Before I started posting on AskHistorians I didn't really "care" about pirate tropes like buried treasure and wooden legs and things like that. I felt like I had a pretty good common sense idea of how true they were and I didn't see any reason to take careful note every time they showed up in primary sources I was reading. However, increasingly I do take note of them and I'm seeing things that I missed before.

Here is an anecdote about Edward Thache (Blackbeard) from A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates published in 1724 that indicates he buried treasure:

The Night before he was killed, he sat up and drank till the Morning, with some of his own Men, and the Master of a Merchant-Man, and having had Intelligence of the two Sloops coming to attack him, as has been before observed; one of his Men asked him, in Case any Thing should happen to him in the Engagement with the Sloops, whether his Wife knew where he had buried his Money? He answered, that no Body but himself, and the Devil, knew where it was, and the longest Liver should take all. (A General History, 85)

This is corroborated by another account published in 1737 by the British naval officer Clement Downing who recorded an eyewitness interview with a former associate or at least contemporary of Blackbeard circa 1722 who discussed buried treasure:

This Anthony told me, he had been amongst the Pyrates, and that he belong'd to one of the Sloops in Virginia, when Blackbeard was taken. He informed me, that if it should be my lot ever to go to York River or Maryland, near an Island called Mulberry Island, provided we went on shore at the Watering Place, where the Shipping used most commonly to ride, that there the Pyrates had buried considerable Sums of Money in great Chests, well clamp'd with Iron Plates. As to my part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any that ever used those Parts: But I have made Enquiry, and am Inform'd there is such a Place as Mulberry Island. If any Person, who uses those Parts, should think it worth while to dig a little way at the upper End of a small sandy Cove, where it is convenient to land, he would soon find whether the Information I had was well grounded. Fronting the Landing-place are five Trees, amongst which, he said, the Money was hid. I cannot warrant the Truth of this Account; but if I was ever to go there, I would by some means or other satisfy myself, as it could not be a great deal out of my way. If any body should obtain any Benefit by this Account, if it please God they ever come to England, 'tis hoped they will remember the Author for his Information. (Downing, 124)

In addition to the usual obscure examples of Francis Drake, William Kidd and Roberto Confresi that I originally cited in this answer about buried treasure (and that are often cited as "the only" examples of pirates burying treasure), there is now not only Blackbeard who can be added to the list, but many others too. In the same account mentioned above by Clement Downing, he mentions that the pirate John Plantain, who had set up a small petty kingdom on Madagascar in the 1720s, used to hide his money and valuables every time he went to war, as that was the only way he could keep them safe. Another example is from 1687, when the escaped indentured servant Henry Pitman was marooned on Salt Tortugas Island in the Caribbean along with eight buccaneers. Three of the buccaneers robbed their companions at gunpoint. The pretext under which they did this was that the others had "hid their Monies in the Sand, and did not keep it in their Chests," even though the whole reason they hid their money was clearly to keep it safe from robbery by their companions in the first place. The account of this is contained in Henry Pitman's own book A Relation of the Great Sufferings and Strange Adventures of Henry Pitman published in 1689.

There are still other believable accounts of pirates burying treasure besides these. Lots of people also very commonly hid and buried valuables to keep pirates from getting them, so that's another way that pirates really did often go searching for buried treasure (though the usual way they did this was by torturing people). Basically I've come to the strong conclusion that there are more than enough examples to conclude pirates did in fact commonly bury and hide treasure under certain circumstances. These circumstance were generally:

1. because they didn't have the means to quickly transport it with them (as in the case of Francis Drake circa 1573),

2. because they had a permanent base of operations and needed to hide their valuables while they went away to continue engaging in piracy but with the goal of returning (as in the case of Blackbeard circa 1718 and John Plantain circa 1720s),

3. because they hoped to use their buried treasure to bargain with authorities (as in the case of William Kidd circa 1699 and Roberto Confresi circa 1825),

4. because they were just afraid of being robbed in general even by their companions (as in the case of the buccaneers Henry Pitman encountered in 1687),

or 5) because they wanted to hide their stolen wealth from authorities since it was evidence of piracy (examples of this are possibly William Kidd circa 1699, as well as the French pirate Jean Thomas Dulaien whose crew smuggled their valuables ashore and hid them while awaiting a pardon for piracy in 1729 so admiralty inspectors wouldn't find them).

Sources used:

The Golden Age of Piracy: The truth behind pirate myths by Benerson Little

A Compendious History of the Indian Wars ... With an Account of the Life and Actions of John Plantain, a notorious Pyrate at Madagascar; his Wars with the Natives on that Island, where having continued eight Years, he join'd Angria, and was made his chief Admiral by Clement Downing, published 1737

A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates published in 1724/26 by Charles Johnson/Daniel Defoe/Nathaniel Mist (Charles Johnson is a pseudonym long thought to have been Defore, but Mist is the most likely author)

A Relation of the Great Sufferings and Strange Adventures of Henry Pitman by Henry Pitman, published 1689

I'm going to be beginning a short history of the 1st Nebraska Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War and into the 1870s (exact end date TBD), and appear to be well-served with both primary and secondary sources, although cobbling something together about an obscure topic where no official written history exists is going to be a challenge.

