by Bob Curran
In his travels in the East, the Italian explorer Marco Polo mentioned a county that he called Abascia in which he claimed there was a substantial Christian population whose needs were served by capable patriarchs. However, it is thought that he was referring to Abyssinia, where there were indeed substantial numbers of Christians and several churches overseen by patriarchs. His writings did nothing to explain the mystery.
The Christians of St. Thomas
In the 15th century, however, the legend was to receive yet another twist. In the mid-1400s, word began to reach the West of a previously unknown group of Christians living on the Malabar Coast in Southern India. They called themselves “the Christians of St. Thomas,” taking their name from a leader known as the “patriarch Thomas.” Attention was once more turned to the letter that Manuel I had received from Prester John. One of the sites in his fabulous kingdom mentioned in this communication had been the tomb of the patriarch Thomas—did this give some credibility to the communication? Even more startling, these Christians (who were thought to be Nestorians), claimed that prior to Thomas, their leader had been “the Patriarch John of India.” To add further confusion to the tale, the patriarch John was also described as a great ruler who had presided over a land that had encompassed “the Three Indias.” Great speculation arose as to what these lands might be and as to the identity of the patriarch John (might he indeed be the legendary Prester John?) and attention was turned toward certain ancient Chinese writings, which were now appearing in Europe for the first time.
First and foremost was the Chu-fan-chi, an early Chinese geographical work by the scholar Chau Ju-kua written around 1225. Together with another work by the same author—the Ma-tua-lim—it gave an impression of the medieval East, which had hitherto been unknown by those in the West. The work spoke of two great kingdoms, lying in part beyond both China and India. These were the kingdoms of Sanfotsi and Zabag (which included an area that Arab seamen referred to as Sirandib, and which we know today as Sri Lanka). There is also mention of another kingdom known as Tuopo, or Shopo. There has subsequently been great debate about the actual areas covered by these kingdoms, although it is generally agreed that at least part of them contained lands controlled by the Chola Empire of Southern India—a Tamil dynasty that had ruled in the 13th century. Some commentators believe that Sanfotsi in particular ruled areas such as present-day Malayasia and Burma, the Korean Peninsula, and parts of the Philippines, which encompassed a substantial realm. Could these kingdoms have been “the Three Indias” over which Prester John ruled?
It was suggested in various parts of the West that although nominally Christian, these Christians of St. Thomas were in fact more Buddhist than Christian, and Buddhist elements featured strongly in their forms of worship. This led to the assertion that the patriarch John, while perhaps initially being Christian, had converted to a form of Buddhism and had become a lama. Some accounts suggested that he had been a lama from the outset, and his “kingdom” lay not in India at all, but in remote Tibet. In fact, in some respects, Prester John became equated with the ruler of legendary Shambhala, as a kind of lama-king who espoused Eastern religion rather than Christianity. His “kingdom,” therefore, some claimed, lay somewhere among the peaks of the lofty Himalayas, and was more or less inaccessible to Westerners. Such theories kept the idea of Prester John firmly in the East, but already the identity of this mysterious figure and the supposed location of his mythical kingdom was shifting.
As the Mongol Empire began to crumble due to internal disputes, the idea that Prester John might be a Central Asian king began to fade. Besides, there was new evidence as to who he might have been. India was often mentioned as the location of his kingdom, but “India” was so vague a concept to the medieval mind that few were completely sure as to where it actually was.
Proving and Disproving the Legend of Prester John
In 1306, more than 30 representatives from the court of Wadem Arad of Ethiopia attended a Christian Council in Rome. Wadem Arad was a ruler of the Solomonic dynasty, which held a very special place in the Middle East and also in Christian folklore. The dynasty traced its roots to an alleged union between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The founder of the dynasty, Menelik I, claimed to be issue of that union, and therefore claimed the biblical Solomon as his father. The legendary country of Sheba was defined as being in the south of Ethiopia, which had engendered it some prestige among Christians. The representatives stated that the foundation of their country had also originated from the patriarch John who had been appointed by God to oversee them. This patriarch was also known as John the Presbyter. This established Ethiopia, already a Christian country, as a possible location for the realm of the mystical monarch, and gave him a direct connection into biblical writings. Might “the Third India,” some argued, not have been in Asia at all, but in Arabia? The theory was a tantalizing one. And it built on an old legend that circulated throughout the 13th century.
