SOURCE: Hemming, John. “Chapter 6.” In The Search for El Dorado, pp. 97-109. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978.

[In the following essay, Hemming examines the earliest Spanish references to El Dorado, concluding that the legend was unknown before 1541, although several explorers would claim earlier knowledge of the golden kingdom in their attempts to gain exclusive rights to the region where it was believed to be.]

The legend of El Dorado, the Golden Man, was born in Quito at the beginning of 1541. It was a beguiling story and it quickly caught the imagination of the conquistadores. It spread fast, gained momentum and credibility, and evolved in detail during the ensuing century. It became one of the most famous chimeras in history, a legend that lured hundreds of hard men into desperate expeditions. Such is the conclusion of the distinguished Venezuelan historian Demetrio Ramos Pérez, who traced the genesis of the legend through elaborate detective work in documentary and chronicle sources. His painstaking research led him to fix the time and place of the birth of the legend, and to conclude that it was entirely unconnected with the Muisca. If he is right, he refutes the accepted version, an attractive story told by the chroniclers within a few decades of Jiménez de Quesada's conquest.

What exactly was the legend? Fernández de Oviedo was surprised by it and, with his usual diligence, interrogated men who could advise him. ‘I asked Spaniards who have been in Quito and have come here to Santo Domingo … why they call that prince the “Golden Chief or King”. They tell me that what they have learned from the Indians is that that great lord or prince goes about continually covered in gold dust as fine as ground salt. He feels that it would be less beautiful to wear any other ornament. It would be crude and common to put on armour plates of hammered or stamped gold, for other rich lords wear these when they wish. But to powder oneself with gold is something exotic, unusual, novel and more costly—for he washes away at night what he puts on each morning, so that it is discarded and lost, and he does this every day of the year. With this custom, going about clothed and covered in that way, he has no impediment or hindrance. The fine proportions of his body and natural form, on which he prides himself, are not covered or obscured, for he wears no other clothing of any sort on top of it.’¹ The chronicler marvelled at the thought of such waste: ‘I would rather have the sweepings of the chamber of this prince than the great meltings of gold there have been in Peru or that there could be anywhere on earth! For the Indians say that this chief or king is a very rich and great ruler. He anoints himself every morning with a certain gum or resin that sticks very well. The powdered gold adheres to that unction … until his entire body is covered from the soles of his feet to his head. He looks as resplendent as a gold object worked by the hand of a great artist. I believe that, if that chief does do this, he must have very rich mines of fine quality gold. On the Mainland, I have in fact seen plenty of the gold that Spaniards call placer gold, in such quantities that he could easily do what is said.’²

Fernández de Oviedo told this legend in the context of events at Quito in mid-1541. He told the story in full because it was new, and he was careful to warn that it was based on hearsay from Indian sources. But, as a good historian with an open mind, he did not dismiss El Dorado as pure fantasy. He had been told it on good authority, and he reasoned that a region rich in gold mines could easily produce enough for this magnificent custom. His vision of a handsome naked prince, gleaming with the brilliance of gold, was not utterly impossible. The sun temple of the Incas had yielded a garden of life-size golden statues of llamas, maize and other plants and attendant figures. It was—and still is—very common for American Indians to paint their naked bodies.

A Jesuit called José Gumilla lived among the tribes of the Orinoco in the seventeenth century. He observed that ‘with very few exceptions, all tribes of those lands anoint themselves from the crowns of their heads to the tips of their feet with oil and achote. Mothers anoint all their children, even those at the breast, at the same time as they anoint themselves, at least twice a day in the morning and at nightfall. They later anoint their husbands very liberally. On special days a great variety of drawings in different colours goes on top of the unction … The ordinary daily unction is a mixture of oil and anatto that we call achote. It is ground and kneaded with oil of cunamá or turtle eggs. It serves not only as clothing but as a sure defence against mosquitoes, which abound in such a great number of species. It not only prevents mosquitoes from biting them’,³ but the insects stick in the gum. It is also cool, a protection against the heat of the sun. Amazon tribes still do this regularly, painting their bodies with scarlet anatto or black genipapo vegetable dyes. So, if naked tribes painted themselves red or black, why not gold also?

The next chronicler to mention El Dorado was Pedro de Cieza de León, a soldier historian who wrote an incomparable account of the conquest of Peru. He was the only contemporary chronicler to visit Quito, passing through that Andean city in the late 1540s. He said that Gonzalo Pizarro, youngest brother of Francisco, the conqueror of the Incas, went to Quito in 1541 ‘and observing in that city many [unemployed] men, either youths or veterans, he became eager to discover the valley of El Dorado.’⁴ According to the recent story, this land lay beyond the mountains east of Quito. An expedition had just returned from an attempt to find cinnamon in those wild hills, the territory of the Quijos Indians. ‘The Indians said that further on, if they advanced, they would come to a wide-spreading flat country, teeming with Indians who possess great riches, for they all wear gold ornaments, and where there are no forests nor mountain ranges. When this news spread in Quito, everyone there wanted to take part in the expedition.’⁵ Gonzalo Pizarro himself wrote to the King that ‘because of many reports which I received in Quito and outside that city, from prominent and very aged chiefs as well as from Spaniards, whose accounts agreed with one another, that the province of La Canela [Cinnamon] and Lake El Dorado were a very populous and very rich land, I decided to go and conquer and explore it.’⁶ This letter of 1542 was the first time that the legend of the Golden Man was linked to a lake.

Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada never mentioned El Dorado in those early years—although it later became an obsession of his brother and of himself in old age. In his Logbook of the conquest of the Muisca he spoke of many fabulous places—the country of the Amazons, the rich land of Menza, the House of the Sun and the enchanting plains visible from the high Andes—but he never spoke of the Golden Man. Nor did he do so in the interrogation at Cartagena in July 1539. It was only in the Epítome, an account of the conquest apparently written by him in 1550, that he suggested that the Meta or El Dorado that everyone had been seeking for the past nine years was the rich land of the Muisca that he himself had conquered in 1537: ‘All the reports … which set everyone's feet marching from the North Sea so excitedly … later appeared to be the same thing, namely this kingdom of New Granada [the lands of the Muisca].’⁷ This was a wonderfully tidy solution. All the expeditions had been moving towards the same goal, which was why Quesada, Benalcázar and Federmann had all met so dramatically in 1539. It was an explanation developed and repeated by later chroniclers. The only trouble was that it was not true: we have seen how each of those three expeditions reached Bogotá for different reasons, and none of them in search of El Dorado.

Jiménez de Quesada was also interested in the idea of rich lakes. On the journey up from the Magdalena valley, he thought that his men would find a lake that produced the salt cakes traded by the Muisca. This was ‘the lake of the salt, in which, as they were assured by the Indians, there was a very large town of many huts and many golden effigies as big as pitchers.’⁸ In the event, the salt came from saline wells. But there were many lakes in Muisca territory, as well as large towns and gold objects. Quesada later said that the Muisca ‘have many woods and lakes consecrated to their false religion … They also go to do their sacrifices in these woods and they bury gold and emeralds in them … They do the same in the lakes which they have dedicated for their sacrifices. They go there and throw in much gold and precious stones, which are thus lost for ever.’⁹

Sacrifice in a sacred lake was the theme of Juan de Castellanos, the next serious chronicler to deal with El Dorado. Castellanos was the vicar of Tunja, a careful author who checked his facts and knew most of the participants in the conquest. His main failing was to see himself as an epic poet rather than a historian. He wrote long elegies to famous men, modelled on classical heroic verse and sometimes allowing poetic licence to overrule historical accuracy. Castellanos composed his verse epics between 1570 and the late 1580s, a time when El Dorado was long established as a lure for successive expeditions. Castellanos wanted to follow Quesada in establishing that the elusive El Dorado was his own homeland of Bogotá. He wrote that rumours were rife in Quito after its first discovery. ‘Benalcázar interrogated a foreign, itinerant Indian resident in the city of Quito, who said he was a citizen of Bogotá and had come there by I know not what means. He stated that [Bogotá] was a land rich in emeralds and gold. Among the things that attracted them, he told of a certain king, unclothed, who went on rafts on a pool to make oblations, which he had observed, anointing all [his body] with resin and on top of it a quantity of ground gold, from the bottom of his feet to his forehead, gleaming like a ray of the sun. He also said that there was continual traffic there to make offerings of gold jewellery, fine emeralds, and other pieces of their ornaments. … The soldiers, delighted and content, then gave [that king] the name El Dorado; and they spread out [in search of him] by innumerable routes.’¹⁰ But Castellanos went on to warn his readers that ‘El Dorado does not and never had any foundation, beyond what I have declared … I know for sure that it does not certify news of any rich land.’¹¹

These few authors—the chroniclers Fernández de Oviedo, Cieza de León and Castellanos, and the conquistadores Gonzalo Pizarro, Jiménez de Quesada and Sebastián de Benalcázar—were the only primary sources for the original El Dorado legend. All later writers embellished these early accounts. Pedro de Aguado, a friar who wrote a valuable contemporary history, never told his version of the origin of El Dorado: this part of his history was removed by an ecclesiastical censor. Antonio de Herrera, who published an official history of the Spanish conquests in 1615, based his account on Cieza de León and Castellanos. He said that the ‘itinerant Indian’ was an ambassador from the ruler of Cundinamarca who had gone to request military help from the Inca Atahualpa. According to Herrera, Luis Daza captured this envoy near Quito, and Benalcázar interrogated him. He told of the great wealth of his land, which lay twelve days' march away. All this tallies well with Daza's official contemporary report of his capture of the ‘indio dorado’ in 1534. It could well have referred to the rich Quimbaya lands of the Cauca valley. Herrera made no mention of Bogotá or of sacrifices on a lake; but he commented that the story ‘has been the cause of many men undertaking the discovery of El Dorado, which until now seems an enchantment’.¹²

