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El Dorado.
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In the following essay, Bandalier describes how the myth of El Dorado and the lure of gold spurred Spanish exploration and conquest of the New World.
While the early Spanish adventurers in America are...
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In the following essay, Connell describes the hardships and madness endured by expeditions led by Ambrosius Dalfinger, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Gonzalo Pizarro, Lope de Aguirre, and Walter R...
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In the following essay, Hemming describes expeditions by Antonio de Berrío and Domingo de Vera in the last two decades of the sixteenth century to find the elusive El Dorado.
Gonzalo Jimé...
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In the following essay, Sinclair recounts Walter Raleigh's two unsuccessful searches for El Dorado, the failure of which ultimately resulted in his execution.
When the Spaniards seized rooms fu...
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In the following excerpt, Whitehead examines Walter Raleigh's Discoverie as an anthropological work that provides ethnographic information on the native peoples of Guiana, and he analyzes the &...
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In the following essay, Zahm recounts several versions of the El Dorado legend and argues that the main reason so little is known about the expeditions which searched for El Dorado is that few of the ...
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In the following essay, Hemming examines the earliest Spanish references to El Dorado, concluding that the legend was unknown before 1541, although several explorers would claim earlier knowledge of t...
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In the following essay, Silverberg establishes how Spaniards could have believed in El Dorado by describing the riches in gold accumulated by explorers like Columbus, Cortés, and Pizarro.
The q...
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In the following essay, Ainsa examines the ways in which the European myth of a lost Golden Age contributed to the formation of the myth of El Dorado.
The geographical Utopias that present a New World...
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In the following excerpt, Bodmer argues that belief in various myths about South America—including that of El Dorado—spurred the exploration of the interior of the continent.
On the nort...
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In the following essay, Ainsa traces the evolution of the myth of El Dorado from the story of a gilded king, to a belief in a treasure lying at the bottom of a lake, to the legend of a golden land.
Dr...
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In the following excerpt, Nicholl considers the search for El Dorado the result of a psychological “projection” onto the unexplored territory of South America of the desire for wealth an...
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In the following essay, Sturcken describes how Walter Raleigh's failure to find El Dorado led to his execution in 1618.
The Empyre of Guiana is directly east from Peru towards the sea … ...
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Critical Essay by A. F. Bandelier
