London-based accounts of Guiana, from the beginnings of European exploration to the formation of various separate political entities, strive to tell and retell the need of an English presence in South America. This drive to competitively negotiate imperial ambitions originates in part in the political geography of the contested area, balanced between the Spanish presence to the North and the Portuguese to the South, while facing similar attempts by the Dutch and the French. Yet it also originates in Raleigh’s hear-say reports of El Dorado, which haunt tales of the Guianas for 300 years, promising that ultimate European freedom: gold. While criticism on the (colonial or postcolonial) Guianas to date tends to focus on slavery and related issues, this paper looks at the image of the Guianese native American, a vibrant nexus of English publications of the period in question. From a comparative analysis of fictional and non-fictional texts the Guiana “Indian” emerges as contested ground herself, oscillating between stereotypes of native subservience and innate nobility, gendered Otherness and emerging racial constructions, narrative appeals to exploitation and an (often paradoxical) rhetoric of political liberation. The establishment of slavery thus leaves traces in the depiction of Guianese tribes, while, in turn, even worn-out tropes such as Cannibalism can emerge as de/perception, provided access to a possible El Dorado remains within the reach of the English. The rhetoric of indigenous liberation from various suppressors by heroic English ventures finally shows the contemporary à propos of this historical project.