Cortés as Quetzalcoatl? The returning-god story

Spanish and some later Nahua sources claimed Moctezuma took Hernán Cortés, who landed near Veracruz in April 1519, for the god Quetzalcoatl returning from the east.

1519 CE · 19.20, -96.13 · status: disputed

The account

The idea appears in the Florentine Codex and in Spanish chronicles, but not in Cortés's own letters, which mention no such belief.

The sceptical view

Many historians now think the story was built after the conquest, by Spanish writers and by Nahua elites explaining the defeat. Camilla Townsend and Matthew Restall call it a myth of the conquest.

Connections in the atlas

• The eight omens before the conquest

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Quetzalcoatl
2. Wikipedia: Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire