Gold and greed[edit]
Spanish conquistadores had noticed the native people's fine artifacts of gold and silver long before any legend of "golden men" or "lost cities" had appeared. The prevalence of such valuable artifacts, and the natives' apparent ignorance of their value, inspired speculation as to a plentiful source for them.
Prior to the time of Spanish conquest of the Muisca people and discovery of Lake Guatavita, a handful of expeditions had set out to explore the lowlands to the east of the Andes in search of gold, cinnamon, precious stones, and anything else of value.
During the Klein-Venedig period in Venezuela (1528–1546), agents of the German Welser banking family (which had received a concession from Charles I of Spain), launched repeated expeditions into the interior of the country in search of gold, starting with Ambrosius Ehinger's first expedition in July of 1529.[citation needed]
Spanish explorer Diego de Ordaz, then governor of the eastern part of Venezuela known as Paria, was the first European to explore the Orinoco river in 1531-32 in search of gold. A veteran of Cortez's campaign in Mexico, Ordaz followed the Orinoco beyond the mouth of the Meta River but was blocked by the rapids at Atures. After his return he died, possibly poisoned, on a voyage back to Spain.[8]
The search for El Dorado[edit]
The earliest reference to the name El Dorado was in 1535 or 1536, before Spanish contact with the Muisca people.
In 1535, Captains Anasco and Ampudia were dispatched by Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar, one of Francisco Pizarro's chief lieutenants, to discover the valley of Dorado in pursuit of the splendid riches of the Zaque, or chieftain of Cundinamarca, described by a wandering Indian of Tacumga.
After the death of Ordaz while returning from his expedition, the Crown appointed a new Governor of Paria, Jeronimo Ortal, who diligently explored the interior along the Meta River between 1532 and 1537. In 1535 he ordered Captain Alonso de Herrera to move inland by the waters of the Uyapari River (today the town of Barrancas de Orinoco). Herrera, who had accompanied Ordaz three years before, explored the Meta River but was killed by Achagua Indians near its banks while waiting out the winter rains in Casanare.
In 1536 Gonzalo Díaz de Pineda had led an expedition to the lowlands to the east of Quito and had found cinnamon trees but no rich empire.
Between 1535 and 1538, the German conquistadors Georg von Speyer and Nikolaus Federmann searched the Colombian plateaus, Orinoco Basin and Venezuelan lowlands for El Dorado.[9] Subsequently Philipp von Hutten accompanied Von Speyer on a journey (1536–38) in which they reached the headwaters of the Rio Japura, near the equator. In 1541 Hutten led an exploring party of about 150 men, mostly horsemen, from Coro on the coast of Venezuela in search of the Golden City. After several years of wandering, harassed by the natives and weakened by hunger and fever, he crossed the Rio Bermejo, and went on with a small group of around 40 men on horseback into Los Llanos, where they engaged in battle with a large number of Omaguas and Hutten was severely wounded. He led those of his followers who survived back to Coro in 1546.[10]
In 1560 Pedro de Ursúa and Lope de Aguirre searched the Amazon region for El Dorado until Aguirre assassinated Ursúa in 1561.[11]
Quesada brothers' expeditions[edit]
In 1537 stories of El Dorado drew the Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada and his army of 800 men away from their mission to find an overland route to Peru and up into the Andean homeland of the Muisca for the first time. A little further to the north, Spanish conquistador Hernán Pérez de Quesada (brother of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada) set out in September of 1540 with 270 Spaniards and countless Indian porters to explore the Orinoco Basin, but they likewise found nothing before turning around and returning to Bogotá.[8]
The Muisca towns and their treasures quickly fell to the conquistadores. At the same time, the Spanish began to hear stories of El Dorado from captured natives (mostly Indians), and of the rites which used to take place at Lake Guatavita.[specify] The Spaniards also found gold on these natives, which led them to spread the word that El Dorado was near. The news of the gold was considered proof that there was a kingdom of immense wealth in South America.
Pizarro and Orellana's discovery of the Amazon[edit]
See also: Amazon River § History
In 1540, Gonzalo Pizarro, the younger half-brother of Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who toppled the Incan Empire in Peru, was made the governor of the province 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 accompanied Pizarro on the expedition as his lieutenant. 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 theAtlantic Ocean. The expedition found neither cinnamon nor gold, but Orellana is credited with discovering the Amazon River (so named because of a tribe of female warriors that attacked Orellana’s men while on their voyage).
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