Legends about a city of gold located in northern South America date to the sixteenth century. However, in some of the earliest stories, “El Dorado” refers not to a place but to a person: “the gilded one.” While a golden city remains a fantasy, there is real evidence for ceremonies involving a gilded man. A 1599 engraving in this case, for example, illustrates a ceremony in which a cacique (ruler) is covered in gold dust. 
  
A similar ritual was described in 1638 for the coronation of a Muisca cacique, who was said to have dropped piles of golden offerings from a boat into the center of Lake Guatavita. Stories and images such as these fueled numerous expeditions and raids into Indigenous territories, and attempts to drain Lake Guatavita to recover the supposed treasure at its bottom—all of them unsuccessful—continued into the twentieth century.