El Dorado. The man who became city
When he reached the place they pointed him to, Pizarro only found trees and scrub brush. No gold. The Indios had lied. But one thing he was sure of. Sooner or later, he would have made it. He would have found El Dorado. However, he didn’t know he was only chasing a dream. Because before becoming a city, El Dorado was a man.
New World
Many years earlier, when the first Spanish settlers had landed on the shores of the “East Indies”, they heard from natives stories about a man who lived in a forest far away. Every year he sprinkled his skin with gold dust and fragrant resin, boarded a boat, reached the middle of a lake and poured precious objects into it. The man was called El Indio Dorado, El Dorado. Those who could afford such squandering, the Spaniards thought, must live in a prosperous land: the land of El Dorado. Some identified it with the mythical Ofir, the biblical city from which King Solomon received large shipments of gold each year. For centuries many had searched for it in vain. Perhaps because it was located in a world humanity had forgotten? What everyone now called “The New World”? That had to be the case. Ofir was El Dorado.
Searching for El Dorado
Dozens of expeditions were organized to find the all-gold city, in which some of the most famous conquistadors of the time took part: Sebastián de Belalcázar, Hernán Cortés, Antonio de Berrio, and Lope de Aguirre, who inspired the leading character of Werner Herzog’s film Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Germans and Englishmen also sought El Dorado, like Walter Raleigh, the pirate poet. They all wanted their galleys stuffed with the metal for which humanity has always waged wars and committed genocides and massacres. And to succeed, once again, they decimated entire villages, destroyed centuries-old civilizations, and betrayed people who, in many cases, saw foreigners as guests to be welcomed with all honors.
In 1519, Hernán Cortés sailed from Cuba and reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, Mexico, where Emperor Montezuma welcomed him with dances, celebrations, and gold gifts. Rather than valuing the king’s gratitude, Cortés was persuaded that more gold should be there. Through deception, he kidnapped Montezuma and scoured the city. He didn’t find the amount of gold he was expecting, but he conquered Mexico. He found several gold and silver veins but no El Dorado. Perhaps, the legendary city was elsewhere.
Fragrance of cinnamon
Spaniard after Spaniard, European after European, the new Ofir always had different names: Manoa, Omagua. Towns that no one could locate or territories where no treasure was found. An Indio tortured by Gonzalo, Pizarro’s younger brother, confessed that El Dorado was in a region named Guyana, where cinnamon trees sprouted. This spice was highly valued in Europe and was synonymous with wealth. Once again, in the conqueror’s imagination, a town where cinnamon abounded should be full of gold and gemstones: the legendary city of La Canela, that by some accounts, is identified with El Dorado. However, in no one of the areas Pizarro explored, the amount of cinnamon was so much to justify the myth. And this encouraged him to carry on his quest, putting to the sword every village on his route.
The ransom room
After he reached Cajamarca, the Incas’ capital, Pizarro imprisoned King Atahualpa, and tried to establish a puppet government. Atahualpa was well aware of having to deal with greedy conquerors and proposed to exchange his freedom for a treasure never seen before. He would have filled a room five meters by six with gold ad gemstones to the height of a man. Pizarro’s mouth watered, and he agreed to the deal. Cajamarca wasn’t the legendary Ofir, but he had found his El Dorado!
Even today, among the ruins of Cajamarca, a building is known to archaeologists as “The Ransom Room”. It’s dubious it was really filled with gold. Rather, it’s a legend or a deception devised by the Inca King to make time. We know for sure Atahualpa was killed, and the Spaniards conquered Chile. El dorado was every day more distant.
The privateer poet
Walter Raleigh was probably the last adventurer deeply convinced that the lost city existed. The privateer chased his dream engaging in two expeditions, the last of which cost him his life. After he sneaks attacked a Spanish colony in Venezuela, violating the agreements between his country and the Spanish Crown, as soon as he came back to his country, he was sentenced to death by beheading. It was 1618. In the following centuries, El Dorado became just an excuse to conquer new territories and prey on local resources.
On the shores of Guatavita
The Spaniards were right at least about one thing. El Indio Dorado really existed, but it wasn’t how they had supposed. For the Muisca Indios, a tribe that lives on the plateaus near Bogota, in Colombia, bodies of water were sacred. And the Guatavita lagoon was even more so, because of its peculiar form: perfectly round, sheltered by high grounds, and resembling a crater. Local legends said it was created by a golden God fallen from the sky to find a home at the bottom of the lake. Every year, anyone in the village who was guilty of any fault could go to the banks of the Guatavita and manifest his intention to purify himself by getting rid of objects to which he attached some value. Most generous offerings came from the Zipa, the village leader. After sprinkling his body with fragrant resins and golden dust, he reached the middle of the lagoon on a raft made of gold, he washed and offered the god many valuable objects, not necessarily gold. When Cristopher Columbus set foot on the New World for the first time, this ritual had long disappeared. In the accounts of the natives, the Zipa of Musica had become El Dorado and, in the imagination of the Spaniards, an all-gold city.
The power of a myth
Some scholars believe that natives told the Europeans stories about great treasures to remove foreigners from their land, which is very likely, but perhaps not the only explanation. At the same time that Pizarro was moving to King Atahualpa’s capital, three expeditions, set out simultaneously from different places in search of Eldorado, met in the same forest. This episode makes us ask a question. What is richness? For the Spaniards, it was gold, but for the natives?
What is richness?
It is true. Incas, Aztecs and Mayas made a great display of gold, but they probably did not consider it as valuable as it was to Europeans. Gold was used for ritual purposes but not as currency, although some people used it as a bargaining chip, to buy salt for example. Greater importance was attached to guanín, an alloy of gold, silver, and copper, that required refined technical knowledge to be smelted. On the other hand, gold was simply found in nature. There was nothing special about it. According to science journalist Hugh Aldersey-Williams this may explain why local people willingly exchanged their gold for tinsels made of brass, an alloy of low value to the Spanish but unknown in South America, the production of which required knowledge similar to that needed to smelt guanín. It is also likely that the Indios were not lying. Perhaps in that forest where the three Spanish expeditions met, in the places visited by Pizarro, Cortés, and Raleigh, there really was something very precious to the natives. Perhaps there really was their El Dorado. Simply, blinded by greed, the Europeans had not been able to see it.
To know more:
- Evan S. Connell. El Dorado And Other Pursuits. Pimlico, 2002.
- Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc, Ecco Press, 2011.
- John Hemming. «The draining of the lake Guatavita». The search for El Dorado, E.P. Dutton, 1978.
- Manuel Lucena Salmoral. El mito de el dorado. Historia 16, 1985.
- Matthew Restall. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Rogger Ravines. El Cuarto del Rescate de Atahualpa 1532–1986. Istituto Nacional de Cultura de Lima, 1987.