The legend of El Dorado really took shape in the writing of Father Pedro Simón. His Noticias historiales de las conquistas was written in 1621-3 and shamelessly plagiarized Castellanos—Simón simply turned Castellanos' verse into prose, and added corroborative details apparently derived from his own common sense. Simón wrote that the Indian in Quito called his land Muequetá and its chief Bogotá. He gave a lyrical description of the raft, lake and gold dust ceremony, which took place on a clear morning with the sun shining brilliantly on the radiant chief. Father Simón then connected the Indian's account with the Muisca custom of making sacrifices to lakes. He located the ceremony at Lake Guatavita, an eery, perfectly round lake on desolate hills 50 kilometres north-east of Bogotá. He also told a dramatic story of an adulterous chieftainess. His legend was that the unfaithful wife of a chief of Guatavita, unable to endure her husband's scorn, threw herself and her daughter into the lake. She remained in its depths, living with a monster. There were apparitions of the chieftainess, which led to a cult, with offerings to gain her protection. The chief himself started to gild his body, to sublimate his own offerings; and when the Spaniards invaded, the Indians threw treasures into this sacred lake.¹³

The story evolved further with the next chronicler, Juan Rodríguez Fresle, who wrote the Conquest and discovery of New Granada in 1636. In his version, the gilding ceremony became the ancient ritual of investiture of the successor to the Zipa of Bogotá. The heir was stripped of his Muisca cloaks, anointed with gum and gold dust, and launched on to the lake on a raft with four other chiefs and a pile of gold and emerald offerings. As chanting and liturgical music from the shore reached a climax, the prince and his attendants cast their tribute into Lake Guatavita. ‘From this ceremony was taken that famous name “El Dorado” that has cost so many lives and fortunes …’¹⁴

A later history of the conquest, by the astute Bishop Lucas Fernández Piedrahita, sought to reconcile the various earlier stories. He implied that the Indian captured by Benalcázar at Quito directly inspired the march towards Bogotá—although there was in fact a gap of four years. He said that the ‘indio dorado’ of Quito came from a people who were fighting against the Muisca or Chibcha, and he prudently omitted any detail of the offerings or investiture ceremonies.¹⁵

A final version of the legend, by the eighteenth-century author Basilio Vicente de Oviedo, located El Dorado on the Ariari river, near the Orinoco. It was a land so rich that tufts of grass pulled from the ground had gold dust on their roots. Every year a young man was chosen by lot, and then offered as a sacrifice to their idol. ‘They open him up and salt him with gold dust, and offer him as a sacrifice in their church. Because of this they call him El Dorado.’¹⁶

So the legend of El Dorado evolved from a vague notion of a rich, flat land east of Quito, to Fernández de Oviedo's prince anointed daily, to the offerings of Castellanos, the penitent chief of Simón, the investiture of Rodríguez Fresle, and the sacrifice of Basilio de Oviedo. The constants in all these versions are: the Indian messenger at Quito, the lake, and the anointment with gold dust. By analysing these elements, Ramos Pérez has shown how difficult it is to accept that the El Dorado of the legend was the ceremony at Lake Guatavita.

Could the ‘indio dorado’ captured near Quito really have been an envoy from the Muisca? It seems impossible. The Incas had conquered the region of Quito and what is now southern Colombia only a few years before the arrival of the Spaniards. The Muisca were not an expansive military empire, and they were under no threat that would justify seeking help from such a distant source. The Incas were fighting on their northern marches when the civil war between the Incas Atahualpa and Huascar broke out. There were hundreds of kilometres of mountain and forest, and innumerable hostile tribes separating the two rich Andean peoples. It is hard to imagine how a single Muisca could have survived such a journey to seek an Inca alliance.

Another theory is that the ‘foreign itinerant Indian’ was a trader—for the Muisca were above all accomplished traders. They had a lively commerce, exchanging salt and finished cotton textiles for gold or raw cotton, with tribes of the Magdalena valley or the eastern llanos. But these commodities were too bulky to trade as far afield as Quito; and there was no Quitan produce that they would want in return. Perhaps he was an emerald merchant—for the Spaniards found many emeralds on the coast of Ecuador? It is an ingenious theory, until a careful reading of Garcilaso de la Vega and other Peruvian chroniclers shows that the Ecuadorean and Muisca emeralds were of quite different quality: Garcilaso was interested in precious stones, and he wrote a long account of the differences between emeralds from these two regions.¹⁷ No conquistador found any sign of trade or other contact between the Muisca and Inca—apart from the one wishful remark in Castellanos and, following him, Simón.

