Colombia's Guatavita Lake: how a suicide myth led to an endless gold rush

[Judi Lynn]

by Adriaan Alsema August 27, 2019

The Guatativa Lake became one of Colombia’s most historically significant sites after the alleged suicide of a heart-broken princess gave birth to the legend of El Dorado.

Spanish chronicles first mention what would later become the legend approximately a decade after Christopher Columbus first set foot in the Americas.

According to chronicler Francisco Lopez, the quests for El Dorado began in Panama after the son of a native American tribal leader told subordinates of conquistador Vasco Nuñez who were fighting over gold about a place in the mountains that was so full of the precious metal that “you will get fed up with it.”

If I knew, Christians, that you would fight over my gold, I would not have given it to you, because I am a friend of peace and harmony. I marvel at your blindness and madness, that you destroy well carved jewels by turning them into sticks, and that, while being friends, you vilely quarrel for something petty. It would be better for you to be in your own land, which is so far from here and where there are such wise and sophisticated people as you affirm, than to come and quarrel in the land of other people, where we, the brash and barbaric men as you call us, live happily. But if you have so much desire for gold, that you dishonor and even kill those who have it, I will show you a land where you will get fed up with it.

Panquiaco

More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-guatavita-lake-how-a-suicide-myth-led-to-an-endless-gold-rush/