Cortés and Montezuma

Landing on the Mexican coast on Good Friday, 1519, Hern n Cort s 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 Cort s 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.

Author: Maurice Collis
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 09/15/1999
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 7.95h x 5.25w x 0.68d
ISBN13: 9780811214230
ISBN10: 0811214230
BISAC Categories:
- History | Latin America | Mexico
- History | Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
- History | Expeditions & Discoveries