The concept of El Dorado as a lake is intriguing. Gonzalo Pizarro did say that he was looking for ‘Lake El Dorado’ in his letter to the King in 1542—although no other early source connected El Dorado with a lake, not Cieza de León, Fernández de Oviedo, Benalcázar, Jiménez de Quesada or his brother Hernán Pérez de Quesada. It is also true that the Muisca venerated lakes. Jiménez de Quesada described their offerings in woods and lakes, in his Epítome de la conquista of 1550. This was a small element in Muisca religion, whose main worship was of the sun, moon and stars. They had idols in their temples. Castellanos, who as a Christian priest was concerned to destroy these rival manifestations, described Muisca idols: ‘Some [were] of gold and others of wood or fibre, large and small, all with hair and badly sculpted. They also make idols of wax or of white clay. They are all in pairs, male with female, adorned with mantles placed on them in their infamous sanctuaries …’¹⁸ Water entered into many Muisca rituals, such as the washing of the dead or the puberty rites of girls. The chief of Chía used to bathe ceremonially in the fountain of Tíquisa, and the chief of Bojacá bathed in Lake Tena. Guatavita was one of a series of sacred lakes, which included Guasca, Siecha, Teusacá and Ubaque.

One of the questions in the Catholic inquiries designed to eradicate pre-conquest ‘idolatry’ was: ‘Have you worshipped in the lakes?’, and Muisca artefacts have occasionally been found on the beds of old lakes. One of the most fascinating of all such finds was a golden replica of a raft with a tall central figure and four attendants. This amazing discovery was made at the edge of Lake Siecha. It convinced Ernst Röthlisberger, Eduardo Posada, Liborio Zerda and many others that this was proof of the Guatavita legend of El Dorado. The golden raft certainly looks like a religious ceremony, although Vicente Restrepo Tirado thought that the two tiny tubes of gold held by the central figure represented trophy heads, the skulls of Panche or other enemies being offered to the lake deity. The raft is only 19.5 centimetres long, but beautifully detailed, with six outer rows of logs curving inwards at the ends and enclosing a central section covered in matting. There are ten attendants on the raft, all flat, triangular figures with features and limbs of wire-thin gold, in typical Muisca style. They wear diadems that probably represent feather headdresses. The central figure towers above the rest, although his height is only 10 centimetres. All the figures face forward. Their careful grouping and static postures leave no doubt that they are performing a ritual.

It is important to place this raft in perspective. It evidently portrays a ceremony on a lake. But it is only one of thousands of surviving gold Muisca artefacts. Worship of lakes was only one element in Muisca religion. The first observers of Muisca society wrote much about its religion but scarcely mentioned the importance of lakes, for the Muisca worshipped mountains, celestial bodies, ancestors, and the magnificent rock gorges and outcrops that make the scenery around Bogotá so exciting. The Muisca did not produce gold: they traded it from other tribes, and their gold objects tended to be small as a result. They could not have afforded the prodigal waste of gold dust described in the El Dorado legends. Thus, although there was religious significance in the mysterious Lake Guatavita, it was not central to Muisca beliefs. It is difficult to see how it could have given rise to the powerful El Dorado legend, so far away in Quito, when contemporary conquerors of the Muisca had not heard of it.

A third element in the different versions of El Dorado was powdered or ground gold. Jiménez de Quesada had heard that the Muisca obtained raw gold from the Neiva region of the upper Magdalena: he hurried off to investigate in a disappointing mission, early in 1538. Sebastián de Benalcázar's men emerged into the same valley a few months later, after their harrowing crossing of the Cordillera Central, and were delighted to find its Indians in possession of gold dust. Benalcázar himself and two of his leading officers testified about their trip, at Cartagena in July 1539. Benalcázar and Pedro de Puelles made no mention of El Dorado, although they told about the gold of the Neiva region and the wealth they later saw in the Muisca lands. But Benalcázar's royal treasurer Gonzalo de la Peña made a surprising remark. He said that the expedition left Popayán ‘in search of a land called the golden [el dorado] and Paquies, of very great fame in gold and jewels’.¹⁹ Peña went on to describe the towns and temples of the Muisca ‘where they offer gold and jewels and make their sacrifices’.²⁰ He never again used the words ‘el dorado’. His use of this expression was its first appearance in any source; it does not recur until 1541, after which it was on everyone's tongue. Demetrio Ramos Pérez thought that Gonzalo de la Peña was simply using this as an adjective, calling the valley of Neiva a golden land (although the adjective should then have been ‘dorada’ and not ‘el dorado’). Possibly the El Dorado legend had just begun to take shape at Quito, so that Peña mentioned it; but it was still too insignificant an idea to be repeated by Benalcázar or any other contemporary.

