Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

by Camilla Townsend

The group that had wandered away to the east had been following the peaceful leader. If they decided the man’s name was not Huemac, as a leading culture hero of numerous ancient stories was called, but rather Quetzalcoatl, as the former teacher fray Toribio was the first one to suggest, the story would work perfectly, as one of the many year signs associated with the god Quetzalcoatl corresponded to 1519. The mortal man could have become a god and been expected to return then. Unfortunately, the students got the matter a bit confused. From their people’s own records, they knew of the arrivals along the coast in the two preceding years, and they said it was the second captain who was thought to be Quetzalcoatl returning from the east.32 That one was actually Juan de Grijalva, sailing in 1518, not Cortés arriving in 1519. But no matter. The gist of the story was there, and it could be taken up in generations to come and embellished as much as future authors saw fit to do.