Source: TW
A trope of historical narratives is that superstitious natives believed European invaders to be gods. Yet the more I read, the more it seems these stories are post-conquest propaganda. Take the claim that the Aztecs (Mexica) thought Hernán Cortés was the god Quetzalcoatl.
You’re probably familiar w/ the standard story: The Aztecs believed that the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl, was destined to return from the east on a certain date. When the conquistador Hernán Cortés pulled up, they mistook him for the deity, making them easier to conquer. This is popular. It appears in books like Todorov’s “Conquest of America”, along with a slew of history textbooks (search “Quetzalcoatl” here: https://t.co/Ke96GVe5L8).
Yet the evidence is tenuous. For one, although it supposedly happened in 1519, the Cortés-as-god story is not mentioned for decades. It doesn’t appear, for example, in Cortés’s letters, nor in the accounts of the early priests who studied indigenous religion. Rather the story first showed up in the 1560s, when the Franciscan friar Sahagún edited the Florentine codex. The description is evocative. Yet no one who observed some of the incidents would’ve been alive to tell Sahagún—in part b/c the emperor’s inner circle had been killed.
It fails in other ways, too: There’s no evidence of a pre-conquest myth of the feathered serpent leaving or returning. Quetzalcoatl was not prominent in the capital, Tenochtitlan. He was important in Cholula—yet they attacked, not acquiesced to, Cortés on his way to the capital.
The trope is, of course, bigger than Cortés. Colombus said that he and his sailors were taken to be gods. In Peru, Pizarro was presumably taken to be the god Viracocha. This version of colonial conquest places some of the responsibility on natives, who welcome later arrangements. Yet when indigenous people share their stories, we find that they are much more discerning. My favorite is this clip from the film “First Contact” - Some New Guineans thought that white people might be ancestral ghosts—until they saw them defecate.
The trope of the credulous native downplays the much more interesting reality. Rather than adopting simpleton narratives, indigenous people have entertained a sophisticated discourse to figure out who newcomers are and what exactly they want. Conquest is rarely welcomed. Almost all of the details here come from this incredible article by Camilla Townsend: https://t.co/DUWrwcpbZV ; Free and edited version here: https://t.co/FUPyeqGFni