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El Dorado

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This article is about the mythical City of Gold. For other uses, see El Dorado (disambiguation).
File:LagunaGuatavita.jpg
Guatavita lake

El Dorado (Spanish for "the golden one") is a legend that began with the story of a South American tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and would dive into a lake of pure mountain water.

The legend originates in present-day Colombia, where conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada first found the Muiscas, a nation in the modern day Cundinamarca and Boyacá highlands of Colombia, in 1537. The story of Muisca rituals was brought to Quito by Sebastián de Belalcázar's men; mixed with other rumors, there arose the legend of 'El Dorado' (meaning the Golden Man rather than a place - 'el indio dorado', the golden Indian or 'El Rey Dorado', The Golden King).

Imagined as a place, El Dorado became a kingdom, an empire, the city of this legendary golden king. Deluded by a similar 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 to navigate the Amazon River all the way to its mouth. 

he was a poop man.

Expeditions

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, and was eventually found to be in Colombia.

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 Indians 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 Indians 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).

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). [1]

Metaphor

In the mythology of the Muisca today, El Dorado (Mnya) represents the energy contained in the trinity of Chiminigagua, which constitutes the creative power of everything that exists. Chiminigagua is, along with Bachué, Cuza, Chibchachum, Bochica, and Nemcatacoa, one of the creators of the universe.

Meanwhile, the name of El Dorado came to be used metaphorically of any place where wealth could be rapidly acquired. It was given to El Dorado County, California, and to towns and cities in various states. It has also been anglicized to the single word Eldorado.

In literature, frequent allusion is made to the legend, perhaps the best-known references being those in Milton's Paradise Lost (Book xi. 408-411) and in Voltaire's Candide (chs. 18, 19). "Eldorado" was the title and subject of a four-stanza poem by Edgar Allan Poe. In the 1966 John Wayne film El Dorado, most of Poe's poem is recited by the character nicknamed Mississippi [1] El Dorado is also referenced in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. Within Conrad's work, the Eldorado Exploring Expedition journeys into the jungles of Africa in search of conquest and treasure, only to meet an untimely demise.

El Dorado is also sometimes used as a metaphor to represent an ultimate prize or "Holy Grail" that one might spend one's life seeking. It could represent true love, heaven, happiness, or success. It is used sometimes as a figure of speech to represent something much sought after that may not even exist, or at least may not ever be found. Such use is evident in Poe's poem "El Dorado". In this context, El Dorado bears similarity to other myths such as the Fountain of Youth, Shangri-la, and to some extent the term "white whale" which refers to Captain Ahab's obsession in the book Moby-Dick. The disillusionment side of the ideal quest metaphor may be represented by Helldorado, a satirical nickname given to Tombstone by a tardy miner who complained that many of his profession had traveled far to find El Dorado, only to wind up washing dishes in restaurants.

Werner Herzog's film, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, also explores the El Dorado metaphor. The main character, Lope de Aguirre, is historically based, but is actually an amalgam of Aguirre and Francisco Orellana, mentioned in the historical section, above.

References

  1. ^ http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/humboldt/alexander/travels/chapter25.html Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America by Alexander von Humboldt
  • Bandelier, A. F. A. The Gilded Man, El Dorado (New York, 1893).
  • Fernandez de Oviedo, Gonzalo. Historia General y Natural de las India, islas y Tierra-Firme del Mar Oceano, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1851.
  • Freyle, Juan Rodriguez. El Carnero: Conquista y descubrimiento del Nuevo Reino de Granada. ISBN 84-660-0025-9
  • Hagen, Victor Wolfgang von. The Gold of El Dorado: The Quest for the Golden Man
  • Naipaul,V.S. The Loss of El Dorado 1969
  • Nicholl, Charles. The Creature in the Map, London, 1995 ISBN 0-09-959521-4
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