A 1636 chronicle says the heir of Guatavita fasted six years in a cave and was covered in gold dust to take his uncle's lordship, and the rite gave the world El Dorado

El Dorado began as a real succession rite and grew into a legend. Juan Rodríguez Freyle wrote the fullest account in 1636 from what don Juan, lord of Guatavita, told him. Don Juan said that among the Muisca, nephews, sons of a sister, inherited, and that he was in his succession fast when the Spaniards came. The heir spent six years in a cave without women, meat, salt or chili, and could not see the sun. Then he was stripped, coated in sticky earth and powdered with gold dust. He stood on a reed raft with a pile of gold and emeralds at his feet, was rowed to the middle of the lake, and threw the offering in. Freyle wrote that the name El Dorado came from this rite, "que tantas vidas ha costado, y haciendas." He also wrote that the old lord hid his treasure from the Spaniards and had the carriers killed, and nobody has found it. Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada reached the lake in 1537 and later lost his whole force hunting El Dorado. In the 1580s Antonio de Sepúlveda cut a notch in the rim to drain it. An English company dug a drainage tunnel, dated 1909 by one source, and the mud hardened and blocked it. Colombia placed the lake under legal protection in 1965. In 1969 a farmer at Pasca found a gold model of the raft, now in Bogotá's Gold Museum.