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The Chimera of El Dorado

In the conquest of America , the expeditions and massacres of Hernan Cor tes in Mexico and Francisco Pizarro in Peru were the most episodes known.

The Chimera of El Dorado

But, by the same dates, other conquerors They rushed to all the directions of the continent they had just discovered.They had to venture to North America, in search of the treasures of the "Seven Cities of Cibola."

But the Coronado expedition, which traced the Colorado, discovered the Grand Canon and crossed the Prairie, did not achieve the desired results in 1540.The silver mines discovered in the desert mountains of northern Mexico (Zacatecas , 1546) pointed out for a long time the advanced front of the Spanish colonization, which did not enter the open spaces of North America.

A troubled dream ba all the spirits: that of El Dorado , the mysterious king who, as it was said, anoints the body with gold polco before bathing in a sacred lagoon. The Ram , by Juan Rodriguez Freyle, would report that:

"They stripped the heir (...) and smeared it with a sticky league, and sprayed everything with gold in powder , so that everything was covered in that metal.Put it in the raft, on which it was standing, and at the feet they put a large pile of gold and emeralds to offer to his god.Four chiefs entered the boat with him, the most important, dressed in plumeria, crowns, bracelets, jackets and golden earmuffs , and also naked...Towards the golden Indian his offer throwing all the gold and emeralds that he had at his feet in the middle of the lagoon, then followed the other chiefs who accompanied him."

The palace of the king, ubi fallen among the golden mountains, it was also of solid gold .There were adventurers who searched for it in Venezuela, and then they went deeper and deeper into the continent.It was supposed to be located somewhere in the jungle Amazon, between Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, or Brazil.

The Chimera of El Dorado

The financiers Europeans were involved in the promising business.The Welser , bankers of Nuremberg, commissioned a German agent to discover the fabulous treasures, in order to collect the debts of the Spanish monarchy.

In 1539, three expeditions coincided in the place that would later be the city of Santa Fe de Bogota: that of the Wesler of Nuremberg, the one Pizarro had sent from Peru with Francisco de Orellana in the lead, and a third, arriving from Panama.

The Chimera of El Dorado

( History with Maps )

Of course, everything was nothing more than a chimera, and a non-innocent one.Along with the explorations in search of El Dorado the new diseases that Europeans brought, and Europeans themselves, spread throughout the Americas., germs of the native destruction.

On the other hand, the conquest itself already showed signs of exhaustion.To the north of the continent, the main conquering forces of Portugal and Spain do not know they entered, and to the south, in the Andes Mountains, after having annihilated everything in their path, the Spaniards met in Chile and Argentina with the resistance of the Araucanians .

The Chimera of El Dorado

Source: Venard, M.: The Beginnings of the Modern World, vol.V, Argos.

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