicks, the spirit of a priest who had been one of the men left behind by Pizarro at Tumbes told Frederick Blair and Mel Chappell that the treasure had been carried overland to Panama and put on Incan-built ships. These ships were battered by storms on their voyage north and came ashore on Nova Scotia, where the specially constructed hiding place was built.
Most would call the story preposterous; it is in fact complete fiction. History records the fact that it was Atahualpa who emerged victorious from the civil war, and he kept all of his gold and silver at Tumbes. This treasure he later turned over to Pizarro, filling a room once with gold and twice with silver in an attempt to buy his freedom. The Spaniards had him strangled. Spanish gold has always captured the romantic imagination of treasure hunters. It is possible that of all the ships that were supposed to have crossed the Atlantic with bulging holds of booty, one may have been diverted to a secret stash of some colonial governor, never to be found by its owners or by later historians. If so, it would more likely have been buried by Spanish conquistadors, rather than Incan sailors, in the cold North Atlantic. Spanish ships did sail with the currents on their return trip and would often go far north, within four hundred miles of Nova Scotia.