The Legend of El Dorado
Storyboard Text
- El Dorado was the mythical land that the Spanish, and many others, admired and desired to gain the wealth of. El Dorado was a supposed city of gold that no man or woman could ever die in. The wealth of this city was told to be more than any country or person could ever have in his grasp. This city of gold was never found.
- The Legend of El DoradoBy Marshall SkinnerFudge 1
- The original El Dorado tale was of a man, not a city, and his tribe that had an interesting way of inaugurating a new governor. Once a governor died, the governor's son (If he had no son, then his oldest nephew) would float out on a raft into the middle of a lake covered in gold dust. Then, he would jump in the water while people ashore threw gold and silver belongings into the lake to bless him.
- In some accounts, including the man that wiped out the Incans, Francisco Pizarro, El Dorado was the lake used for rituals by the tribe just mentioned. It was supposed to have held billions in gold. He expected to find some civilization easily, but after months, came up with nothing. Pizarro found a river that led him to a local tribe. The tribe leader told him he could find great civilizations by the coast, but after searching along the Atlantic, they found nothing. Pizarro and his troops staggered back to home base defeated.
- Once word of Pizarro's exploration spread back to Europe, more countries set eyes on El Dorado's wealth. Sebastian de Benalcázar, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, and Nikolaus Federmann were among the next to venture out into the jungle. All gold gathered in the expeditions, around 400 pounds of it, was collected and hid under a tree for safekeeping, but was never found again.
- Huh?
- Even though no one ever found El Dorado that we know of, or if it was even real at all, we have been told that it was most likely a city, and the ancients described it as a golden city of wonder and purity.
- Was El Dorado ever real? Or was it just a myth that explorers foolishly based all of their hopes on? That's the interesting part of myths and legends. We will never know.
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