An Englishman in S. America..............in Old Town Alexandria, VA......................there is a ship called the Sir Walter R.........






“Discoverie of Guiana”

Raleigh’s 1596 account of his search of El Dorado became a sensation when it was published in England. The book describes Raleigh’s motives of treasure hunting and empire building. Some excerpts with annotations are included below.

Empire Building

And by my Indian interpreter, which I carried out of England, I made them understand that I was the servant of a queen who was the great cacique of the north, and a virgin, and had more caciqui (leader) under her than there were trees in that island, that she was an enemy to the Castellani (Spanish) in respect of their tyranny and oppression, and that she delivered all such nations about her, as were by them oppressed; and having freed all the coast of the northern world from their servitude, had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest. I shewed them her Majesty’s picture, which they so admired and honoured, as it had been easy to have brought them idolatrous thereof. The like and a more large discourse I made to the rest of the nations, bout in my passing to Guiiana and to those of the borders, so as in that part of the world her Majesty is very famous an admirable, whom they now call Ezrabeta cassipuna aquerewana, which is as much as “Elizabeth, the Great Princess, or Greatest Commander.”

Raleigh understood that the easiest way to gain control of an area was to become friendly with its native inhabitants. Raleigh depended on Indian guides to help him traverse the hundreds of rivers he encountered and to help him find food for his men. Without their help, his expedition would not have been possible. Whenever he came across an Indian community he told them, through an interpreter, about Queen Elizabeth and how she had their best interests in mind.

Environment

These Tivitivas are a very goodly people and very valiant, and have the most manly speech and most deliberate that ever I heard of what nation soever. In the summer they have houses on the ground, as in other places; in the winter they dwell upon the trees, where they build very artificial towns and villages. For between May and September the river of Orinoco riseth thirty feet upright, and then are those islands overflown twenty foot high above the lever of the ground, saving some few raised grounds in the middle of them and for this cause they are enforced to live in this manner. They never eat of anything that is set or sown and as at home they use neither planting nor other manurance, so when they come abroad they refuse to feed of aught but of that which nature without labour bringeth forty. They use the tops of palmitos for bread, and kill deer, fish, and porks for the rest of their sustenance. They have also many sorts of fruits that grow in the woods, and great variety of birds and fowls. Of these people those that dwell upon the branches of the Orinoque, called Capuri, and Macureo, are for the most part carpenters of canoas; for they make the most and fairest canoas; and sell them into Guiana for gold and into Trinidad for Tabacco, in the excessive taking whereof they exceed all nations.
On the banks of these rivers were divers sorts of fruits good to eat, flowers and trees of such variety as were sufficient to make ten volumes of Herbals; we relieved ourselves many times with the fruits of the country, and sometimes with fowl and fish. We say birds of all colours, some carnation, some crimson, orange-tawny, purple, watchet (pale blue), and of all other sorts, both simple and mixed, and it was unto us a great good-passing of the time to behold them, besides the relief we found by killing some store of them with our fowling-pieces; without which, having little or no bread, and less drink, but only the thick and trouble water of the river, we had been in a very hard case.
Upon this river there were great store of fowl, and of many sorts; we saw in it divers sorts of strange fishes, and of marvelous bigness, but for lagartos (alligators) it exceeded, for there were thousands of those ugly serpents and the people call it, for the abundance of them, the River of Lagartos, in their language. I had a negro, a very proper young fellow, who leaping out of the galley to swim in the mouth of this river, was in all our sights taken and devoured with one of those lagartos.

Raleigh commented at many points about the rich abundance of the rainforest and the riverbanks. Interestingly, Raleigh comments on how the Indians dealt with the drastically changing environment of the northern Amazon region. For almost half of the year, the land was covered with the swollen river, forcing the inhabitants to take to the trees. The annual flooding prevented any sustained agriculture, but Raleigh explained that there were enough fruits and animals that the Indians could survive without planting crops.

Legends

Next unto Arui there are two rivers Atoica and Caura, an on that branch which is called Caura are a nation of people whose heads appear not above their shoulders; which though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for mine own part I am resoled it is true, because every child in the provinces of Aromaia and Canuri affirm the same. They are called Ewaipanoma; they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts, and that a long train of hair groweth backward between their shoulders.

Raleigh was a man of his times and he wrote a book to satisfy the curiosity of his readers. In the 1500s, stories of fanciful groups of people, whether their heads were below their shoulders, or their feet were so large they used them as umbrellas, filled the tales of travelers. Sir John Mandeville first reported the legend of the people with no heads. His book was later determined to be a fictional account written by a bored English lord, but the images he created lived on in the tales of other travelers.

The expedition’s result

I will promise these things that follow, which I know to be true. Those that are desirous to discover and to see many nations may be satisfied within this river, which bringeth forth so many arms and branches leading to several countries and provinces, about 2,000 miles east and west and 800 miles south and north, and of those the most either rich in gold or in other merchandises. The common soldier shall here fight for gold, and pay himself, instead of pence, with plates of half-a-foot broad. Those commanders and chieftans that shoot at honour and abundance shall find there more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with golden images, more sepulchres filled with treasure, than either Cortes found in Mexico of Pizarro in Peru. And the shining glory of this conquest will eclipse all those so far-extended beams of the Spanish nation.

Ever the optimist, Raleigh found many positive results of his expedition. Even though he only found tiny amounts of gold, he believed the legend of El Dorado. He was convinced that there were huge veins of gold in the mountains of northern South America. Ironically, since the 1980s Venezuela has become of the world’s leading gold exporters. While there was never a pre-Colombian civilization west of the Andes that worked gold in quantities similar to those of the Inca or Aztec empires, there certainly was and is enough gold in the hills of Venezuela and Guiana to support the legend of El Dorado.