“The Eldorado Spirit”: The Lure of the Man, Lake, and Myth of El Dorado

“The Eldorado Spirit”: ENDNOTES The Lure of the Man, Lake and Myth of El Dorado

As Spanish explorers arrived in Quito in the 1530s, they heard a story that would, over time, be carried back across the Atlantic: the story of a man whose skin was covered with gold dust, shining on a floating raft upon a lake. This story developed into a myth, telling of how El Dorado, an Indigenous prince, took part in a ceremony of his people while covered in gold dust and floated on a raft across a lake of buried treasure.1 The myth of El Dorado and his elusive home abundant with gold, a pinnacle of wealth, influenced European exploration of the Americas as explorers searched for mythic wealth.

The myth of El Dorado first appeared in the sixteenth century, through a slow and gradual process as Europeans came to explore the Americas. While exploration urged “the quest for souls and the quest for gold,”2 knowledge of a gold-coated man began to spread in the mid-1500s. Word of an Indigenous ceremony involving the anointment of gold dust brought news of el indio dorado, “the Golden Indian,” which reached the eager ears of explorers across the Atlantic. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the quest to find El Dorado escalated, the myth evolved. As conquistadors explored the regions of South America, the image of a golden man was replaced by a golden lake, a place of ritual ceremony overwhelmed with treasure.3

Contemporary writers describe the legend through different lenses, adding and omitting details over the years. The historian Pedro Simón based his own narrative on the expeditions he had witnessed, writing about a ceremony of the Muisca at Lake Guatavita in Colombia. Knowledge of the Muisca ceremony brought conquistadors to the region to no avail.4

Muisca Raft, Museo Del Oro, Bogota, photo by Reg Natarajan (2016), Wikimedia Commons.

Two accounts describe the search for the golden lake. Pedro de Ursúa’s travels in South America in 1559 brought a Spanish expedition to the place believed to be El Dorado, which ultimately ended with disputation when no such place was found.5 The English explorer, Sir Walter Raleigh, carried out an expedition in 1595, which led him to a town called Guiana in South America, believed to be a place near mountains “very rich and full of gold.”6 The discovery that Guiana lacked the mountains of gold he had longed for brought further knowledge of an Indigenous ceremony. The ceremony in this Indigenous town was similar to that of the stories, as Raleigh illustrated: “they are anointed all over, certain servants of the emperor, having prepared gold made into fine powder, blow it thorough hollow canes upon their naked bodies, until they be all shining from the foot to the head.”7

The interactions accompanying the search for El Dorado present the conflicting narratives of European explorers, leaving little to be said of any lasting contemporary accounts by Indigenous witnesses. “We can only try to imagine what they thought of this mysterious and menacing column that had suddenly emerged from the forests,” writes historian John Hemming,8 as the accounts of Indigenous perspectives of the El Dorado story can only be assumed. The accounts of conquistadores suggest they were encouraged by Indigenous locals who told stories of golden cities and wealth far away. This is evident in Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s claim of “an Indian slave” who suggested that “in his country to the east lay Golden Quivira” another assumed variation of El Dorado.9

The tale of the golden man and the golden lake created a curiosity which resulted in connections between Europeans and the Indigenous peoples of South America. Thus, El Dorado became a catalyst which spurred the escalating greed for golden treasure, “the eldorado spirit,”10 and served as a source of opportunity and the thrill of the unknown “with all the perseverance, hardship…and exhilaration it involved.”11

Muisca Raft, Museo Del Oro, Bogota, photo by Reg Natarajan (2016), Wikimedia Commons.

Jessica Knapp English major, History minor