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.