It was said that in 1248, French knights returning from the Seventh Crusade had brought back from the Middle East a “great secret” that had never been disclosed. Some said that it was a relic that they had found among the Arabs. While there is no actual account of what this relic was, it was said to be the skull of Prester John, a Christian king of Arabia, who had been “betrayed” by the Church in the West. When his kingdom had allegedly been threatened by the Saracens, he had contacted the West for aid, and the Church there had ignored him. Consequently, his kingdom had been overrun, and he himself had been slain. All that remained was his skull, which had been secretly venerated as a relic by Christians in the Middle East. It had been “liberated” by Crusader knights and brought westward. What became of the skull when it came to Europe is unknown—it is even possible that such a relic never existed at all. However, it was enough to connect the idea of Prester John with the Middle East and with Africa.
Medieval writings linking Prester John with Ethiopia first appeared in 1329 in a document written by a French Dominican monk named Jordanus known as Mirabilia Descripta, which records a number of fanciful tales linking Prester John with the Ethiopic dynasty. Their emissaries hailed the Ethiopian king Dawit II as “Emperor of Ethiopia; a descendant of King Solomon and of Prester John.” The move was, of course, a political one, and designed to secure Portuguese interests in Ethiopia. As far as Prester John went, however, the Ethiopians knew nothing about him. They never used the title “Emperor of Ethiopia,” and although they made some reference to the patriarch, they did not generally regard him with the immense importance that the Portuguese accorded him. When this salutation was used in 1441 by a Portuguese envoy to the court of another Ethiopian ruler, Zara Yaqob (1399–1468) the king gazed at him questioningly. In fact, the idea of attaching the name of Prester John to the Ethiopian kings was to foster military and trading links with the Christian West—just as earlier generations had attempted to link the name with Temujin (Genghis Khan) or Torghul (the Weng Khan).
Gradually, however, the idea of Prester John and his kingdom began to fade. There seemed no prospect of ever finding evidence of an early Christian king in the deserts of Arabia, and through the years the connection to the Ethiopian lineage was disproved. At best, the whole thing assumed the air of a Christian myth; at worst, of Church propaganda for political purposes. Nevertheless, similar to most legends, its mystery and romance continued to inspire writers and poets throughout the centuries.
Did Prester John exist? Was there really a legendary Christian king somewhere in either the Far East or in Ethiopia? Or was the whole idea simply an elaborate trick, designed to ingratiate Western powers with Eastern rulers, or, inspire the populace of war-torn Eastern countries in their faith? We will probably never know. In any event, the idea of the mysterious, mystical Christian king has echoed down through the centuries and still forms as much of an intriguing legend today as it did far back in medieval times.
12
El Dorado
On the morning of the April 22, 1540, a la
rge company of armed men (mostly Spaniards) and pack animals marched out of the dusty city of Culiacán in Northern Mexico, heading north into what would one day become the United States of America. The expedition was led by Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, governor of Nueva Galicia, who set out to find the Seven Cities of Gold—a network of golden citadels—rumored to lie somewhere in the unexplored hinterland. Ahead of them was their guide, an Italian Franciscan monk, Fray Marcos de Niza, who was following a trail that had been laid out by an earlier explorer Estevanico (Black Stephen), the Black Mexican of the Zuni.
