Cortes and Montezuma

The convergence of Cortes and Montezuma is the most emlematic event in the birth of what would come to be called "America". Landing on the Mexican coast on Good Friday, 1519, Hernan Cortes 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 astronomical system as 9 Wind Day) was the precise date of a dire prophesy: the return of Quetzacoatl, a fearsome god predicted to arrive by ship, from the East, with light skin, a black beard, robed in black - exactly as Cortes would. The ensuing drama is described by historian Maurice Collis in a style that is equal parts story and scholarship.