Sierra de la Plata

The Sierra de la Plata ("Silver Mountains") 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 indigenous ambush in Paraguay, but survivors brought precious metals back to corroborate their story. The legend inspired other expeditions, all of which ended in failure.

The Río de la Plata (literally "Silver River") and the modern country of Argentina (from the Latin argentum, "silver") both take their names from the myth. The legend of the Sierra de la Plata may have been based on the Cerro Rico de Potosí in Bolivia, which was discovered by a Spanish expedition traveling from Peru in 1545.

The legend of the White King and the Sierra de la Plata began with the expeditions of Juan Díaz de Solís along the coast of South America. On his first voyage in 1512, Solís followed the coast of Brazil until he came across an enormous estuary, the Río de la Plata, which Amerigo Vespucci had named the River Jordan on his 1501-02 expedition and the local inhabitants called Paranaguazu ("river like the sea" or "great water"). Solís decided to call it the Mar Dulce ("Freshwater Sea") due to its great size. After exploring the area and guessing it could be a strait connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific, Solís returned to Spain to stake his claim as conqueror and governor of the region. In 1516, he returned with the title of Captain General, but when Solís and his party landed on the eastern bank of the Río de la Plata, they were attacked and killed by Guaranís. Seeing this, the crew remaining on the ships decided to weigh anchor and return to Spain.

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