Legends of Gold
Since the middle of the 12th century, there had been stories of marvelous cities in the American interior, some of them resulting from European legends. From the early 1100s, the wealthy and holy city of Mérida in southern Spain had been constantly attacked by Moorish invaders before being finally destroyed in 1150. Before that happened, however, tradition says that seven bishops fled the city, taking with them part of the municipal wealth and a good number of religious ornaments. They fled, it is said, to a “far land” where they encountered an already thriving civilization of dusky-faced foreigners who welcomed them and allowed them to stay. Using the wealth they had brought with them, and the inordinate wealth of the foreign civilization that came from mining (mainly gold), the bishops founded a number of cities of opulent splendor. The land to which these clerics had fled was generally taken to be America, and the cities that they had established were reputedly deep within that continent. Legends persisted of settlements deep in the hinterland, some supposedly ruled over by the descendants of Europeans. These were the cities that the incoming Spaniards were trying to find, and the most persistent of these legends—that of the Seven Cities of Gold—was what Coronado’s expedition was trying to prove.
According to the legend, one of the major golden cities, Quivara or Qiviria, lay in the unexplored wilderness beyond an area known as the Jornada del Muerto (the Journey of Dead Men). This was a desert-like basin in the north of Mexico and few Spanish explorers had ever crossed it. It was said that on its northern edge lay an area known as “Tejas,” or “Techjas.” This was a name used by the Hasinai Confederation of Indians, and was used to refer to another confederation of tribes to the north. The name meant “those who are allies,” and would later be changed by European tongues “Texas,” and it was here that Coronado expected to find the golden city. Bearing the Cross of Christ in front of them, he and his men marched from Culiacán into unknown territory.
He gruelingly marched his expedition across the Jornada del Muerto into southern Texas. No fabulous city, however, awaited him, only a region that Coronado himself would name Llano Escado, or the Staked Plain. This was a seemingly endless sea of grass—a huge plain stretching away for as far as the eye could see. Most historians believe that Coronado gave the area its name—Staked Plain—because of the geological formations that surrounded it that resembled a stockade or military fortification, usually made of wooden stakes. Some say that he drove stakes into the ground to guide his expedition across the seemingly unending grassland. On the other side of this “grassy sea,” de Niza assured him the city that he sought would be there, and so Coronado marched on, drawn by the legend. He crossed what is today Texas and parts of New Mexico and Arizona without finding anything. Still, de Niza assured him, according to local Indian tales, the city lay somewhere on the other side of the horizon.
In mid-1541, with his expedition decimated by disease, desertions, and attacks by Indian bands, Coronado crossed the Wichita River in present-day southern Kansas. Just beyond this river, Zuni guides had assured him, lay Cibola and great wealth. Coronado, however, found nothing but the squalid mud pueblos of the Wichita Indians and more grassland. Defeated and disillusioned, he turned back and retraced his steps to Culiacán. Although he was to remain governor of Nueva Galicia until 1544, Coronado was a shamed and broken man. The failed expedition had almost bankrupted him; finally with the title of governor, he retired to Mexico City where he died on September 22, 1544. Marcos de Niza was to survive him by another 14 years before also dying in Mexico City, shamed and penniless, in 1558. The main memorials to the tragic expedition are a monument in Sierra Vista, Arizona, and the Coronado Shopping Mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Nevertheless, stories of fabulously wealthy and infinitely mysterious cities located somewhere in the American hinterland persisted.
Aztec Gold
When the Spanish had first arrived in Mexico in 1518, under the leadership of Hernan Cortez, they had found a relatively advanced and reasonably wealthy civilization there, which greeted them more or less as gods. This was the Aztec empire, ruled over by Moctezuma II. Impressed by the lavishness of golden gifts, Cortez and his men would take Moctezuma II prisoner and eventually overthrow the Aztec civilization. However, Tenochtitlan allegedly traded with other cities in the hinterland where there were gold mines and places where precious stones could be found; stories of these settlements piqued Spanish interest. Stories concerning them circulated widely among the Spanish conquistadores and may well have formed the basis of the legend of Cibola. There was another intriguing aspect to the tale as well. When Cortez arrived among the Aztecs, he was feted as a god. This was because the Aztecs believed that one of their chief deities—Quetzalcoatl (whose main incarnation was a plumed serpent)—would visit them in the guise of a bearded European. For Cortez, this may have been significant, as it might have been suggestive of the Spanish bishops who had fled from Merida in the 12th century. The Spanish leader remembered the legend that they had founded cities somewhere in a “far land,” and he may well have believed that these were indeed the cities with which Tinochtitlan traded. If so, they might be fabulously wealthy. This idea was probably passed on to Coronado (who had met Cortez) and formed the basis of the governor’s expedition to find Cibola.
