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(^76) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
Eager to surpass his brother’s success,
Gonzalo Pizarro left Quito, in northern
Ecuador, in February 1541 with 220 soldiers,
supplies carried by 4,000 chained Indian
slaves, and a huge herd of pigs for food. The
expedition’s progress soon slowed to a crawl
due to the equatorial rainy season and
Pizarro’s stubborn insistence on hacking
through roadless jungles. A month after set-
ting forth, he was joined by a company of cav-
alry reinforcements, led by a one-eyed
conquistador named Francisco Orellana.
Pizarroleft his main army and set forth
with 70 men. He found and wandered aim-
lessly in the “Land of Cinnamon,” which he
discovered to have little actual cinnamon.
When he rejoined his main force two months
later, most of his Indian porters (carriers of the
burdens) were dead from disease and mis-
treatment, as were many of the Spaniards.
Increasingly desperate, Pizarro struggled
east along the River Coca, bearing the sick and
remaining supplies on a hastily crafted boat
christened the San Pedro.His situation wors-
ened when he forced his way 150 miles east-
ward down the River Napo, only to be told by
Indian guides that they were lost in a land with
no food, far from any escape route back to the
Andes. Theday after Christmas 1541, with his
starving men ready to mutiny, Pizarro agreed
to let Orellana take the boat and 59 men down-
river to seek food. Whether or not Pizarro
The Legend of El Dorado =
As European explorers made their way into the interior of Colombia in the
1530s, they heard Indian tales about a man covered with gold—El Dorado (“the
golden one”). The first written account came in a 1539 report by a member of
Sebastián de Benalcázar’s expedition, Luis da Daza, who described an ancient
coronation ritual at Lake Guatavita, just north of Bogotá. Writing in 1636, a cen-
tury after the rush to find El Dorado, Spanish colonial writer Juan Rodríguez
Freyle related the legend, in which a new ruler, religious leaders, and a heap of
gold were floated aboard a raft into the lake. There the new ruler would be:
stripped to his skin, and anointed with a sticky earth on which they placed the
gold dust so that he was completely covered with this metal... when they
reached the centre of the lagoon... the gilded Indian made his offering, throw-
ing out all the pile of gold into the middle of the lake, and the chiefs accompany-
ing him did the same.
Gold-hungry conquistadores speculated that the bottom of Lake Guatavita
was carpeted with treasure. In 1545 explorer Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada par-
tially drained the lake and recovered 4,000 gold coins. Later attempts, which
continued for centuries, produced mostly mud.
Over time, the term El Doradocame to refer to an entire golden city instead of
one man. Similar legends spread throughout the Americas and encouraged illu-
sions such as the Seven Cities of Cíbola, which was sought by Spanish conquis-
tador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. Although never found, El Dorado’s grip on
the imagination spurred exploration throughout the Americas for decades.
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