The Transformation of a Native American Myth Into a Widely-Accepted Fake Tale
The legend of El Dorado changed like a message in a game of telephone, gradually altered with each retelling, until the final recipient hears something completely different. It began with the first Spaniards who came across the native Muisca people, in today’s Colombia. They heard tales of chiefs who coated themselves in gold dust, then rowed into Lake Guatavita, northeast of modern Bogota, to drop golden gifts for the water god. The first Spaniards to hear the tale named such chiefs El Hombre Dorado, Spanish for “the golden man”. Over the years and many retellings,El Hombre Dorado was transformed. What began as a tribal chief coated in gold dust became a city made of gold. Then it was a kingdom of gold. Finally, a legend grew of a fabulously wealthy empire, that had more gold than the rest of the world put together.
The fake story was helped by the fact that Spaniards and other Europeans had encountered plenty of real life gold among the natives of the Caribbean coast of South of America. So they reasoned that there must be a huge source of gold somewhere in the interior. Many Spanish Conquistadores and other European adventurers who heard the El Dorado narrative of a city of gold, came to believe in its existence. The lust for gold and fabulous riches said to be found in the mythical city fueled various expeditions and searches in the 1500s and 1600s. None of them managed to discover the nonexistent city of gold.