Cozzens, Peter. The Darkest Days of the War: The Battles of Iuka and Corinth. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Dunlay, Thomas W. Wolves for the Blue Soldiers: Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries With the United States Army, 1860-90. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion: Compiled and Arranged From Official Records of the Federal and Confederate Armies, Reports of the Adjutant Generals of the Several States, the Army Registers, and Other Reliable Documents and Sources. Des Moines: The Dyer Publishing Company, 1908.

Nebraska National Guard Museum (Seward, NE)

Nebraska State Historical Society (Lincoln, NE)

Scherneckau, August. Marching with the First Nebraska: A Civil War Diary ed. Edith Robbins, James E. Potter, trans. Edith Robbins. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010.

Shaara, Jeff. A Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh. New York: Ballantine Books, 2013.

I finished reading Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies in the Conquest of Mesoamerica edited by Laura E. Matthew and Michel R. Oudijk. I read this book after reading Matthew Restall’s book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest so I had an idea of what many of the chapters were going to be about. However, Indian Conquistadors offered a deeper and more in-depth look at the conquest of Mesoamerica through many different indigenous peoples and regions. For anyone interested in the early colonial period of Mexico, I think this is a must read.

Out of all the chapters I do have a few favorites. Chapter 1, Mesoamerican Conquistadors in the Sixteenth Century by Michel R. Oudijk and Matthew Restall, sets the stage for the entire book. It was largely a summary of Restall’s book, Seven Myths, but with a bit more detail and breath that highlights aspects of each chapter in the rest of Indian Conquistadors.

Chapter 4, Concubines and Wives: Reinterpreting Native-Spanish Intimate Unions in Sixteenth-Century Guatemala by Robinson A. Herrera, was an eye-opener. Too often, women are not the focus of archaeology and history. While feminist archaeology has made great strides in the last several decades, more work is definitely needed. Chapter 4 highlights the contributions of Native women, for better or worse, to the conquest of Mesoamerica. Native women were not passive objects given to the Spanish to simply cement alliances between Native peoples and the Spanish. Nor were Native women simply the ones that cooked the food or raised the children. Instead, Native women helped to direct the Spanish in their conquest, they helped to raise indigenous troops to fight for the Spanish, and they worked to preserve their own peoples against the Spanish.

Lastly, Chapter 5, Conquest, Coercion, and Collaboration: Indian Allies and the Campaigns in Nueva Galicia by Ida Altman, is a favorite because Altman covers West Mexico. However, her book, The War for Mexico’s West, does a much better job of covering this topic than her chapter.

Favorite chapters aside, There is an interesting tidbit in Chapter 1 that warrants further research. The authors of this chapter mention the Spanish taking Nahua and Maya troops to conquer Native peoples in the Andes in 1534. However, according to Pedro de Cieza de Leon, many of these troops “died either because of the sea or from the great hardship they suffered on land.” And Pedro de Alvarado claims “that the Indians whom they had brought from Guatemala ate countless native peoples of these villages … and afterwards most of them froze in the cold and starved to death.” I had never heard of Mesoamerican peoples being sent south to the Andes and I am intrigued to learn more.

The authors also say that Indians (probably Tlaxcalteca) were sent all the way to the Philippines in the early 17th century to fight “bloodthirsty Chinese” (meaning the Philippine natives). And there was apparently no issue among Spanish colonial town councilors in raising troops from Mexico to go send them halfway across the world to do the Crown’s bidding. If I am able to find information on one or both of these instances, I will be sure to share it with you all.

I hope you check out the book and enjoy it as much as I have.

A few weeks ago, almost by chance, I found a book I half-forgot existed: Нестор Лакоба (Nestor Lakoba) by Mikhail Bgazhba(1965). Lakoba was an Abkhaz Bolshevik, and someone who featured somewhat prominently in my MA thesis (and was included in my PhD applications). There is no other biography of him out there (disclosure: I erroneously claimed there was no biography at all in my application, though I stated none I was aware of) , and what little is written on him is mainly how he was the leader of Abkhazia, Stalin would visit, and he was killed by Beria for being perceived as a rival. However his collected papers were saved, and now sit in Stanford's library, waiting for someone to look them over and write about this guy.

But some random searching found this on what is like the Russian version of Kijiji. For $15 I got it, and shipped to a friend in Russia and thence to me (guy apparently complained to my friend, saying he should have sold it for more; he's right, I would have paid a lot more). It's 40 pages, all Russian, with some new photos I've never seen, and written by the then-First Secretary of the Abkhaz Communist Party, so you know it'll be full of propaganda. It was done to rehabilitate Lakoba, who in his death was declared "an enemy of the people." And best of all, in case my Russian fails me, I have a roughly-translated copy available from some Abkhaz nationalist site. I'm quite excited to get reading it.

Thomas V. Cohen's Love And Death In Renaissance Italy has arrived for me and I'm hoping it'll be as zesty as its title is. I'm back on a jag of Renaissance Italian gender baggage, beauty culture, sex work, and venereal disease. (One of the essays in Sins of the Flesh, which otherwise did not wow me, made a striking comparison between Renaissance Italian constructions of the origins of syphilis, in particular a specific imagined origin in the fornications of one single extraordinarily beautiful woman, and the 20th century "patient zero" construction of the AIDS epidemic, and my response was basically "well, damn".)