SOURCE: Bodmer, Beatriz Pastor. “The Models in Crisis: The Search for El Dorado.” In The Armature of Conquest: Spanish Accounts of the Discovery of America, 1492-1589, translated by Lydia Longstreth Hunt pp. 153-68. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992.

[In the following excerpt, Bodmer argues that belief in various myths about South America—including that of El Dorado—spurred the exploration of the interior of the continent.]

On the northern continent, territorial expansion had been organized in pursuit of two central goals: the Fountain of Youth and the Seven Cities of Cibola. Every great Spanish expedition to that region had been initially inspired by one of these two mythical objectives. Although these ventures ultimately failed, they never quite succeeded in curbing the mythical impulses of a people who persisted in identifying the unknown with the imaginary things and beings of ancient legends, Native American lore, and the “lying histories” that were the rage of the time.¹

While expansion continued toward the north, the southern continent was gradually being explored from bases established along the coast in Peru, Quito, and Venezuela. The conquistadors who led these explorations seem to have been just as creative at myth-making as those who had developed and perpetuated the tales about the wonderful fountain and the enchanted cities. Irving A. Leonard notes that:

There is nothing to indicate that the fantastic notions so prevalent in the earlier years of the century had suffered any appreciable loss of vigor by the time the Spaniards addressed themselves seriously to the almost superhuman task of subjugating the continent of South America. Indeed, as New Spain and its hinterland failed to disclose the location of the enchanted cities, the fountains of youth, the Amazons, and the many other wonders so plainly expected, there was a disposition to shift their locale to the still more mysterious and forbidding Tierra Firme to the south in which the unshaken faith of eager adventurers would be vindicated.²

Actually, more than a resurgence of the specific myths in the southern hemisphere, it was the same collective penchant for fantasy that characterized the exploration of the north that was also present in the south. Except for the story of the Amazons, which persisted for reasons to be discussed later, the myths themselves were not transferred. The conquistadors (including men like Pedro de Alvarado, Diego de Ordaz, or Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who had gone after mythical goals in the north) were more likely to formulate new myths than to transfer the earlier ones to the unknown territory they were about to explore.

The most important myths during the conquest of the southern continent were grounded on the hypothesis that there was a fabulous region located in the interior along the equinoctial line. Initially this hypothesis did not seem entirely fantastic, for it appeared to be related to one of the most credible cosmographical theories of the time: the theory of the distribution of precious metals over the globe.³ References to this theory in texts dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries seem to confirm its importance over a long period. There is an allusion to it in a letter to Columbus from the king and queen, in 1493, in which they consult him regarding the advisability of changing the bull to include more land lying in the tropics. They speak of Portuguese reports according to which “there may be islands and even terra firma which, depending on where they lie in relation to the sun, are thought to be very fruitful and richer than any other land. And because we know that you know more about this than anyone else, we request your opinion immediately, for if it be advisable and you believe it to be as good a venture as it is thought to be here, the bull will be amended.”⁴

In 1495 the prestigious cosmographer Jaume Ferrer wrote to Columbus, telling him that the area around the equinoctial line was especially rich in natural treasures: “Just around the equinox … precious stones, gold, spices, and medicinal plants are abundant and valuable; and I can speak of this because of my frequent commerce with the Levant, Cairo, and Damascus, and because I am a lapidary and have always been interested in learning about those places from people coming from there, and in knowing from what climate or province they bring such things. And what I have heard most often from many Indians, Arabs, and Ethiopians is that most of the good merchandise comes from a very hot climate.”⁵

Anghiera devoted an entire section of his Decades to the subject. The heading of the section reads: “Conjecture concerning the existence of other gold, spice, and pearl producing islands in the torrid zone, besides those already known.” He claimed that new lands would soon be discovered “either south of the equator or near by” and that these lands would be “rich in gold sand of the king already discovered in the Malucas and other previously described islands.” Anghiera based his conviction on “the virtue of the effect of the sun on terrestrial matter at the equinox,” maintaining that if this virtue had produced such fertile land in the tropics in the area of the Malucas, it was logical to expect similar conditions to have produced similar bounty at other sites along the same latitude: “That circle is greater than all the others. Therefore if in this small area nature is as I have said so great in her art and ability that she can produce in one region the same things that she produces in another subject to similar influences, can there be any doubt that with fragrances likewise there may be somewhere under the great globe of the sky other lands endowed with the same virtues as the Maluca islands and their neighbors, some of them on the equator and others just above or below it?”⁶

The theory regarding the distribution of natural treasures—mostly consisting of precious stones and metals, but also spices in Anghiera's version—continued to be widely respected throughout the sixteenth century. It was used by Father José de Acosta to support his theory on the nature of metals: “Metals are like plants buried in the bowels of the earth and they develop in a somewhat similar fashion, for they too have trunks and branches, meaning the larger and smaller veins, which are likewise intricately coordinated. And in a sense, minerals seem to grow like plants—for they occur in the bowels of the earth as a result of the virtue and efficiency of the sun and other planets.”⁷ It was referred to also by the chroniclers, from Gómara, who used it to challenge claims that the tropics in the New World were poor, to Herrera, who discussed the influence of the sun and the planets on the region in his Historia General.

The theory of the cosmographical distribution of metals provided the scientific foundation for the belief shared by a great many conquistadors that there were fabulous regions in the interior of the continent. But the specific way in which their imagination portrayed these regions, that is, the myths that provided incentives for the explorers, were related to Native American and European legends, historical tradition, and reports by people who had dwelled in the interior or survived one or more of a long series of expeditions that set out between 1530 and 1560, mainly from Peru, Quito, new Grenada, and Paria, to conquer the vast unknown hinterland.

One of the many myths that inspired the exploration of the interior of South America had already spurred the imagination of a large number of discoverers in the Caribbean and the northern territories (including Columbus and Cortés). It was a new version of a very old legend—the Amazons. Columbus may have been unfamiliar with Herodotus's classical tale, but he did know the version in The Travels of Marco Polo. Polo reconstructed Herodotus's myth in his description of two islands and the customs of the inhabitants: “one of which [islands] is inhabited by men, without the company of women, and is called the island of males; and the other by women without men, which is called the island of females. … The men visit the island of females, and remain with them for three successive months, namely, March, April, and May, each man ocupying a separate habitation along with his wife. They then return to the island of males. … The wives retain their sons with them until they are of the age of twelve years, when they are sent off to join their fathers.”⁸ The islands appear on Martin Behaim's 1492 map of the world, together with inscriptions describing some of their customs. Both Polo and Behaim refer to an important point that sheds some light on the important role played by the many versions of this myth throughout the conquest of America. According to the medieval version of the myth, the Amazons lived in Far East Asia and consequently were associated with the fabulous treasures presumed to exist there.

Columbus was the first to mention that there might be Amazons living in the New World (on the islands of Matinino and Carib), thus formulating the first American version of the myth and implicitly determining the function it would have for many years after the initial discovery. He did not consider the Amazons an objective as such, but they were an important piece of evidence in his set of identifications, for had he discovered them they would have given him undeniable proof of the proximity of the fabulous regions he was seeking.

After Columbus's first voyage, the Amazons were referred to frequently in narratives of expeditions that sought widely different objectives. Leonard has analyzed the development of this myth, wondered about why it was so persistent and ubiquitous, and noted its function as a means of identifying land containing treasure. He believes, however, that this function was secondary and that the discovery of the Amazons constituted a fundamental objective.⁹ It seems likely, however, that the myth's extraordinary vitality and persistence was due primarily to its value as a means of identifying wonderfully rich territory. The Amazons were interesting in that their presence had been associated time and again, since the Middle Ages, with great quantities of gold, silver, and precious stones. Rather than being an objective in themselves as Leonard claims,¹⁰ they were a sign confirming the existence and proximity of certain basic mythical objectives—from Columbus's Cipangu to Orellana's Kingdom of Omagua.

Once transferred to South America, the Amazon myth reappeared periodically, nourished by native reports consistently misinterpreted by the Spaniards according to the terms of their own versions of the myth.¹¹ But it was always associated by the explorers with their own imaginary representations of the fabulous treasures of the hinterland. Some of the native reports described the matriarchal organization and customs of certain tribes in the interior, and most of them referred to the Inca virgins (called the wives of the Inca), who had consecrated their lives to the worship of the Sun. The custom attributed to the Amazons in the original myth, of keeping the girls with them while sending the boys to their fathers, became identified with the tribute of young girls and boys demanded by the Inca from his vassals. And the traditional association of the Amazons with rich treasure seemed confirmed by repeated reports of the great wealth that the Incas accumulated in the temples of the Sun—the same temples where the virgins believed by the Spaniards to be the Amazons lived, in close proximity to the fabulous objectives they all coveted.¹² The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega speaks at some length of this treasure in his Comentarios Reales, where he says that most of the empire's collected gold and silver was used to serve and adorn the numerous Houses of the Virgins of the Temples of the Sun located throughout the empire.

From the time of Columbus to the eighteenth century there were many versions of the Amazon myth indeed.¹³ They ranged from brief references by Columbus, or by Cortés who speaks in his fourth letter of the women who lived “without a single man, and … at certain times men go over from the mainland and have intercourse with them; the females born to those who conceive are kept but the males are sent away,”¹⁴ to complex, ornate elaborations as in Gaspar de Carvajal's account of Orellana's expedition along the Amazon. Describing Orellana's questioning of a native who had come from somewhere near Omagua, Carvajal says the latter claimed that there were a great many women “living about seven days inland” in up to more than seventy towns:

they get together with Indian men when they wish to from time to time, and once they become pregnant send them back to their land without doing them any other harm; and when a child is born, if it is a son he is killed and returned to his father, and if a daughter, she is raised very solemnly and taught the things of war. He said there are enormous gold and silver treasures there, all the important ladies are served exclusively on gold and silver, and there are many gold and silver idols in the houses with which to serve the Sun.

Carvajal even includes a physical description of what he claims to have seen with his own eyes: “Up to ten or twelve came, which is the number we saw, fighting at the head of all the men, as their captains. … These women are very white and tall, their hair is very long and braided around their heads, they are very long-limbed, go naked except for something to cover their private parts, and carry bows and arrows.”¹⁵

Whether in the form of a brief remark or a detailed elaboration, however, every allusion to the Amazons is associated with the existence of fabulous treasures: gold and pearls in Cortés's fourth letter; gold mines richer than any beheld ever before according to Juan de San Martín and Alonso de Lebrija in their Relación del Descubrimiento del Nuevo Reino de Granada;¹⁶ a great accumulation of gold, silver, and precious stones in Carvajal's narrative or great quantities of “white and yellow metal,” according to Hernando de Ribera who maintained that “the table service and chairs in these houses were all made of this metal.”¹⁷

Throughout the exploration of the southern continent, the itinerary of the Amazon myth was associated with that of several other mythical objectives that embodied in different ways and at different times the fabulous character of the mysterious hinterland. The presence of the Amazons—for Columbus a sign of the proximity of Marco Polo's wondrous Asia—always indicated that the men were near imaginary wonders as diverse as the land of Meta, the hidden treasure of the Incas, El Dorado, the kingdom of the Omaguas—the very mythical objectives that would continue to provide the incentive to keep pushing ahead into the wildernesses and forests of South America.

During the sixteenth century, imaginary representations of the interior underwent several fundamental transformations and reformulations, producing the series of myths that provided the main objectives of the expeditions. In 1516 a caravel in Juan Díaz de Solís's expedition was shipwrecked in the Atlantic, near Puerto de los Patos. Some of the cast-aways were convinced by native accounts that there was a white king and unbelievable riches somewhere in the interior. They went well into the Brazilian jungle as far as the Charcas mines, where they seized a large amount of precious metal. But only a few native slaves survived the return of the expedition, for everyone else was killed by the Brazilian natives. Those who did return, however, brought back samples of gold and silver, and the castaways who had remained at Puerto de los Patos took this as confirmation that the Silver Mountains and the Empire of the Sun did in fact exist in the interior of the continent. Thus the existence of certain real mines and references to the as yet undiscovered Inca empire provided incentives throughout the first half of the sixteenth century for expeditions into the interior of South America originating on the Atlantic coast.¹⁸

In 1530 Diego de Ordás was authorized to put together an expedition to the interior along the course of the Orinoco river. His initial objective was the area around the equator, which he assumed to be rich in precious metals. The expedition set out in 1531 and was a complete failure. Diego de Ordás died in 1532 without having found what he was looking for. But one of his men, Gerónimo Ortal, organized another expedition inland in 1533. Here again the objective was land near the equinoctial line, but in this case it concerned a specific, fabulously rich region about which certain vague reports had been heard during Ordás's unlucky venture. This region was the marvelous Land of Meta, in search of which many expeditions journeyed between 1533 and 1538. The final outcome was the confirmation of the existence of this mythical country. Juan de San Martín and Antonio de Lebrija, who took part in these expeditions, wrote to the king listing the many gold and emerald mines they had discovered, describing treasures in precious stones found at the temples of Tunja and Sogamoso and presenting a compilation of native reports that claimed that even more extraordinary treasures were to be had a few days' journey away, and virtually in every direction, from where the men were staying.¹⁹

When, in 1538, the expeditions led by Benalcázar, Federman, and Ximénez de Quesada converged on the same “six league triangle” from such distant points of origin as Peru, Venezuela, and Santa Marta, the sum of information and proof accumulated by each along the way appeared to provide complete confirmation of incalculable riches in the interior. For Ximénez de Quesada, these consisted of the treasures of the Inca, which since the conquest of Cuzco had been assumed to be distributed in more or less unlimited quantities throughout the empire. The discovery and plunder of Tunja and Sogamoso had confirmed a general belief in these mythical treasures. Moreover, taking as conclusive evidence the discovery of gold and emerald mines in the interior and information from the natives on more and better treasures in the same region, Ximénez de Quesada's expedition also confirmed the existence of the mythical land of Meta. In addition, Federman (whose army included the expeditionaries who had rebeled agaisnt Gerónimo de Ortal) had gathered information from natives all along his route concerning Meta and the vast quantities of precious stones and metals to be found there. And Benalcázar added to all this lore his account of the booty taken at Irruminari and of the existence and capture of the Golden Indian around whom the myth of El Dorado would gradually be woven.

According to Enrique de Gandía, the tale of El Dorado was first heard of in 1534, but the complete version was not put together or passed along until 1538. Gandía claims that it was precisely after the meeting of Ximénez de Quesada, Benalcázar, and Federman that “the fame of El Dorado spread rapidly over the north of South America, then down to Peru, and from there a few years later to the River Plate.”²⁰ The legend that inspired the myth was related to a Chibcha ceremony held in a village on the shore of Lake Guativitá, which had ceased to be practiced even before the arrival of the Spaniards. During the ceremony an offering of gold and precious stones was buried by the chieftain in the waters of the lake. According to the Indian legend, the custom dated back to a time when the wife of an Indian chief who had committed adultery was so fiercely and publicly punished and put to shame by her husband that in her despair, she threw herself into the lake. Filled with remorse, the chieftain consulted his priests, who told him that his wife was living in a palace at the bottom of the lake and persuaded him to make offerings to her in the form of gold. To fulfill the ritual, the Indian chief “covered his naked body from head to toe with a very sticky turpentine, over which he poured a large quantity of fine gold powder … and thus bedecked he went to the middle of the lake and made offerings and sacrifices there, throwing gold pieces and emeralds into the water.”²¹

Originally the myth focused on two well defined central elements: the offerings thrown into the lake, and the figure of the golden chieftain. But as time went on, “Dorado” began to be used as a preferred synonym for any region gifted with immense treasure. Hence perhaps the importance attributed to this myth by so many chroniclers and historians, who mistakenly claimed it to have been the objective of several expeditions bound for Meta, the House of the Sun, or the Inca treasures, all three of which had developed independently of the legend of the golden chieftain.

Felipe Huten left Coro in search of El Dorado in 1541, when the popularity of the myth was at its peak. He found no trace of El Dorado, but the expedition returned bearing news of another enormously rich kingdom, that of the Omaguas. Gonzalo Pizarro sailed in 1542 in search of the Land of Cinnamon, but upon hearing the latest reports of El Dorado added this objective to his plans. When he came to the Amazon he divided his expedition into two groups, and one, led by Orellana, was the first to sail as far as the mouth of the river. Describing his expedition, Father Gaspar de Carvajal spoke of the presence of the Amazons (always associated with wonderful treasures) in the proximity of the region of the Omaguas. The myth of the fabulous kingdom of the Omaguas, based on an actual province and on the discoverers' determination to find treasure in the hinterland, would later be confirmed with the arrival in Peru of the Brazil Indians. These natives claimed that they had been sailing up the Marañón toward Peru for ten years, and they “said such great things about the river and the provinces through which it passed, especially the province of Omagua; and about the large number of inhabitants and countless treasures there, that many people were inspired to go see and discover them.”²² By the time Pedro de Ursúa obtained authorization to conquer the region in 1559, the myths of Omagua and El Dorado had become fused, both referring to the rich mythical region now thought to lie not in the interior plains between Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela but in the Amazon Basin, which ever since Pizarro's expedition to the Land of Cinnamon had become the main focus of exploration.

The transfer of qualities implied in Ursúa's belief that Omagua and El Dorado were the same place was neither an isolated case nor even an exceptional one. The imaginary representations of the fabulous hinterland that emerged as South America was being explored were highly dynamic. Contacts among the expeditions and the constant dissemination of fantastic reports—absorbed first by one myth, then by another²³—made the different versions extremely fluid. This extraordinarily dynamic quality was reflected in the way in which some of the conquistadors modified the purpose of their expeditions. Ximénez de Quesada, for example, first set out in 1536 with the intention of sailing along the Magdalena basin in search of an intercontinental connection with the South Seas. Demetrio Ramos notes that “the point was not to carry out Ordás's ideas, in regard to the route along the Gran Magdalena … but to attempt to reach the South Seas as proposed by Alvarado, whose purpose must have provided a powerful incentive for Fernández de Lugo.”²⁴ But when in 1539 Ximénez de Quesada led his fourth expedition, he included in its objectives—as recorded by several of the expeditionaries—two of the most important mythical representations of the hinterland, the House of the Sun and the Land of Meta, both of which he associated with the presence of the Amazons, a sure sign of the proximity of any mythically rich territory.²⁵

The statements of goals and the accounts of reports gathered during the expeditions eventually became composite formulations that merged various myths of diverse origin and heterogeneous nature with real news of actual treasures, usually from the Inca empire. Hernando de Ribera's report, certified by a notary in the presence of witnesses, on his exploration of the Igatu River toward the end of 1537, following the orders of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, is one of the best examples of how all the myths and legends about the interior that circulated at a given time could be combined within a single account. As if the formal circumstances under which he dictated his report were not enough to guarantee its accuracy and objectivity, Ribera begins his narrative with a detailed description of his careful, objective method for obtaining information:

And traveling by foot through many Indian villages he heard and took from the natives there and from other Indians from places further away who had come to see and talk to him, a long and profuse account that he examined and attempted to study in detail so as to know the truth from them, as a man familiar with the cario language, through the interpretation of which and statements he communicated and talked with those generations and gathered information about the land … he stated that to obtain the truth from the said Indians and ascertain whether their statements were inconsistent, he spent an entire day and night questioning each of them in different ways, and they in turn all spoke and made statements among which there was no disagreement.²⁶

The representation of the fabulous hinterland is first introduced in Ribera's account by a complete presentation of the American version of the Amazons. All the features to be found in the texts, from Columbus to Carvajal and even to Herrera's Historia, are included: the Amazons are female warriors governed by a woman; they are hostile toward the neighboring tribes; at certain times of the year they cease their warfare temporarily to have sexual relations with natives from the regions on their borders, whom they expel once their function has been fulfilled; they raise and educate their daughters with great care, but send their sons to their fathers; they possess great wealth in the form of “yellow and white metal,” which they use to make their chairs and their table service; they live near very rich land, and “there are very large settlements with a great many Indians bordering on their territory.”²⁷

The first item around which Ribera organizes his representation of the fabulous hinterland (suggested by the presence of the Amazons) is a lake. In native traditions, lakes were associated with ceremonial rites and the offering of gifts. The Chibchas and other groups in the interior considered them holy, and the tradition of casting offerings of precious gifts into their depths led to the development of legends such as that of the adulterous wife of the chieftain of Guativitá. With the complex process of generation, transformation, and reformulation of myths and reports that accompanied the conquest, lakes also became, from the time of the conquest of Tenochtitlan and the disappearance of the Aztec treasures, a symbol of concealment for the Spaniards.²⁸ But there is no question that once the explorers became aware of the Guativitá ceremony and the tale of the golden chieftain, they associated lakes with El Dorado and often thought of them as vast reservoirs of treasures accumulated as a result of long years of Indian offerings. Ribera's version, however, reflects a shift in which the lake changes from being a place where treasures are buried, to a natural storage place from which the Indians in the hinterland draw gold and precious stones: “And also toward the west, there was a very large lake … and on its borders … larger settlements of people who wore clothing and possessed a large amount of metal, and their clothes were embroidered with precious stones, which shone mightily, and they took these stones from the lake.”²⁹ The lake mentioned by Ribera's natives was probably the Titicaca, which according to Gandía³⁰ was one of the places in South America identified for many years with the mythical El Dorado.³¹

The second central element in Ribera's representation of the fabulous interior is his description of the population living in this unexplored region. Ribera says that “just beyond the women's villages” there were other very large settlements “whose inhabitants were black and who, they said, have beards … similar to those of the Moors.”³² By saying that black people and men with Arabic features were living in the region, he repeats the claims of Jaume Ferrer who, in the first account ever written on the wondrous hinterland (his letter to Columbus), identified it with the equinoctial line.³³ Ferrer associated the region with treasures and a hot climate and remarked that the richest regions on the planet were likely to be inhabited by blacks and Arabs or at least be near places inhabited by people like them.

Finally, the last item around which Ribera organizes his mythical representation consists of the legendary echoes of the splendor of the Inca empire. These include references to the Amazons (perhaps a modified version of reports on the Virgins of the Sun) and to the Temple of the Sun at Lake Titicaca. Ribera also refers to the Incas themselves and their llamas: “very rich people who wore clothing, owned a large amount of metal, and raised a large number of animals with very big ears.”³⁴

Thus Ribera's mythical hinterland contains many features from earlier versions, brought together in a single imaginary representation. The region he describes is located in eastern Peru, but on the basis of native reports he extends it toward the north, so that it becomes necessarily associated with the mythical land of Meta searched for so assiduously by explorers from Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela, and toward the southwest and the territory of Chile, which had barely been explored at the time and was eventually to constitute the last bastion of the myth of El Dorado.

Dictated in good faith—there is no reason to believe otherwise—and based on his interpretation of the natives' replies to his elaborate questioning, Ribera's account formulated a new mythical representation of the nature of the interior. The result of his narrative was not an accurate description of South America but a rather complete synthesis of the central elements shaping the basic myths that had been encouraging the exploration of the mysterious interior. It contains a rather heterogeneous mixture of things taken haphazardly from a variety of occasionally misinterpreted reports of mythical objectives, combined with a number of native reports—some misunderstood or invented—concerning the legendary splendor of the Peru of the Incas. The formulation is interesting precisely because of its synthetic and heterogeneous nature. For in its confusion of sources and objectives, it provides a singular illustration of how these myths were generated and transmitted while the exploration and conquest of the interior of South America was underway. It reveals how extremely dynamic the imaginary component of the experience of the conquest in fact was, and it illuminates the mechanism by which vague knowledge concerning cosmographical theories, geographical descriptions, legends, myths, and personal dreams came together and combined in the minds of the conquistadors, often very subjectively, with the information provided by the natives. The result was that new myths and imaginary versions were constantly being created, of an interior whose marvels had not yet materialized, but whose fabulous nature was not only not questioned but appeared to be reaffirmed with each new formulation. The extraordinary vitality of the urge to create mythical objectives so apparent in Ribera's relación provides yet another example of the same process underlying the successive transformations of mythical objectives in Ximénez de Quesada's expeditions. There, a specific if nonexistent geographical objective—the search for a passage to the South Seas—was replaced by a series of increasingly complex mythical goals. In this case the reformulation took place over the course of four expeditions, but there are several instances in which specific geographic or economic objectives were progressively substituted by mythical ones in the course of a single expedition. The expedition led by Pizarro and Orellana toward the end of 1540 is a case in point.

The initial objective of Gonzalo Pizarro's expedition—the Land of Cinnamon—was the same one that aroused the interest of many other discoverers. Its existence had recently been confirmed by Díaz de Pineda. The first reports of cinnamon in the interior dated back to 1534, shortly after Atahualpa's capture. In May 1540 Sebastián de Benalcázar obtained authorization from the emperor to explore the interior for cinnamon “or any other spice.” The terms of his authorization granted him exclusive right to “the profits to be had from this spice.”³⁵ The chronicler Oviedo describes the objectives of the expedition: “And this Benalcázar learned that there was abundant cinnamon, and when he returned from Spain to be governor of Popayan, he told me here in Santo Domingo that he believed he would find it near the Marañón river, and that it was along this river that the cinnamon was to be taken to Castille and Europe.”³⁶

Fray Gaspar de Carvajal confirms how Pizarro gave top priority to the search for cinnamon while planning his expedition. He states repeatedly that the expedition was inspired by “the many reports about a land where cinnamon was made”; that Pizarro and Orellana met in the province of Motín “to go after this cinnamon”; and that “After the said captain (Orellana) had come to where Governor Gonzalo Pizarro was, he set out personally to find cinnamon.”³⁷ However, Pizarro's letter written to the king after returning from his expedition in September 1542 mentions a second objective that turns up systematically in association with cinnamon. Pizarro says that his objectives are “the province of Cinnamon and the Lake of El Dorado, both very rich and heavily populated.” His account of the early part of his expedition to the interior confirms, however, that the initial goal was cinnamon and that El Dorado came later. “I attempted to ascertain where the Land of Cinnamon was from some Indians I had taken from the natives, who said they knew its whereabouts; and because it had been so widely reported and was taken to be so rich … I decided to look for it personally … and so I searched for cinnamon trees … for well more than seventy days.”³⁸ When Pizarro finally reached the cinnamon region he must have been exceedingly disappointed by the land, which turned out to be full of “very rough, uninhabited and uninhabitable mountains,” where the highly prized cinnamon trees are “at a very great distance from each other.” In the face of such disappointment, he concluded, “Your Majesty will gain no use or service from this land or its products.”³⁹ And it must have been in the light of this assessment that the initial objectives of the expedition were canceled and reformulated to include the mythical El Dorado to which Pizarro would refer two years later in his letter to the king. Carvajal notes the circumstances of the cancellation of the plan to look for cinnamon, in the following brief remark, “He found no land or recourse that might be of service to Your Majesty, and decided accordingly to proceed onward.”⁴⁰

It is unlikely that when cinnamon failed to materialize Pizarro would not have told his men that his other objective was El Dorado if so it had been. Surely the best means of boosting their morale would have been to offer a valuable substitute. The fact that he presented no more than a vague plan to “proceed onward” would seem to indicate pretty clearly that finding cinnamon had been his sole objective and that it had not yet been replaced by another one, real or mythical.

The goal of discovery soon gave way to the need to find provisions. This seems to be the reason why Orellana left the expedition, and his voyage down the river in search of food to remedy the critical situation of Pizarro and his men implied a second transformation of the original objective. The beginning of this voyage down the Marañón by Orellana and his followers marks the final stages in the cancellation of the initial objective, cinnamon, and the end of the attempt to find it. The valuable objective is first replaced by a somewhat aimless wandering, and then by a search for provisions. The process illustrated by Pizarro and Orellana's change of plans duplicates the development of the action in the narrative discourse of failure discussed earlier. But in Orellana's case, the acceptance of failure is short-lived, for as he sails down the Marañón the impulse to mythify takes over again, resulting in his formulation of a new myth about the fantastic kingdom of the Omaguas.

The first real element on which this new mythical formulation was based was the arrival of natives bearing offerings: “and they came with their jewelry and gold trays,” recounts Carvajal. It was the first evidence of gold in the region, and this brief note is followed by a reference to the proximity of the Amazons, associated as always with a region endowed with rich treasure. “Here they told us about the Amazons, and the riches below,” says Carvajal.⁴¹ The samples of gold offered by the Indians and the reports confirming its existence that Orellana and his men heard as they sailed down the Marañón were to be interpreted once the expedition reached the coast of the prosperous Omagua settlements as having constituted all along a concrete premonitory sign. “There are many very large settlements next to each other, and the land was very pretty and fertile.” According to Carvajal, the natives replied when questioned that “everything made of clay in those settlements was made of gold and silver further inland.”⁴² The mention of household objects of gold and silver links the representations of the rich kingdom of the Omaguas with the myth of the Amazons who, according to the American version, always drank and ate from bowls and vessels made of these metals. The connection between the Omaguas and other imaginary representations of the fabulous interior is further strengthened by a remark about the llamas, which Carvajal calls “the sheep of Peru” and which are always associated with legendary accounts of the Inca empire. Connected with these signs of premonition, and supported by reports from the Indians, the region of Omagua becomes thus, in Carvajal's account, a new mythical objective combining once again into a new imaginary representation all the treasures presumed to lie in the fabulous hinterland.

But Omagua is not Carvajal's only myth in his Relación del descubrimiento del Amazonas. Around the middle of June, Orellana and his men coasted along a region that they later named the province of San Juan, where Carvajal claims they first saw the Amazons. The mythical women are associated here as usual with gold, silver, and other riches, and are described as living in a region in the interior which shares a number of central elements with other mythical formulations. The first of these is again the llama, which Carvajal here calls a “camel.” The second and far more important element, since it links Carvajal's version directly to the myth of El Dorado, is a lake, which he locates near Amazons who live near “two salt water lakes from which they produce salt.” Later, describing the kingdom bordering on Amazon territory, Carvajal speaks of a land governed by a very powerful man named Arripuna “who was lord of a large amount of land up river requiring an eight days' journey to cross, to the north of which there was a lake in a densely populated area ruled by another man named Tinamaston—said to possess a great quantity of silver.”⁴³

This representation of the interior, tied by the mention of a lake to the myth of El Dorado, concludes Carvajal's transformation of concrete objectives into mythical ones. The tangible goal of cinnamon, the existence of which had been confirmed by Díaz de Pineda, seems to have been forgotten. Two new mythical constructs emerge to replace it, each confirmed by the nearby presence of the Amazons: Omagua, and a new version of the myth of El Dorado.

The elaborate nature of Carvajal's formulation shows just how far the collective propensity to create myths (already evident in the survival and repeated reformulation of mythical objectives that propelled the spread of the conquest toward the north)⁴⁴ encouraged and shaped the exploration of the south. Its dynamism in South America was proof of an intensity that allowed mythical objectives to persist and reemerge—as in Carvajal's account—in the face of new failures and disappointments. And in the south, the mysterious and impregnable character of the hinterland provided an ideal ground for the endless creation of new myths. Leonard refers to the mystery and fascination the unexplored interior held for the conquistadors,⁴⁵ and Gil Munilla relates the real difficulties involved in penetrating its domains to the fact that certain myths survived even beyond the eighteenth century: “This vast, hard to explore region was thought of for a long time to come as the inaccessible domain referred to in a variety of fables and myths.”⁴⁶ There is no doubt that South America offered far more to inspire the creation of myths than the northern continent. Marvel-seekers in the north found themselves more often than not before a reality that left little margin for invention, and they were forced to accept it as it lay before their eyes, with its endless sky, cows, and pasturelands, none of which were very likely to inspire dreams or fables. In South America, on the other hand, the Amazons continued to elude the conquistadors despite insistent reports of their whereabouts; the silver mountains, golden hills, and emerald rocks the natives seemed to be constantly referring to never appeared; and the marvelous kingdom of El Dorado remained undiscovered, amidst a tangle of confusing, contradictory accounts claiming that it lay in the most unlikely places on the continent. But emeralds had indeed been found; mines had been discovered at Charcas; temples dedicated to the Sun by the Inca were a tangible, verified reality, as were the treasures they contained and the virgins who lived there and dined exclusively with tableware made of gold and silver. Legends and facts came together to perpetuate an essentially mythical, imaginary representation of the nature and contents of a mysterious hinterland that was to remain largely unexplored for several centuries.

Notes

1. See Chap. 3, “A Collective Penchant for Myth,” above.

2. Leonard, Books of the Brave (Cambridge, Mass., 1949) pp. 54-55.

3. Demetrio Ramos Pérez refers to this connection in El mito del Dorado: Su génesis y proceso (Caracas, 1973). The author provides an insightful discussion of the rational and scientific foundation—consistent with the scientific knowledge of the period—underlying the mythification process, thus identifying the area reserved to the imagination proper in the complex process of formulating and reelaborating the myth of El Dorado during the conquest and exploration of the continent.

4. “Carta mensajera de los reyes al Almirante,” September 5, 1493. Reproduced in Fernández de Navarrete, Colección de viajes y descubrimientos (Madrid, 1954) vol. 1, p. 364.

5. Lletras reals molt notables fetas a Mossen Jaume Ferrer: e regles per el ordenades en Cosmografía y en art de Navegar, les quals XVII anys ha trobi en semps ab lo pait Sumari a tinch los mateixos originals: Coopilat per so criat Raphel Ferrer Coll (Barcelona, 1545), quoted in Ramos Pérez, El mito del Dorado, p. 22.

6. Pedro Martir de Anglería, Décadas del Nuevo Mundo (Buenos Aires, 1944), dec. 7, chap. 6, p. 448.

7. Padre José de Acosta, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (Madrid, 1954), bk. 4, chap. 1, pp. 88-89.

8. The Travels of Marco Polo (New York, 1958), p. 309.

9. Referring for example to the expeditions organized by Hernán Cortés, Leonard claims that “in all directions his lieutenants, as well as he himself, were heading expeditions with instructions to locate the Amazons and other oddities, along with gold and silver mines,” in Books of the Brave, p. 41.

10. See Leonard, chaps. 4 and 5. On page 48, for example, speaking of the explorations undertaken from the base in New Spain, Leonard states specifically, “Chief among the latter objectives were the Amazon women, and again and again the proximity of their realm was reported.”

11. See in particular Rómulo Cúneo Vidal, “Las leyendas del Perú de los Incas,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid, 1925), on the connection between the ancient myth of the Amazons and the native accounts. Based on an etymologico-historical analysis of his material, the author discusses aspects of the society and culture of the Peruvian Incas described by the natives to the Spaniards, which served to confirm to the latter the presence in South America of their own European myths. See also Gandía's, Historia crítica de los mitos de la conquista americana (Buenos Aires, 1929) for an analysis of the mingling of European facts and myths with native legends that characterized the development and evolution of Greek myth in America.

12. See Gandía, Historia crítica, chap. 6.

13. Even as late as 1778 there is a reference by La Condamine in his Relation Abregée d'un voyage fait dans l'intérieur de l'Amérique méridionale to warrior women who lived without men in the lands and along the river's edge, in the region of the Amazon basin. See Gandía, Historia crítica, p. 87.

14. Cortés, Letters from Mexico tr. A. R. Pagden (New Haven, 1986), p. 298.

15. Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, Relación del descubrimiento del río de las Amazonas (Seville, 1894), pp. 59-60, 66-69.

16. Reproduced in Fernández de Oviedo's Historia General y Natural de las Indias (Madrid, 1959), bk. 26, chap. 11, p. 87.

17. Hernando de Ribera, Relación de la expedición del río de la Plata, published together with Núñez's Naufragios y Comentarios (Madrid, 1957), p. 258.

18. See “La sierra de la plata” in Gandía, Historia crítica, pp. 145ff.

19. The “Carta de Lebrija y Martín” contains abundant information on the objectives and development of the expeditions in search of the fabulous hinterland, especially the one led by Ximénez de Quesada. The letter is reproduced in Fernández de Oviedo, Historia General, pp. 83-92. It is there that reference is made to the “triangle” I mention in the next paragraph of my text.

20. Gandía, Historia crítica, p. 129.

21. The quotation is from Fray Pedro Simón's Tercera Noticia (Caracas, 1963), chap. 1. See also Gandía, Historia crítica, p. 112. Cúneo Vidal, moreover, relates the source of the legend of El Dorado to the Inca empire's system for collecting tribute rather than to the Guativita Lake ceremony. According to Cúneo, the Golden Indian was in fact the Inca's factor, in the ceremonies held to collect tributes of gold. “After the manus' gold had been collected on the cumbi blankets,” says Cúneo, “the monarch's factor rolled about on it as if taking possession of it … so that his body, covered in particles of gold, shone in the sunlight like a burning coal,” in “Las leyendas del Perú de los Incas,” p. 25. Gandía mentions this theory but disregards it for lack of acceptable proof, although he acknowledges it to be highly suggestive.

22. Relación de la jornada de Omagua y el Dorado: Relación del Bachiller Francisco Vázquez que narra la expedición de Pedro de Ursúa (Madrid, 1979), pp. 11-12.

23. Ramos Pérez examines this transformation with admirable erudition in his study, focusing specifically on the myth of El Dorado. Both analytically and from the point of view of its documentation, his work is extremely interesting and thorough.

24. Ramos Pérez, El mito del Dorado, p. 142.

25. Ibid., p. 153.

26. Ribera, Relación de la expedición del río de la Plata, pp. 256-61. Ribera's insistence on officially certifying the accuracy of his version is worth noting, precisely in view of the fantastic character of its information.

27. Ribera, Relación de la expedición, p. 258.

28. In El mito del Dorado, Ramos Pérez develops his theory according to which the increasing appearance of the lake as a symbol for concealment was based on the episode concerning the concealment of the treasure of Moctezuma. In effect, familiarity with this episode may have made it easier for the Spaniards to accept as true the native tradition according to which lakes were sacred and used as the depositories of offerings; it may likewise have contributed to making lakes an integral element of several myths.

29. Ribera, Relación de la expedición, p. 259.

30. Gandía, Historia crítica, p. 123.

31. Ribera's reference (after his first mention of a lake) to the “House of the Sun,” which he takes to be the name given by the natives to the lake they describe, confirms the hypothesis that he was referring to Lake Titicaca and to the Temple of the Sun built by the Incas along its edges. Gandía summarizes the stories about lakes that were eventually all identified with a single lake deep in the unexplored hinterland: “The confusion surrounding imprecise and fabulous reports concerning Lake Titicaca, the Guativita Lake, Lake Parime, and the Lake of the Xarays, created in Peru and the River Plate the notion of an imaginary lake that was often identified with the Xarays, but also shared details in common with the other lakes.” Gandía, Historia crítica, p. 224.

32. Ribera, Relación de la expedición del río de la Plata, p. 258.

33. See above note 5.

34. Ribera, Relación de la expedición del río de la Plata, p. 260.

35. Ladislao Gil Munilla, El descubrimiento del Marañón (Seville, 1954), p. 154 and pp. 192-193.

36. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia General, bk. 49, chap. 1.

37. Carvajal, Relación, pp. 3 and 5.

38. “Carta de Gonzalo Pizarro al Rey,” from Tomabamba, dated September 3, 1542. The letter is transcribed by Toribio Medina in “El descubrimiento del Amazonas,” a documentary appendix accompanying Fray Gaspar de Carvajal's Relación, pp. 85ff. The very inclusion of the search for El Dorado as an objective of the expedition makes the goal in Benalcazar's 1540 capitulaciones different from those in his “Carta al Emperador” written in 1542. This would appear to indicate that between 1540 and 1542 El Dorado began to be reported in Quito as being an objective at least as important as cinnamon.

39. Gonzalo Pizarro, “Carta al Rey” from Tomabamba, pp. 85ff. There is no conclusive proof, however, that cinnamon constituted a false objective from the outset (as suggested by Gil Munilla) solely designed to disguise the true objective of Pizarro's presumed plan to find El Dorado. The only thing Pizarro's letter to the king makes clear is that the first time he reformulated his objectives was after his main design (the search for cinnamon) had failed.

40. Carvajal, Relación, p. 5. Italics mine.

41. Ibid., p. 15.

42. Ibid., pp. 43-44. For more on the connection with the myth of the Amazons, see pp. 67-68.

43. Ibid., pp. 67 and 70.

44. See Chap. 3, “A Collective Penchant for Myth,” above.

45. Leonard, Books of the Brave, pp. 54-55.

46. Gil Munilla, El descubrimiento del Marañón, p. 152.