El Dorado () is a mythical city of gold supposedly located somewhere in South America. The legend originated in 16th-century Spanish accounts of a ruler known as El Dorado, or the Golden One, who was said to cover himself in gold dust before washing it off in a sacred lake. Over time, the name came to refer not only to the ruler, but also to a lost city or kingdom of immense wealth.
The legend is associated with the Muisca, an Indigenous people who inhabited the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in present-day Colombia. Later accounts linked the story to the installation ceremony of a new zipa, involving offerings of gold and other valuables at Lake Guatavita. The Muisca were skilled goldsmiths, and Spanish expeditions under Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada reached and conquered their territory in 1537. Later attempts were made to drain Lake Guatavita in search of treasure, and objects associated with the El Dorado tradition, including the Muisca raft, are now held by the Museo del Oro in Bogotá.
In the decades that followed, European explorers searched for El Dorado in various parts of South America. Expeditions associated with Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco Orellana, Philipp von Hutten, Pedro de Ursúa, Antonio de Berrio, and Walter Raleigh shifted the supposed location of the golden city from the Colombian highlands to the Amazon and the Guianas. The legend later became associated with Lake Parime, a supposed inland lake that appeared on maps of the region during the 17th century before its existence was rejected by later explorers and geographers.
Although belief in El Dorado as a real place declined, the legend has had a lasting cultural impact. It became a symbol of fabulous wealth, utopia, and obsessive exploration, appearing in works such as Voltaire's Candide, Edgar Allan Poe's "Eldorado", and later films, games, and adventure fiction.
Background
Christopher Columbus, the first European known to have reached the Americas after the Scandinavians, made landfall in the Caribbean Islands in 1492. Seeing golden ornaments worn by some of the Indigenous inhabitants, he assumed that he had found a prosperous land, and spent several months travelling from island to island in search of the source of the gold. Although he found no mines, he remained convinced that the newly encountered lands contained great wealth. He promised the Catholic monarchs of Spain, who sponsored the expedition, that with sufficient assistance he could "give them as much gold as they have need of".
European accounts of the newly encountered lands were influenced by older legends of wealthy utopias across the Atlantic. The ancient Greeks believed that somewhere in the Atlantic lay the Isles of the Blessed, an earthly paradise with a permanently temperate climate. According to second-century author Lucian, the inhabitants of these islands lived in cities made of gold, ivory, and emeralds. The Atlantic also gave its name to the mythical continent of Atlantis, which was said to be home to an advanced civilization rich in gold, silver, and orichalcum. During the Middle Ages, stories circulated about the Isle of Seven Cities, a supposed Christian haven that frequently appeared on 15th-century maps and may have influenced the later legend of the Seven Cities of Gold. Columbus was also interested in locating the biblical regions of Ophir and Tarshish, from which King Solomon was said to have imported vast quantities of treasure. He believed that these places, along with the Garden of Eden, were somewhere on the newly discovered continent, and many who followed him shared these beliefs.
The early Spanish settlers in the Caribbean Islands, however, found their expectations disappointed. The Indigenous inhabitants possessed small amounts of gold, but did not mine it systematically, and the Spanish mining activity quickly exhausted the local supply. The settlers' attention then turned towards the mainland, and colonies began to be established along the South American coast. Despite this unpromising beginning, the conquest of the Aztecs by Hernán Cortés and the conquest of the Incas by Francisco Pizarro soon rekindled European hopes that vast gold deposits remained to be found.
Origin of the legend Rumours of gold
The first European incursion into Venezuela was by Ambrosius Dalfinger, governor of the Spanish settlement of Coro. Dalfinger was an employee of the Welser banking family of Augsburg, a German firm to which Charles V of Spain had granted the governorship of Venezuela and a licence to explore the territory as security for a loan. One of the Welsers' principal concerns was to find a passage through the continent to the Pacific Ocean, then known as the South Sea; such a passage would have opened up a new route to India and given Spain an advantage in the spice trade.
To this end, in August 1529, Dalfinger set out with an expeditionary force to Lake Maracaibo. At the time, Europeans still had an incomplete understanding of South American geography, and some hoped that inland waterways might offer a route toward the Pacific. During the course of the nine-month journey, they looted numerous golden trinkets from the local population, and were told that these had been acquired through trade with a certain tribe high up in the mountains. Upon his return to Coro, Dalfinger found that in his absence, he had been presumed dead; the Welsers had sent along a replacement governor, Hans Seissenhofer, who had named Nikolaus Federmann as deputy. Dalfinger now resumed the governorship, but temporarily left Federmann in charge while he recovered from an illness.
