Legend of El Dorado and The Lost City of Gold

The legend of El Dorado had been a dream of treasure hunters in the last few hundred years. A dream about a city filled with gold. But for hundreds of years away, no one of expeditions had a successfully to uncover the veil of mystery. Is El Dorado is only a fairy tale? Or the lost city of gold is a fact that was lost?

A number of historical research or private study carried out to unravel the mystery that includes the legend of El Dorado. The mystery of the gold and precious jewels are buried somewhere of South America. The only source to reveal the big secret is a legend that spread after five hundred years ago. The story of Chibcha, a sub tribe of South American Indians, a tribe had a cult to the God of the sun. Their ancient mythology that launched the Spaniards say that the cult is associated with a number of offerings valuables such as gold and gemstones.

Chibcha people think gold is a gift from the god of the sun and should be offered back to the god. Then the story is pushed through word of mouth mentions that the cult was making merged Chibcha tribes of gold as a shield for the building. Thus their temples coated with gold plate. But there is no remaining evidence of this.

El Dorado (Spanish for “the golden one”) is the name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dove into the lake Guatavita. Later it became the name of a legendary “Lost City of Gold” that has fascinated – and so far eluded – explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors.

Imagined as a place, El Dorado became a kingdom, an empire, the city of this legendary golden king. In pursuit of the legend, Francisco Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro would depart from Quito in 1541 in a famous and disastrous expedition towards the Amazon Basin; as a result of this, however, Orellana became the first person known to navigate the Amazon River all the way to its mouth.

El Dorado is applied to a legendary story in which precious stones were found in fabulous abundance along with gold coins. The concept of El Dorado underwent several transformations, and eventually accounts of the previous myth were also combined with those of the legendary city. The resulting El Dorado enticed European explorers for two centuries.

Among the earliest stories was the one told by Diego de Ordaz’s lieutenant Martinez, who claimed to have been rescued from shipwreck, conveyed inland, and entertained by “El Dorado” himself (1531).

In 1540 Gonzalo Pizarro, the younger half-brother of Francisco Pizarro, was made the governor of the provenance of Quito in northern Ecuador. Shortly after taking lead in Quito, Gonzalo learned from many of the natives of a valley far to the east rich in both cinnamon and gold. He banded together 340 soldiers and about 4000 natives in 1541 and led them eastward down the Rio Coca and Rio Napo. Francisco de Orellana, Gonzalo’s nephew, accompanied his uncle on this expedition. Gonzalo quit after many of the soldiers and natives had died from hunger, disease, and periodic attacks by hostile natives. He ordered Orellana to continue downstream, where he eventually made it to the Atlantic Ocean, discovering the Amazon (named Amazon because of a tribe of female warriors that attacked Orellana’s men while on their voyage.)

Other expeditions include that of Philipp von Hutten (1541–1545), who led an exploring party from Coro on the coast of Venezuela; and of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, the Governor of El Dorado, who started from Bogotá (1569).
Parime Lacus on a map by Hessel Gerritsz (1625). Situated at the west coast of the lake, the so called city Manoa or El Dorado

Sir Walter Raleigh, who resumed the search in 1595, described El Dorado as a city on Lake Parime far up the Orinoco River in Guyana. This city on the lake was marked on English and other maps until its existence was disproved by Alexander von Humboldt during his Latin-America expedition (1799–1804).

The story of El Dorado does not stop in the Middle Ages only. The explorers later centuries are still trying to find the golden city. Even so, attention to lake Guatavita never subside. In 1911, a manufacturer of gold again tried his luck on the lake Guatavita. They managed to remove most of the lake water to make a tunnel and sluice. However, lake mud and rain immediately hardens quickly fill the lake again. They only found a few gold objects are then auctioned off to pay its investors.

In subsequent years, interest in search of El Dorado seems to be reduced. Most people begin to think that El Dorado may be just a legend. In fact there is one opinion which says that the Indians who told about El Dorado may have lied to divert the attention of the conquerors of their villages. However, a big clue came in 1969. Two workers who were digging in a small cave near Bogota accidentally discovered a gold statue. The statue is shaped raft with a figure of a chief and eight men who were riding on it.

Today, Lake Guatavita looks lonely. Even the tourists were rarely plasticity. Some time ago, the Government of Columbia decided to close the area because people often throw rubbish into it or wash the car there. There is only one officer assigned to control the lake.

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