The legend of El Dorado, The Golden King or The Gilded Man, was born in Quito at the very beginning of 1541. Spaniards were returning from Venezuela and Colombia with wild tales of a land richer than either Mexico or Peru. This, they said, was a land of gold that was ruled by a Golden King.

The historian Gonzalo Fern·ndez de Oviedo traveled to Quito and he questioned those who been on these expeditions:

"I made an inquiry of those Spaniards who had been there, why this prince, chief or king, was called Dorado. They tell me that what they have learned from the Indians is that the great lord or prince goes about continually covered in gold dust as fine as ground salt. He feels that it would be less beautiful to wear any other ornament. It would be crude and common to put on armour plates or hammered or stamped gold, for other rich lords wear these when they wish. But to powder oneself with gold is something exotic and unusually novel, and more costly, for he washes away at night what he puts on each morning, so that it is discarded and lost, and he does this every day of the year."

The prince, the men told Oviedo, was very great and fabulously rich:

"Every morning he anoints himself with a kind of resin or gum to which the gold dust easily adheres, until his entire body is covered, from the soles of his feet to his head. So his looks are as resplendent as a gold object worked by the hands of a great artist."

In fact, the tale appeared to be based on an actual ceremony of the Chibcha people of Colombia. Each year the Chibcha would anoint a new king, covering him with gold dust and then cleansing him in the waters of a sacred lake, Guatavita, (Gwa-ta-vee-ta). Though the ritual was no longer practiced by the time of the Spaniards' arrival, the story had been passed on by the Indians and had blossomed into the myth of El Dorado which would captivate men for several centuries to come.