THE QUEST FOR EL DORADO 71
FRUSTRATIONS IN SOUTH AMERICA
The golden will-o’-the-wisp that lured Spanish
knights into the deserts of the Southwest also beck-
oned to them from South America’s jungles and
mountains. From the town of Santa Marta, founded
in 1525 on the coast of modern Colombia, an expe-
dition led by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada set out in
1536 on a diffi cult journey up the Magdalena River
in search of gold and a passage to the Pacifi c. They
suffered incredible hardships before they fi nally
emerged onto the high plateau east of the Magda-
lena inhabited by the Chibcha. Primarily farmers,
skillful in casting gold and copper ornaments, the
Chibcha lived in palisaded towns and were ruled
by a chieftain called the Zipa. After defeating them
in battle, Jiménez de Quesada founded in 1538 the
town of Santa Fé de Bogotá, future capital of the
province of New Granada. The immense treasure
in gold and emeralds looted from the Chibcha fi red
Spanish imaginations and inspired fantasies about
yet other golden kingdoms. The most famous of
these legends was that of El Dorado (the Golden
Man).
The dream of spices also inspired the saga of
Spanish conquest. Attracted by accounts of an
eastern land where cinnamon trees grew in pro-
fusion, Gonzalo Pizarro led an expedition in 1539
from Quito in modern Ecuador across the Andes
and down the forested eastern mountain slopes.
Cinnamon was found, but in disappointingly small
quantities. Lured on by local tall tales of rich king-
doms somewhere beyond the horizon, which were
told to encourage the Spanish intruders to move on,
the treasure hunters plunged deep into the wilder-
ness. Gonzalo’s lieutenant, Francisco de Orellana,
sent with a party down a certain stream in search
of food, found the current too strong to return and
went on to enter a great river whose course he fol-
lowed in two makeshift boats for a distance of eight-
een hundred leagues, eventually emerging from
its mouth to reach Spanish settlements in Vene-
zuela. On the banks of the great river, Orellana
fought natives whose women joined the battle.
For this reason, he gave the river its Spanish name
of Amazonas, an illustration of the myth-making
process among the Spaniards of the Conquest.
In the southern reaches of the continent, which
possessed little gold or silver, new agricultural and
pastoral settlements arose. In 1537, Pizarro’s com-
rade and rival, Diego de Almagro, made a fruitless
march across the rugged Andean altiplano and
the sun-baked Chilean desert in search of gold and
returned bitterly disappointed. Two years later,
Pizarro authorized Pedro de Valdivia to undertake
the conquest of the lands to the south of Peru. Af-
ter crossing the desert of northern Chile, Valdivia
reached the fertile Central Valley and founded
there the town of Santiago. In constant struggle
with Araucanians, Valdivia laid the foundations
of an agricultural colony based on the servile la-
bor of other, more pacifi c native peoples. He was
captured and killed by the Araucanians during an
expedition southward in 1553.
In the same period (1536), the town of Buenos
Aires was founded on the estuary of the Rio de la
Plata by the adelantado Pedro de Mendoza, who
brought twenty-fi ve hundred colonists in fourteen
ships. But Buenos Aires was soon abandoned by its
famished inhabitants, who moved almost a thou-
sand miles upstream to the newly founded town of
Asunción in Paraguay, where a genial climate, an
abundance of food, and a multitude of docile Gua-
rani people created more favorable conditions for
Spanish settlement. Asunción became the capital
of Paraguay and all the Spanish territory in south-
eastern South America.THE CONQUISTADORS
The conquest of America lured a wide variety of
explorers. Professional soldiers, some with back-
grounds of service in the Italian wars and some
with pasts they wanted to forget, made up some of
this group. The old conquistador Gonzalo Fernán-
dez de Oviedo had such men in mind when he
warned the organizers of expeditions against “fi ne-
feathered birds and great talkers” who “will either
slay you or sell you or forsake you when they fi nd
that you promised them more in Spain than you
can produce.” In one of his Exemplary Tales, Cer-
vantes describes the Americas as “the refuge and
shelter of the desperate men of Spain, sanctuary of
rebels, safe-conduct of homicides.” No doubt men