Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was a Spanish conquistador and explorer who led a large expedition from what is now Mexico to present-day Kansas through parts of the southwestern United States between 1540 and 1542. Vázquez de Coronado had hoped to reach the Cities of Cíbola, often referred to now as the mythical Seven Cities of Gold. His expedition marked the first European sightings of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River, among other landmarks. His name is often Anglicized as Vasquez de Coronado or just Coronado.
Conquistadors or conquistadores is the term used to refer to Spanish and Portuguese soldiers and explorers who carried out the conquests and explorations of the Age of Discovery. Conquistadors sailed beyond the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas, Oceania, Africa and Asia, establishing new colonies and trade routes. They brought much of the "New World" under the dominion of Spain and Portugal.
El Dorado is a mythical city of gold supposedly located somewhere in South America. The king of this city was said to be so rich that he would cover himself from head to foot in gold dust – either daily or on certain ceremonial occasions – before diving into a sacred lake to wash it off. The legend was first recorded in the 16th century by Spanish colonists in America; they referred to the king as El Dorado, 'the golden one', a name which eventually came to be applied to the city itself.
Gonzalo Pizarro y Alonso was a Spanish conquistador. He was the younger paternal half brother of Francisco Pizarro, who led the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Pizarro was the illegitimate son of Gonzalo Pizarro y Rodríguez de Aguilar (1446–1522), who, as an infantry colonel, served under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba during the Italian Wars. He was also the younger paternal half brother of Hernándo Pizarro y de Vargas and the older paternal full brother of Juan Pizarro y Alonso.
Scott O'Dell was an American writer of 26 novels for young people, along with three novels for adults and four nonfiction books. He wrote historical fiction, primarily, including several children's novels about historical California and Mexico. For his contribution as a children's writer he received the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1972, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. He received The University of Southern Mississippi Medallion in 1976 and the Catholic Libraries Association Regina Medal in 1978.
Esteban: Child of the Sun, known outside of Japan as the first season of The Mysterious Cities of Gold, is a French-Japanese animated series which was produced by MK, NHK, DiC Audiovisuel, CLT and animated by Studio Pierrot.
Antonio de Mendoza was a Spanish colonial administrator who was the first viceroy of New Spain, serving from 14 November 1535 to 25 November 1550, and the second viceroy of Peru, from 23 September 1551, until his death on 21 July 1552.
The Sierra de la Plata was a mythical source of silver in the interior of South America. The legend began in the early 16th century when castaways from the Juan Díaz de Solís expedition heard indigenous stories of a mountain of silver in an inland region ruled by the so-called White King. The first European to lead an expedition in search of it was the castaway Aleixo Garcia, who crossed nearly the entire continent to reach the Andean altiplano. On his way back to the coast, Garcia died in an ambush by indigenous people in Paraguay, but survivors brought precious metals back to corroborate their story.
The lost world is a subgenre of the fantasy or science fiction genres that involves the discovery of an unknown Earth civilization. It began as a subgenre of the late-Victorian adventure romance and remains popular into the 21st century.
Jack Gantos is an American author of children's books. He is best known for the fictional characters Rotten Ralph and Joey Pigza. Rotten Ralph is a cat who stars in twenty picture books written by Gantos and illustrated by Nicole Rubel from 1976 to 2014. Joey Pigza is a boy with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), featured in five novels from 1998 to 2014.
Christopher Paul Curtis is an American children's book author. His first novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, was published in 1995 and brought him immediate national recognition, receiving the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award and the Newbery Honor Book Award in addition to numerous other awards. In 2000, he became the first person to win both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award—prizes received for his second novel Bud, Not Buddy—and the first African-American man to win the Newbery Medal. His novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 was made into a television film in 2013.
The myth of the Seven Cities of Gold, also known as the Seven Cities of Cíbola, was popular in the 16th century and later featured in several works of popular culture. According to legend, the seven cities of gold referred to Aztec mythology revolving around the Pueblos of the Spanish Nuevo México, modern New Mexico and Southwestern United States.
White gods is the pseudoscientific belief that ancient cultures around the world were visited by white races in ancient times, and that they were known as "white gods".
Search For the Lost City of Gold is a 2003 documentary commissioned by The History Channel and Five (UK). It traces Tahir Shah's epic quest for the lost city of Paititi in the Madre de Dios jungle of Peru, to which the Incas fled from the Spanish in 1532. This journey and his TV-hour film also formed the basis for the book House of the Tiger King, as well as the cinematic feature film with the same name. The film was produced by Caravan Film and was directed by Swedish film director David Flamholc.
Mildred DeLois Taylor is a Newbery Award-winning American young adult novelist. She is best known for her novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, part of her Logan family series.
The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Secret Paths is a game developed by Neko Entertainment and published by Ynnis Interactive, relating the events told in the 2012 television series The Mysterious Cities of Gold.
The Spanish conquest of the Muisca took place from 1537 to 1540. The Muisca were the inhabitants of the central Andean highlands of Colombia before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. They were organised in a loose confederation of different rulers; the psihipqua of Muyquytá, with his headquarters in Funza, the hoa of Hunza, the iraca of the sacred City of the Sun Sugamuxi, the Tundama of Tundama, and several other independent caciques. The most important rulers at the time of the conquest were psihipqua Tisquesusa, hoa Eucaneme, iraca Sugamuxi and Tundama in the northernmost portion of their territories. The Muisca were organised in small communities of circular enclosures, with a central square where the bohío of the cacique was located. They were called "Salt People" because of their extraction of salt in various locations throughout their territories, mainly in Zipaquirá, Nemocón, and Tausa. For the main part self-sufficient in their well-organised economy, the Muisca traded with the European conquistadors valuable products as gold, tumbaga, and emeralds with their neighbouring indigenous groups. In the Tenza Valley, to the east of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense where the majority of the Muisca lived, they extracted emeralds in Chivor and Somondoco. The economy of the Muisca was rooted in their agriculture with main products maize, yuca, potatoes, and various other cultivations elaborated on elevated fields. Agriculture had started around 3000 BCE on the Altiplano, following the preceramic Herrera Period and a long epoch of hunter-gatherers since the late Pleistocene. The earliest archaeological evidence of inhabitation in Colombia, and one of the oldest in South America, has been found in El Abra, dating to around 12,500 years BP.
Hernán Pérez de Quesada, sometimes spelled as Quezada, was a Spanish conquistador. Second in command of the army of his elder brother, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Hernán was part of the first European expedition towards the inner highlands of the Colombian Andes. The harsh journey, taking almost a year and many deaths, led through the modern departments Magdalena, Cesar, Santander, Boyacá, Cundinamarca and Huila of present-day Colombia between 1536 and 1539 and, without him, Meta, Caquetá and Putumayo of Colombia and northern Peru and Ecuador between 1540 and 1542.
Baltasar Maldonado, also written as Baltazar Maldonado, was a Spanish conquistador who first served under Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, and later in the army of Hernán Pérez de Quesada in the Spanish conquest of the Muisca.