And the legend concerning the Seven Cities of Gold was not the only such tale among the early Spanish explorers. Two other conquistadores, Garcia Lopez de Cardenas and Pedro de Tobar had heard Hopi Indian legends of a great city situated on a river somewhere in the north. De Tobar led a small expedition early in 1540 (shortly after Coronado’s expedition had departed) to try to locate it, but had to turn back because of disease among his men; de Cardenas, however, marched another expedition north and crossed into what is today Colorado. His plan was to find the river, which the Hopi legends had described, and follow its course, hopefully, to the lost city. And although he did indeed find the river, he failed in his attempt to locate the legendary metropolis. However, what he did find was the Grand Canyon through which part of the Colorado River flowed, and which remains today as one of the “wonders” of the American continent. Naming the river Tizon, de Cardenas found he could advance no further, as there was no way down the sheer walls of the river canyon. Tired and exhausted, he returned to Spanish America to stake his claim, only to find that the river he’d “discovered” had been visited and claimed in September 1539 by one of Cortez’s generals, Francisco de Ulloa, who had crossed it several hundred miles further down near the coast. Nevertheless, de Cardenas claimed that somewhere, just beyond the point where he had turned back, lay the fabulous city. Of course, more modern exploration of the Colorado Plateau has shown he was wrong, and no such city existed. But still the legends persisted, and there was talk of further expeditions, none of which actually came to fruition. However, interest in finding such places remained great.
Exploring South America
By the end of the 1500s and the beginning of the 1600s, the legend of lost cities in America had merged with another legend—that of El Dorado. It is this name that is most associated with lost cities, and has almost become a by-word for an unattainable goal. In fact, the name does not refer to a city at all. It can be roughly translated as “the gilded man” (or more often “the golden one”), and may refer to a statue or, more probably, an actual person. It may not have concerned the hinterland of North America, but rather the region of the Andes Mountains in South A
merica.
The legend began to circulate as Spanish explorers began to push into Colombia in the 1530s. In 1537, the conquistador and explorer Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, made contact with the Muisca, a nation of the Chibcha culture in the Colombian interior who told him a story of a tribe high up in the mountains, whose great chieftains covered themselves in gold dust before leaping into a freezing cold-water mountain lake as an offering to their gods. These chieftains could only emerge from the waters when the gold had been washed off. The Spaniards referred to this person as el indio dorado—the gilded Indian. Legends surrounding golden offerings to the gods—particularly those of mountain lakes—became widespread among the conquistadores. One of the favored locations for such offerings was Lake Titicaca, high up in the Altiplano region of the Andes Mountains, between present-day Bolivia and Peru. This is one of the highest navigable lakes on Earth, boasting several islands, and thought to be the center of worship for the Inca people since ancient times. The deity who was allegedly worshipped there was Pachamama, also called the Mamacuna, who was supposed to be a Mother Nature–like figure who ensured good weather. However, she demanded tributes every year, including human life, but many of which were of gold. Her temple was on the Isla del Sol, far out in the lake. This notion of giving gifts to the spirits of rivers and lakes was not unique among the Aztecs; many other ancient peoples (including the Celts) did exactly the same. There was also a widely held belief among the worshippers that the Aztec race had sprung from Titicaca, and there were ancient ruins on what is now the Bolivian side of the lake, suggesting that there had been a city there at one point—almost 1,500 years before the Aztec civilization flourished. This has been given by some commentators as one of the locations for the legendary city of Atlantis, and it is certainly suggestive of an extremely antique settlement.
