The Expeditions

The most famous quest for El Dorado was that of Francisco de Orellana, but there were other attempts, before and after his 1541 expedition. In the beginning, explorers looked for El Dorado in the Andes, near Colombia. Sebastián de Benalcázar, a Spanish conquistador who had traveled with Christopher Columbus and Francisco Pizarro, sought El Dorado in southwest Colombia in 1535. Nikolaus Federmann, a German explorer of Venezuela and Colombia, also led an expedition seeking El Dorado in 1535. Spanish conquistador Jiménez de Quesada set out for El Dorado in 1536. He ultimately defeated the Chibcha Indians and established Bogotá as the capital of The New Kingdom of Granada. Quesada later discovered that Federmann and Benalcázar had made claims to the same land, and he convinced them to return to Spain in 1539 to resolve the matter.

While the trio fought over New Granada, other men continued the search. In 1541, Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana set out for El Dorado, and ended up in a disastrous trip down the Amazon. After they split into two parties, Pizarro and his men staggered back to Quito, while Orellana went on to discover and name, the Amazon River. In 1541, German adventurer Philip von Hutten led an unsuccessful search for El Dorado along the headwaters of the Amazon, in the territory of the Omagua. He found a densely populated territory, but no Golden King.

Sir Walter Raleigh was the first English explorer to join the quest. Raleigh set off for El Dorado, or Guiana, as he called it, in 1595. He traveled up the Orinoco River into the interior of Guiana, and returned to England with some gold items, but not the stuff of the legend. He did, however, publish a book about his journey, "The Discoverie of Guiana," a romantic tale promoting himself and further exploration for the golden kingdom.