Federmann, taking advantage of his new authority, soon launched his own expedition into the interior. Placating the Indigenous tribes with gifts of beads and iron tools, and searching for information about the South Sea, he was told that the lands bordering this sea were rich in gold, pearls, and gemstones. Enquiring further, Federmann's party were directed to a hilltop from which they could see what appeared to be a large body of water. This was in fact the llanos, a grassland plain which is subject to periodic floods. Having failed to find a route to the Pacific, and faced with difficult terrain, widespread illness, and increasingly hostile Indigenous groups, Federmann was forced to return to Coro empty-handed.
Dalfinger banished Federmann from Venezuela for four years as punishment for abandoning his post. Dalfinger then ventured inland once again in June 1531, travelling south-west to the banks of the river Cesar. Here, he heard from the Chiri people of a mountain province called "Xerira", which was said to be the source of golden artefacts found among the lowland peoples. Friede identifies Xerira with the Jerira or Jerida plateau, inhabited by the Guane, at the northern edge of the Chibcha plateau. Dalfinger also heard that the tribe which made the golden objects also exported large quantities of salt. Armed with this clue, he led his party south to the trading centre of Tamalameque, then followed the salt trail into the highlands. At an altitude of , facing attacks from Indigenous groups and freezing temperatures, the expedition realised that it could no longer advance further south. It turned south-east in the hope of reaching "Tibu", said to be the place "where the three rivers meet". Dalfinger later separated from the main party, hoping to quickly reach Lake Maracaibo. He was ambushed on the way and died after being shot with a poisoned arrow. The remainder of the expedition returned to Coro on 2 November 1533.
Meanwhile, another group of conquistadors, led by Diego de Ordaz, was searching for the source of the Orinoco River. Sailing inland from the east, rowing hard against the current, they eventually reached the confluence of the Orinoco and the Meta. They attempted to continue south along the Orinoco, but soon ran into impassable rapids. Returning downriver, they were attacked by Caribs; Ordaz's men routed their attackers and captured two. One of the prisoners, being asked if he knew of any gold in the vicinity, told the Spaniards that if they followed the westward course of the Meta River, they would find a kingdom ruled by "a very valiant one-eyed Indian", and that if they found him, "they could fill their boats with that metal". Ordaz attempted to follow this advice immediately, but it was now the dry season and the river level was dropping rapidly. Finally admitting defeat, Ordaz sailed for Spain to make preparations for a second expedition, but died of an illness at sea. Before long, "Meta" would become the general name for the legendary golden kingdom.
In 1534, Sebastián de Belalcázar, one of Pizarro's lieutenants, conquered the Inca city of Quito, where he expected to find great quantities of treasure. Not finding as much as he had hoped, he assumed that the real treasure had been hidden, and set about capturing the local chiefs, whom he tortured for information. One of the chiefs captured during these campaigns was not an Incan; he said that he came from a land 12 days' march to the north. The Spaniards called him el indio dorado, "the golden Indian". The reason for this is not clear, but it may have been because he wore golden armour or other body ornaments. Interested in finding the homeland of this "golden Indian", Belalcázar sent an expedition party north, where they discovered the province of Popayán. However, Belalcázar himself made no further move at this time.
Conquest of the Muisca
Journeys of Hohermuth and Quesada
Following the death of Dalfinger, Georg Hohermuth von Speyer became the new governor of Coro, arriving at the colony in 1535. Federmann returned to Coro in the same year, and resumed his former post as deputy. Hohermuth sent Federmann on an expedition to the Upar Valley in the west, while leading his own expedition south in the hope of finding gold in either direction. Hohermuth's party followed the course of the Andes south-southwest along the edge of the llanos. After a two-year trek, they reached the region of the Ariari River, where they heard rumours of a rich land to the west. By this time, however, morale was low. Over 200 men had died along the way, many of the survivors were too ill to fight, and Hohermuth was forced to turn back.
On the other side of the mountain range, a party led by the lawyer-turned-general Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada was also searching for the land of Meta. The expedition had set out from the Spanish colony of Santa Marta in April 1536, with the dual aim of finding an overland route to Peru and a strait to the Pacific. Both goals were thought to be achievable by following the Magdalena River to its source. The party travelled south as far as La Tora (modern-day Barrancabermeja), where they found that the river had become too narrow and fast-flowing to continue. Although the expedition had suffered heavy losses, Quesada convinced his men not to turn back, declaring, "it would be ignoble to return with nothing done". He had noticed cakes of rock salt in use among the people of La Tora and nearby areas, and suspected that they had been acquired through trade with a more advanced society to the east. Rumours of a wealthy province called Meta led Quesada, like Dalfinger before him, to follow the salt trail into the mountains.
In March 1537, after a lengthy climb, Quesada's party arrived at the edge of a high plateau, at a place they named Grita Valley (near modern-day Vélez). The plateau was home to a prosperous civilization, and the villages the Spaniards passed through yielded impressive quantities of gold and emeralds. They had entered into the territory of the Muisca.
Quesada's conquest of the Muisca