Nicolaus Federmann wrote to a friend that Benalcázar told him that ‘he had come 500 leagues in search and demand of’ the lands of the Muisca. But this was a typical claim by Benalcázar who, on seeing the wealth of Bogotá, liked to think that this was what he had been seeking all along. He had left Popayán to escape arrest by Francisco Pizarro. Doubtless, like any conquistador, he hoped to strike some rich land. But he was clearly not aiming for Bogotá. He moved eastwards to Neiva rather than northwards; and when his men did turn north, to descend the Magdalena, they were looking for a route to the Caribbean. They had no inkling of the rich land in the mountains to their right. When Hernán Pérez de Quesada came to meet them, Benalcázar himself was already looking for a route back to Popayán, and his men were on the far side of the Magdalena from the Muisca homeland.

Benalcázar himself never claimed that he had been looking for the lands of the Muisca²¹ or for El Dorado. He did not do so in the testimony at Cartagena in July 1539; or in a meeting with the King in Spain later that year; or in a conversation with Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in Santo Domingo in 1540; or in his letter to the King from Cali in March 1541. This was not from any false modesty. Benalcázar was one of the most ambitious and pushing of all the conquistadores, and his letters show that he was a forceful, eloquent writer. It was only after mid-1541, after he had received reports about events in Quito, that Benalcázar suddenly started talking about reaching El Dorado. In his subsequent letters he often mentioned it, and he and his lieutenants made strenuous efforts to reach it. From then on he sought to establish a prior claim on El Dorado, for he believed that it could be reached from his new governorship of Popayán. He and his men were convinced that El Dorado lay in the mountains south of Neiva and Timaná, the towns he had founded on the upper Magdalena.

It was apparently Benalcázar's son Francisco who persuaded Juan de Castellanos that his father had been seeking El Dorado when he reached Bogotá. The young Francisco later marched with his father on abortive attempts to explore for El Dorado south of Timaná. He then became convinced that his father had not received due recognition among official historians of the Spanish conquests. He applied to the Council of the Indies for permission to examine its records, so that he could write a justificative biography of his father's exploits. He also organized a probanza, a judicial inquiry, about his father's ‘merits and services’. This Francisco de Benalcázar was in Bogotá in 1569 when Castellanos was gathering information for his Elegies of Illustrious Men. The diligent vicar Castellanos interviewed anyone who could help him, and he would certainly have questioned this son of such a famous conquistador. One of Castellanos' epic poems was about Benalcázar; and in the preamble Castellanos echoed Francisco de Benalcázar's view that his father's exploits needed to be brought out of obscurity. So it was almost certainly Francisco de Benalcázar who persuaded Castellanos that his father had been seeking El Dorado in Bogotá—a view repeated by Pedro Simón and many later writers, but not confirmed in contemporary sources.²²

So how did the idea of El Dorado begin? All sources show that it started in Quito; and contemporary sources leave no doubt that it took shape there in late 1540. The story seems to have been brought back by Spaniards returning from Bogotá. It was the creation of the Spaniards themselves and not of any ‘itinerant Indian’. All Benalcázar's men had been impressed by the gold dust of the Neiva-Timaná region, and of course by the wealth of the Muisca. The men who were left as settlers at Timaná, near the famous archaeological sites of San Agustín, soon found themselves fighting very hard against Yalcones Indians. Benalcázar's lieutenant Pedro de Añasco brought the son of a Yalcon chief back to Popayán and had him baptized Rodrigo. It may have been this boy who inspired the legend; for Cieza de León attributed it to reports by Añasco.²³ Pedro de Añasco returned to Timaná and was soon killed, with most of his men, by the Yalcones. A punitive expedition by Juan de Ampudia, at the beginning of 1540, suffered a similar fate, with its fat leader riddled by Yalcones lance thrusts. The Spaniards became convinced that the Indians were defending Timaná so fiercely because it was the gateway to greater riches. But the man who was probably the final catalyst in originating ‘El Dorado’ was Pedro de Puelles. He had gone down the Magdalena with the three leaders in 1539; in his testimony at Cartagena he stressed the ‘fine gold and gold dust from mines’ of the upper Magdalena, and he hinted that there was more to be found, since his expedition had only ‘begun to find some rich settlements’.²⁴ Puelles returned to Quito just before Gonzalo Pizarro arrived there at the end of 1540.

The idea of gold dust, so fine that it could be anointed like the dyes used by the Orinoco Indians, seems to have combined with earlier notions that the rich lands should be sought ‘behind the mountains’ and in the gold-bearing lands close to the equator. The region east of Quito or south of Timaná would fit this location. A report written in 1541 was quite specific. It said that Timaná was situated in an ‘armpit’ of two mountain ranges, one of which held the source of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers, and the other led to Bogotá, 62 leagues to the north-east. It also stated: ‘From the province of Timaná to the province of El Dorado, which … is considered a rich affair, there are about 36 leagues of road, according to information I have received. [El Dorado] has a large [lake] with certain islands … and appears [to be] on the equator or very close to it …’²⁵ So, when Gonzalo Pizarro, youngest and most impulsive of the four Pizarro brothers, reached Quito to replace Benalcázar as its governor, he was immediately excited by all these reports. He heard that the men of Popayán and Timaná were about to march south to conquer El Dorado. He became ‘greedy to discover the valley of El Dorado’²⁶ and decided to race to reach it first.

