The Spanish Conquistadors were the first to set foot in the Americas,
committing notable achievements of endurance, conquest, and crime in the pursuit of gold.
In the 1530s, a tale arose from Cundinamarca of a gilded and splendid king who covered himself
with gold for a yearly ceremony at the shores of Lake Guatavitá. This tale of a gilded man,
known in Spanish as El Dorado, ruling over a nation so wealthy that it could afford to
coat its monarch’s skin with gold, quickly drew the attention of the ambitious Conquistadors.
Through the decades, the legend would undergo several mutations,
as the gilded man transformed into a city of gold, then a golden kingdom, and finally,
a rich and mysterious empire. In this time, many explorers would look for the land of El Dorado.
In this video we will talk about lesser-known German Conquistadors, their role in the
search of this mythical land of gold and the establishment of a German colony in the Americas.
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Before Charles V was the monarch that controlled half of Europe,
he was just Charles I, the teenage king of Spain, who had the goal to become Holy Roman Emperor,
just as his grandfather had been. In 1519, Emperor Maximilian died, leaving Charles to
contest the title with French king Francis I. Both monarchs tried to buy the votes of the electors,
forcing Charles to borrow large sums of money from German merchants and bankers, and Bartholomeus
Welser the V from Augsburg lent the young monarch nearly 150000 ducats expecting to take advantage
of the trade from the New World in the future. Charles became the Emperor, but that left him
highly indebted, so he started giving lucrative commercial privileges to the German families,
with the Welsers getting benefitting the most. In 1524, they established a factory in Seville
dedicated to trade with the Americas, controlled by the most powerful German merchant in Spain,
Lazarus Nuremberger. Soon they set up a similar institution in Santo Domingo,
directed by two merchants from the city of Ulm, Heinrich and Ambrosius Ehinger. In 1528,
the two merchants arranged a contract with Charles V to manage the colony of the area between Cabo
de la Vela and Cape Maracapana . It was a great opportunity, as they could recoup their investment
with the harvesting of gold, slaves and the drug known as guaiac rumored to cure syphilis.
The Welsers would rename their colony to Klein Venedig, or Little Venice, leading to
the popularization of the name among Europeans and its subsequent Spanish translation to Venezuela.
Believing that the Lake Maracaibo would allow them to pass to the Southern Sea, the Welsers sent an
expedition of 600 Spaniards, to establish two towns and three fortresses in the area.
In January 1529, Ambrosius Ehinger became the first governor of Venezuela.
He then set off by sea from Santo Domingo to the town of Coro , the capital of their new colony,
but was horrified by the misery of the town . Ehinger would have to spend the next few months
rebuilding Coro, renaming it Neu-Augsburg, and preparing for his expedition to Lake Maracaibo.
In August, he crossed the mountains of Jideharas with 180 Spaniards, but encountered considerable
opposition from the indigenous Coquivacoa, led by chieftain Mara. After winning a series of
battles , Ehinger finally reached the east side of the lagoon and founded the town of Neu-Nuremberg
on September 8. He named the lake Maracaibo in honor of the brave chieftain he fought with.
Although he didn’t find the shores of the Southern Sea, Ehinger discovered the fabulous tale of El
Dorado. The German Conquistador then decided to continue westward to look for what he believed
was a city of gold, but at the end of the year had to start returning to New Augsburg to resupply.
Meanwhile, the Welsers had dispatched a new force commanded by the young Conquistador Nikolaus
Federmann . Shortly after Federmann’s arrival, three more Welser ships docked at New Augsburg,
and as the Germans didn’t find Ehinger anywhere, they ended up believing he was dead. A Welser
agent by the name of Seissenhoffer became the new governor, making Federmann his right-hand
man. Luckily, Seissenhoffer died before Ehinger’s return on July 30, preventing a conflict. However,
the latter was sick and weakened from his grueling journey, so he was forced to sail back
to Santo Domingo, leaving Federmann in charge. The young Conquistador, however, was relentless,
and he quickly abandoned his responsibilities to explore the interior of the country . In this
unauthorized expedition, Federmann took with him 100 footmen and 100 allied natives to search for
the Southern Sea, which he believed was south of his capital. On September 12, Federmann left New
Augsburg for the Tocuyo River. After crossing the river, he drifted southwest and then ascended the
rugged hills of the Mérida mountain ranges, getting as far as the modern-day city of Trujillo,
but he was discouraged to continue by the raids of the hostile natives. During his march back,
the young Conquistador acquired 30 pounds of gold and learnt of the tale of El Dorado,
and by March of 1531, returned to New Augsburg with ambitions of discovering the golden city.
