Did Montezuma really tought that Cortés was Quetzalcoatl visiting earth?

The short answer is no. The long answer is also no.

If we go back to the earliest source, in this case Hernan Cortés himself, you’ll note a few interesting things. First, he does not actually mention Quetzalcoatl. Second, upon their meeting Motecuhzoma says this to him, ‘See that I am of flesh and blood like you and all other men, and I am truly mortal and substantial.’ So, according to Cortés himself, Motecuhzoma thought that Cortés was a mortal man. Yet, somehow everybody missed this very explicit and clear statement.

So why did this myth become popular? Well, if we go a few paragraphs back, Cortés records an elaborate speech where Motecuhzoma states that the Mexica were not natives and that their legitimate lords were going to return from the east someday. Note that he never claims that these predecessors were gods. In any case, we should be very suspicious of this. Motechuzoma may not have meant this literally. If he even said this at all! Cortés may have fabricated the speech in order to create the impression that Motecuhzoma had surrender to him. By doing this, he had a bargaining chip in negotiating with the Crown who he had technically betrayed. It also gave him a means to excuse atrocities committed against the Mexica, as their resistance could not be defined as ‘rebellion’.

So, where does Quetzalcoatl come into it? Well, Bernal Díaz may bear some of the blame. According to his account, the Gulf Coast people started calling the Spaniards Teules, which he translates as gods or devils. He quickly forgets about the devil part. He was mistaken. Teotl, from which Teule came, can mean god or divinity. But Nahuatl speakers also used it more colloquially to refer to things that were influential, amazing, or otherwise uncanny. In other words, they were not being literal. It is also worth noting that Díaz is not talking about Motecuhzoma here, or even Aztecs, but a completely different group. And, even though Díaz does know about Quetzalcoatl, he never connects him with the Spanish or Cortés.

The biggest source, therefore, would be Book 12 of the Florentine Codex. This is the earliest source where Cortés was explicitly connected with Quetzalcoatl. The problem is that it was written about 60 years after the event, by people who were almost certainly not there at the time. Indeed, the sections about Motecuhzoma read like a fable, rather than an account. Most likely, the real source is a mixture of folklore, Christian ideas of a returning God, combined with the shattered nobility’s eagerness to find an excuse and a scapegoat.

Sources: Brooks, Frances J.: ‘Moctezuma Xocoyotl, Hernán Cortés, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo: The Construction of an Arrest’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, 75/2 (1995)

Cortés, Hernan: Letters from Mexico, tr. Anthony Pagden, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)

Díaz, Bernal: The Conquest of New Spain, tr. J.M. Cohen, (London: Penguin Books, 1963)

Restall, Matthew: Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)

When Montezuma met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History, (New York: Ecco: An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2018)

Sahagún, Bernardino de: General History of the things of New Spain Book 12: The Conquest of Mexico, tr. by Arthur O.J. Anderson, and Charles E. Dibble, (Santa Fe: University of Utah, 1979)

Townsend, Camilla: ‘Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico’, The American Historical Review, 108/3 (2003)