There was another element connected with the legendary land of El Dorado. It was the spice, cinnamon. Ever since the Spaniards first conquered Peru they noticed that the Incas used a form of cinnamon, which they obtained from forest tribes east of Quito. Spices were very highly prized in Europe in the days before refrigeration: they helped preserve food and hid the taste of rotting meat. The Portuguese made vast profits with their spices from India and the East Indies (Indonesia); Columbus himself had crossed the Atlantic hoping to find a fast route to the gold and spices of the Orient. Francisco Pizarro was therefore eager to discover the source of the Incas' cinnamon. When Pizarro sent Gonzalo Díaz de Pineda to Quito to replace Benalcázar in 1538, he urged this mayor of Quito to search for the cinnamon. Pineda set out, but after reaching the high mountains of the eastern Andes and descending to the ‘Cinnamon Valley’, his expedition was repulsed by Quijos Indians. These were the Indians who told Pineda's explorers that, farther on, there was a broad, flat land full of Indians who all wore gold ornaments. This news, coupled with the thrilling reports coming back from Timaná and Bogotá, galvanized Gonzalo Pizarro into action. ‘When this news spread in Quito, everyone who was there wanted to take part in the expedition. The Governor Gonzalo Pizarro began to make presentations and collect men and horses. In a few days he assembled 220 Spaniards, horse and foot …’²⁷ From then on, Gonzalo Pizarro always said that he set out to find the province of Cinnamon (La Canela in Spanish) and El Dorado.

Sebastián de Benalcázar was also keen to find this cinnamon. He told the King about it when he was in Spain, and on 31 May 1540 the King granted him a licence to search for and extract cinnamon, ‘since you gave me a report that you have news of some lands that contain spices or at least cinnamon’.²⁸ When Benalcázar was back in the Americas later that year, he met Fernández de Oviedo, who wrote: ‘He had many reports of cinnamon, and he told me … that his opinion was that he would find it towards the Marañón [Amazon] river, and that this cinnamon should be taken to Castile and Europe down that river, for the Indians had given him information about the route. He thought that he could not fail … He considered his information to be certain, [obtained] from many Indians.’²⁹ A few months later, in March 1541, when he had reached his new governorship of Popayán, Benalcázar wrote to the King about the exciting news of wealth beyond Timaná. ‘Since coming to this land, I have great reports of rich lands of far greater dimensions than what I told Your Majesty there [in Spain] about the Cinnamon, which Your Majesty awarded to me. … For Indians have come [to Timaná] to say that they want to give and show the Christians rich lands, beyond there.’³⁰ Benalcázar had not yet heard the El Dorado legend; but he connected the land of cinnamon with reports of rich country south of Timaná—exactly as Gonzalo Pizarro was doing at that same moment in Quito.

When Benalcázar finally did learn the El Dorado idea, he immediately claimed that this was the land he had always been planning to conquer. He wrote to the King again in 1542: ‘I have decided to make this expedition called El Dorado and Cinnamon, of which I have news for so many years. [I am financing it] of my own person, although poor and wasted and more in debt. I discovered the entry to it via the town of [Timaná]. To the great content of the explorers and with all speed, I am preparing and have prepared a quantity of men and horses and cattle and other necessary things. God willing, I shall be ready four months from now to fulfil what I have agreed with Your Majesty. I am certain that Your Majesty will be well served by it, and your royal patrimony increased. I plan to run on towards the [Caribbean] and find a port on it, so that there may be trade with all places, specially of the cinnamon which we have seen in such quantity.’³¹ Having often spoken about his cinnamon plans, it was easy for Benalcázar to couple these with the new concept of El Dorado in that same region. He wanted to establish a prior claim to this El Dorado. From then onwards, Benalcázar frequently talked about El Dorado, and he managed to connect himself with the origin of the legend in the minds of two important chroniclers, Cieza de León and Castellanos. It was this that led Castellanos (who wanted to locate El Dorado in his own homeland near Bogotá) to say that when Benalcázar found his way to the Muisca lands in 1538-9, he was looking for El Dorado. We now know that he had never heard of it at that date.

Notes

1. Fernández de Oviedo, bk 49 (pt 3, bk 11), ch. 2, BAE cont. 121, 1959, 236.

2. Idem.

3. Gumilla, El Orinoco ilustrado, pt 1, ch. 7 (Caracas, 1963), 116, 121.

4. Cieza de León, The War of Chupas, ch. 18, trans. C. R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, 2 series, 42 (London, 1918), 55.

