Cortés and Montezuma

Landing on the Mexican coast on Good Friday, 1519, Hernán Cortés felt

himself the bearer of a divine burden to conquer and convert the first

advanced civilization Europeans had yet encountered in the West. For

Montezuma, leader of the Mexicans, April 21, 1519 (known in their

sophisticated astronomical system as 9 Wind Day) was the precise date of

a dire prophesy: the return of Quetzalcoatl, a fearsome god predicted

to arrive by ship, from the East, with light skin, a black beard, robed

in black—exactly as Cortés would. The ensuing drama is described by

eminent historian Maurice Collis in a style that is equal parts story

and scholarship. Though its consequences have been treated by writers as

diverse as D.H. Lawrence and Charles Olson, never before have the facts

of this event been rendered with such extraordinary clarity and

elegance.