Ehinger was furious though, as the young Conquistador had relinquished his responsibilities
for an unauthorized expedition. As a punishment, Federmann was banished to Europe for a period of
four years. This, however, wouldn’t be young Conquistador’s last expedition.
Soon after Federmann’s departure, Ehinger came back to New Nuremberg for his second expedition
with several hundred Spaniards and allied natives. He pushed southwest towards the fabled
land of gold, thus trespassing into the Spanish government of Santa Marta. Ehinger’s route took
him over the mountains of Perija and into the Magdalena River , as the German Conquistador
suspected that the river led south through a thick jungle area to the true land of El Dorado.
The Chimila natives of the region opposed his advance, and he met their enmity with
extraordinary cruelty : chieftains were enslaved and captives were burnt alive as they progressed.
Ehinger looted 600 pounds of gold and forced chained slaves to carry the treasure.
Four months after the expedition began, the German halted his men at Tamalameque,
where the river was in flood. Here, he ruthlessly slaughtered the native Chitareros and gathered a
great treasure from them. A party of men was sent back to New Augsburg with the enormous loot, but
they would get lost in the forests while suffering from tropical fevers and famine, soon succumbing
to cannibalism. They ended up burying the treasure under a tree, never to be found again, and never
returned back to camp. One of them - Francisco Martín fell in love and married a local women.
As the months passed, Ehinger waited fruitfully [fruitlessly?] at Tamalameque.
His men never returned and he ended up concluding that he had been betrayed and
abandoned to rot in the jungle. He then decided to press southwards down the valley of the Magdalena,
continuing to search for El Dorado. Slowly ascending the eastern range of the Andes , the
explorers suffered greatly from the cold, and many died. But Ehinger and a few dozen stubbornly
continued through starvation and hostile natives, even though they didn’t know where
they were going. As their forces were dwindling, the German Conquistadors had to concede defeat.
Just a few miles from Cundinamarca, where the legend had begun, Ehinger started his march
home. But in the valley of Chinacota, his cruelty and crimes against the natives would finally see
retribution. On May 27, 1533, Ehinger and his men were ambushed by Chitareros.
In the struggle, Ehinger would be wounded in the neck with a poisoned arrow,
dying from his wounds three days later. His men buried him in the valley and continued northwards,
but they were too weak to survive. Luckily for them, they encountered Francisco Martín,
who interceded with his new tribesmen on behalf of his former countrymen. The explorers were
granted safe passage through the lowlands and In November limped into New Augsburg.
Though they didn’t find El Dorado, they were the first explorers to get to the Andean mountains.
When news of Ehinger’s death reached Spain, Federmann quickly applied to become new governor
of the colony. He was allowed to sail back but only as second-in-command to the German knight
Georg Hohemut von Speyer. They arrived at the colony in 1534, and Speyer sent Federman with a
small force to a valley west of Maracaibo which was disputed with the Spaniards of Santa Marta.
The young Conquistador was happy to do so as he hoped that El Dorado might
be to the west of New Augsburg. But Speyer also dreamt of gold,
and he believed that El Dorado had to lay south with the Meta civilization. In 1535, Speyer began
to assemble his own expedition, and on May 13, started retracing Federmann’s path . By July,
the explorers were fighting the natives near the modern town of Barquisimeto, before continuing to
the southwest . A few days later, Speyer got to the eastern foothills of the Mérida mountains,
but instead of crossing, he decided to keep going through the plains to avoid the mountain cold.
Back at the capital, Federmann had returned in late 1535 after securing the valley from
Santa Marians. Learning of Speyer’s expedition, he left New Augsburg with 400 men towards the eastern
shores of Lake Maracaibo, with the mountain ranges of the Andes standing on the right to guide him
in Spring of 1536. From there, Federmann continued southwards until he reached the western
foothills of the Mérida mountain ranges. The young Conquistador knew this was the last known location
of Speyer, and suspected that the governor would order him to return to the capital if they met.
To avoid encountering his superior, Federmann began an eastward veer into the difficult plains
of the Orinoco. At the junction of the Apure and the Orinoco rivers, he encountered a ragged
band of stranded Spaniards incorporating them into his company. He also learnt of Speyer’s
whereabouts from the natives, altering his course as necessary to avoid the encounter.
Speyer meanwhile was facing many suffering from difficult terrain,
weather , and jaguar ambushes killed their horses. Despite all of this, on February 2, 1536,
he passed through the Apure River and reached the Casanare River,
which flows into the Meta. There, Speyer found the friendly Zaquitios natives, who told him that
they could lead him to a mountain pass that led to the Muisca of Cundinamarca. However,
the explorers were ambushed by the hostile natives, causing the Zaquitio guides to flee
and without them the pass proved impossible to locate, so, Speyer kept going southwards into the
lands of the ferocious and well-organized Uaupés . His musketeers managed to keep the Uaupés at bay,
giving Speyer enough time to learn that the source of the Meta River was nearby. At the river,
they found friendly Uaupés that traded in gold and silver, but as they couldn’t cross the mountain
ranges from there either, Speyer continued south until he crossed the Guaviare River. No matter
how far south he traveled, the mountain ranges kept seeming impassable, and at the Caqueta River
the explorers were ambushed by the Chogue natives, suffering many casualties in the struggle. Speyer,
frustrated by his lack of progress, then ascended the Caqueta in revenge and slaughtered a whole
Chogue village. On August 10, 1537, the prospect of war with the Chogues finally forced Speyer to
turn back. He had reached the line of the Equator, traversed 1500 miles and discovered many places,
but he had only gathered 50 pounds of gold with no evidence of El Dorado to show for.
At the same time, Federmann was approaching the Meta River from the west. After a year
roaming in the plains of the Orinoco, the young Conquistador finally crossed the Meta and learned
of Speyer’s retreat in the summer of 1537. Taking particular care not to cross the governor’s path,
Federmann began to march south along the foothills of the Andean mountain ranges
in search of the same mountain pass that Speyer had failed to find. Federmann would fruitlessly
spend all of the year trying to find the mountain pass, but luckily, early in 1539, the young
Conquistador came to the village of Pasacote and finally discovered the mountain pass of Sumapaz.
But the hardships of the passage were immense. 13000 feet above sea level, the bedraggled
explorers traced their way along a trail that reached from one frightful precipice to another.
After a great struggle, Federmann managed to cross the mountain ranges and got to the grassy savannah
of the Bogotá plateau. The young Conquistador now longed to find the golden land of El Dorado
that lay ahead. But his dreams quickly broke into pieces when he found out that they had all been
forestalled. The plateau was full of Spaniards under the leadership of the
Conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada. Another Spanish expedition under Sebastián de Belalcázar
then arrived from Quito, and with them, the German found out that the Muisca of Cundinamarca were not
a rich and complex civilization that could rival the Incas or the Aztecs. Both German and Spanish
Conquistadors were highly disillusioned by the discovery that there was no gold at El Dorado.
There was however, a good amount of salt springs that yielded a rich supply of this necessary
commodity. It turns out the Muisca traded their valuable salt for gold and silver as the people
of the lowlands were happy to trade their useless metal for the commodities of salt. The Muisca
indeed used imported gold dust to coat the skin of their chieftain, but there was no real gold
in their lands. Quesada, Federmann and Belalcázar had wandered through unexpected jungles for years
only to come together at Bogotá in the same month of February, 1539, just to discover
that their search was a fraud. Together, the three Conquistadors then founded the city of Bogotá and
feasted for several days as they quickly became friends. The newly discovered territory was left
under the jurisdiction of Quesada while Federmann received 40 pounds of gold as compensation.
In May, the three Conquistadors parted together for Spain for an audience with Charles V regarding
their discovery. Federmann would never return to America, having lost the favor of the Welsers
because of his second and final insubordination. Speyer also got back to New Augsburg on May 27,
1538, where he learnt of Federmann’s recent adventures and achievements.
But the German governor was worn out and tired from his long and gruesome journey.
Before launching another expedition, Speyer would die in 1540.
Replacing him was German adventurer Philipp von Hutten who served with Speyer on his expedition
south and had learnt of another El Dorado east of the Orinoco basin with the Omagua civilization. He
would leave New Augsburg in an expedition in July, 1541, accompanied by Bartholomeus Welser the VI.
Two years later, he would get to the land of the Omaguas, where he discovered there was
no El Dorado there either. After a fight with the Omaguas, Hutten would be severely injured and the
company would have to retreat under the leadership of Bartholomeus. Arriving back to New Augsburg in
1544, the Germans were ambushed by the Spaniard Juan de Carvajal. Welser managed to fight off
and wound Carvajal, but in April of 1546, Hutten and Welser would be captured by the Spaniards.
For some time, Carvajal kept them in chains at his capital before having them beheaded,
thus ending the Welsers aspirations to have a colony in the New World.
Eight years later, the Welsers grant of Venezuela was officially taken from them
when Charles V abdicated his throne. This would be the end of German Venezuela, but the German
Conquistadors left a great legacy behind, not only with the name of a modern-day country,
as they also managed to explore and discover much of northern South America with their expeditions,
playing a crucial role in the search of El Dorado and the conquest of New Granada.
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