5. Idem, 55-6.

6. Gonzalo Pizarro to King, Tomebamba (Cuenca), 3 September 1542, in Bertram T. Lee trans., Gaspar de Carvajal, The Discovery of the Amazon (New York, 1934), 245.

7. Jiménez de Quesada, Epítome de la conquista, 44.

8. Jerónimo Lebrón letter, Santa Marta, 9 May 1537, DIHC, 4, 195.

9. Jiménez de Quesada, Epítome, in Demetrio Ramos Pérez, El mito del Dorado, 331.

10. Castellanos, Elegías de varones ilustres, pt 3, Elegía to Benalcázar, canto 2, verses 37-9, BAE 4, 1847, 453.

11. Castellanos, idem, 454.

12. Herrera, decada 5, bk 7, ch. 14, 11 173-4. Luis Daza's Probanza, held at Popayán, 3 October 1542, is in Ramos Pérez, El mito del Dorado, 470. It clearly states that the report given by the ‘Indian called Dorado’ led to the discovery of Popayán ‘and the news of El Dorado’. Herrera seems to have based this part of his history on a missing work by Cieza de León.

13. Pedro Simón, Noticias historiales de las conquistas de Tierra Firme …, pt 2, noticia 3, ch. 1, 1953 edn, 163-4. This famous chapter was first published by Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough, in his translation of Augustine Aglio, Antiquities of Mexico (9 vols, London, 1830-48), 8 221-38. However, it was not until 1891 that Father Simón's complete work was published by Medardo Rivas at Bogotá.

14. Rodríguez Fresle, Conquista y descubrimiento del Nuevo Reino de Granada, ch. 2.

15. Fernández Piedrahita, Historia general de las conquistas …, pt 1, bk 4, ch. 1, and bk 6, ch. 3, 1688 edn, 109, 204.

16. Basilio Vicente de Oviedo, Cualidades y riquezas del Nuevo Reino de Granada (Bogotá, 1930).

17. Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas, pt 1, bk 7, ch. 23 (Lisbon, 1609), BAE cont. 133 (Madrid, 1960), 325-6. Federmann also noted the difference between Ecuadorean and Colombian emeralds in his letter to Francisco Dávila, Jamaica, 1 August 1539, in Fernández de Oviedo, pt 2, bk 25, ch. 18, 2 321. José Pérez de Barradas, Los Muiscas antes de la conquista (Madrid, 1950), 1 147. Ramos Pérez, El mito del Dorado, 302-9.

18. Castellanos, Elegías de varones ilustres, pt 4, canto 1 (Bogotá, 1955 edn), 155.

19. Peña testimony, Cartagena, 4 July 1539, DIHC, 5 208.

20. Peña testimony, idem.

21. Federmann to Francisco Dávila, Jamaica, 1 August 1539, in Fernández de Oviedo, pt 2, bk 25, ch. 17, 2 320.

22. Demetrio Ramos Pérez established this ingenious and convincing explanation of Castellanos' remark, in El mito del Dorado, 134-20. One of Dr Ramos' research students, María de las Mercedes Velasco Fito, found Francisco de Benalcázar's application to search the Council of Indies' papers, in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Justicia, box 1122. The Probanza of the merits of the Benalcázars was published by José Manuel de Groot in his Historia eclesiástica y civil de la Nueva Granada (Bogotá, 1889), 1 477-83.

23. Cieza de León, War of Chupas, ch. 18, Hakluyt Society, 2 series, 42 55. Cieza said that the report also came from Benalcázar; but he could not have brought it, for he did not return to Quito until late 1541, after Gonzalo Pizarro had gone to seek El Dorado.

24. Puelles testimony, Cartagena, 4 July 1539, DIHC, 5 213-4.

25. This anonymous fragment was found by Demetrio Ramos Pérez in the Archive of the Indies in Seville, Patronato, legajo 27, ramo 1: El mito del Dorado, 366-7.

26. Cieza de León, War of Chupas, ch. 18, Hakluyt Society, 55.

27. Cieza de León, War of Chupas, ch. 18, Hakluyt Society, 2 series, 42 56; Fernández de Oviedo, pt 3, bk 49, ch. 2, 1852 edn, 4 383.

28. Royal grant, Louvain, 31 May 1540, CDIA 23, 1875, 33-5.

29. Fernández de Oviedo, pt 3, bk 49, ch. 1, BAE cont. 121, 1959, 235.

30. Benalcázar to King, Cali, 30 March 1541, DIHC, 6 132-3. In this letter, Benalcázar worried that a rival governor, Pascual de Andagoya, had also written to the King about the wealth beyond Timaná. He poured scorn on the unadventurous Andagoya, who acted only on reports from his officers: ‘He learned about it, seated, with papers going and papers coming, and sleeping in a very soft bed.’

