This anecdote get brought up all the time whenever conquistadors or meso-americans get mentioned.

I don't know much about meso-american history, but it's quite known that the Spaniards used all sort of propaganda in their narratives as a way to justify the conversion to Christianity of the New World's inhabitants.

And after reading my lot of ancient historical records on different places, events and peoples, I've came to notice that, no matter what culture they are from, the historians and authors of these accounts tend to be a teeny tiny little bit biased in their writings. Sometimes changing or adding elements out of nowhere to convey how great is whatever they place on a pedestal (an ideology, religion, culture, empire, king, etc.).

So I'm a little bit skeptical of that missionary Bernardino de Sahagún who translated the Aztecs' perspective on their first encounter with foreigners they mistook for being gods. Some parts of his narratives seemed believable, others... quite doubtful.

I can give credit to his work for being perhaps true to some extent since he describes only the Aztec king Moctezuma thinking of the Spaniards as gods, while the Aztec people, at large, didn't bought it. But I'm still not sure about that "gods" myth... The very fact that it was constantly repeated and perpetuated by the conquistadors referring to themselves as "gods" makes it all the harder to believe. Especially seeing how other natives treated Spaniards and the more down-to-earth view they had of them.

What was his sources and how did he translate the viewpoint of the Aztec perspective ? Did the Aztecs even have a script for Nahuatl to translate from ? How reliable were his translations ? How objective and unbiased were his accounts ? To what extent do modern historians agree he was a reliable source ?

Thanks in advance !