31. Benalcázar to King, Cali, 20 September 1542, DIHC, 6 298. Soon after reaching Cali, Benalcázar had welcomed a royal emissary, Cristóbal Vaca de Castro, who was going to Peru to try to resolve the quarrel between Francisco Pizarro and the heirs of his former partner Diego de Almagro. Then came news that Pizarro had been murdered, in his palace in Lima, on 26 June 1541. Vaca de Castro sent to order Benalcázar to march south to help him suppress a rebellion in Peru led by Almagro's young son. Benalcázar went down to Quito, but was eventually sent back to Popayán when Vaca de Castro decided that he was too sympathetic to Pizarro's murderers.

Abbreviations

BAE: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles desde la formación del lenguaje hasta nuestros dias, ed. Manuel Rivadeneira, 71 vols (Madrid, 1846-80); Continuación, ed. M. Menéndez-Pelayo (Madrid, 1905-).

CDIA: Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonización de las posesiones españolas en América y Oceania sacadas en su mayor parte del Real Archivo de Indias, ed. Joaquín F. Pacheco, Francisco de Cárdenas and Luis Torres de Mendoza, 42 vols (Madrid, 1864-84).

DIHC: Documentos inéditos para la historia de Colombia, ed. Juan Friede, 10 vols (Bogotá, 1955-60).

Bibliography

Early sources

Carvajal, Gaspar de, Descubrimiento del río de las Amazonas, ed. José Toribio Medina (Seville, 1894); trans. Bertram T. Lee and ed. H. C. Heaton, The Discovery of the Amazon (New York, 1934).

Castellanos, Juan de, Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias (Madrid, 1589); ed. Caracciolo Parra (2 vols, Caracas, 1930-2); ed. Miguel A. Caro (4 vols, Bogotá, 1955).

Cieza de León, Pedro de, La guerra de Chupas, trans. C. R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, 2 series, 42, 1918.

Daza, Luis, Probanza (sobre el indio dorado), Popayán, 3 October 1542, in Demetrio Ramos Pérez, El mito del Dorado (Caracas, 1973), 467-76.

Federmann, Nicolaus, Indianische Historia, eine schöne kurtz-weilige Historia, Nicolaus Federmann des Jüngers von Ulm (Hagenau, 1557); ed. Karl Klüpfel, Bibliotek des Literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart 47 (Stuttgart, 1859); trans. Juan Friede, in Joaquín Gabaldón Márquez ed., Descubrimiento y conquista de Venezuela, 2 155-250 (Caracas, 1962).

Fernández Piedrahita, Lucas, Historia general de las conquistas del Nuevo Reyno de Granada (Antwerp, 1688).

Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas (Lisbon, 1609, Córdoba, 1617), BAE cont. 134-5, 1960; trans. Harold V. Livermore (London and Austin, 1966).

Gumilla, José, S. J., El Orinoco ilustrado y defendido (Madrid, 1741), ed. Demetrio Ramos Pérez, Biblioteca de la Academia Nacional de la Historia 63 (Caracas, 1963).

Herrera Tordesillas, Antonio de, Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y Tierrafirme del Mar Océano (Madrid, 1610-15), ed. Antonio Ballesteros Beretta and Miguel Gómez del Campillo (17 vols, Madrid, 1934-55).

Jiménez de Quesada, Gonzalo, (attributed to), Epítome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada (c. 1550), ed. Manuel Lucena Salmoral, Jiménez de Quesada 3, no. 13 (Instituto Colombiano de Cultural Hispánica, Bogotá), December 1962, 43-60.

Oviedo, Basilio Vicente de, Cualidades y riquezas del Nuevo Reino de Granada, ed. L. A. Cuervo, Biblioteca de Historia Nacional 45 (Bogotá, 1930).

Oviedo y Valdés, Gonzalo Fernández de, Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y Tierra-firme del Mar Océano (Seville, 1535-47), ed. José Amador de Los Rios (4 vols, Madrid, 1852); ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, BAE (continuation) 117-21 (Madrid, 1959).

Rodríguez Fresle, Juan, El Carnero de Bogotá: Conquista y descubrimiento del Nuevo Reino de Granada (1636), ed. F. Pérez (Bogotá, 1942); trans. William C. Atkinson, The Conquest of New Granada (London, 1961).

Simón, Pedro, OFM, Noticias historiales de las conquistas de Tierra Firme, en las Indias Occidentales (Cuenca, 1627); part trans. William Bollaert, The Expedition of Pedro de Ursúa and Lope de Aguirre in search of El Dorado and Omagua in 1560-1, Hakluyt Society 28 (London, 1861); (5 vols, Bogotá, 1882-92); ed. Demetrio Ramos Pérez, Biblioteca de la Academia Nacional de la Historia 66-7 (2 vols, Caracas, 1963).

Modern works

Pérez de Barradas, José, Los Muiscas antes de la Conquista (2 vols, Instituto Bernardino de Sahagún, Madrid, 1950-1).

Ramos Pérez, Demetrio, El mito del Dorado. Su génesis y proceso (BANH 116) (Caracas, 1973).