Not very true, by all accounts, though there is a story here.

First, to break this up: Native Americans responded differently to Europeans because they had their own things going on. The Aztec, Tarascans, Maya, Zapotecs, and Mextec's in Central America. The Musica and Inca in the South. The people in the Caribbean and North America I know less about. The population of the Americas as a whole certainly exceeded the entire population of Europe. There were a lot of people there and they did not all respond the same way. They had lots of different religious practice, cultures, and civilizations.

There is however little reason to think any of them saw the Europeans as gods.

The different peoples of the Americas had a lot of different religions and we frankly know only sporadic things about them. Edwin Barnhart has argued that the Andean cultures of South America may have had a monotheistic tradition but I don't think he has the evidence right now to support that. The religions of various areas though could have incredible legacies.

The feathered serpent was a consistent feature of Meso-American iconography, as were the symbols of Sustenance Mountain and Xibalba. We can trace the Staff God (also called the Fanged Deity) back thousands of years among the Andes civilizations.

They had their own religious traditions. We know that for sure. They responded to Christian missionaries in many ways. Some converted willingly. Some didn't. Some pretended to and continued their traditional religious practices in secret for centuries. Some are still practicing their old religions, especially in the Amazon where Europeans still haven't touched much.

Now, that story.

The feathered serpent, also known as Quetzacoatl, is generally understood to be deity of Mesoamerica. There's a lot of debate there. Some archeologists think we've been too eager to name images gods or point at things and call them the same image. There's a lot we don't know about the religions of the people of Mesoamerica. The Spanish burned a lot of their books during the conquests and that was after the Aztecs burned a lot of the books before the Spanish showed up! Double burning. Total disaster from our perspective. Lots of things we may never know.

One thing is curious though. Quetzacoatl is also the name of a legendary figure in central America. We're not sure if he's supposed to be the feathered serpent, named for the feathered serpent, or if the two somehow got conflated over time. The later is possible. Quetz was a king from Tulla according to the tale as we have it, a city revered by the Aztecs. Itzcoatl, the fourth Aztec King, burned a lot of books in 1427 and then tried to rewrite central American history. He may well have tried to conflate the figures of Quetz, the feathered serpent, and the cultural legitimacy of the Aztecs but this is pure hypothesis. We have very little evidence to work with.

So, there's a whole story here that long story short ends it with Quetz being driven from Tulla and some prophecy that he will return to reclaim the city. The year of his return is the year Cortez arrives on the coast of Mexico.

This is the origin of the 'the natives saw the Europeans as gods' idea.

But there's a lot of problems with it. One, the most obvious, is that Montezuma II and no one else seemed to treat Cortez as a god. We have two accounts of his conquest of the Aztecs by men who were there. It doesn't sound from their accounts like the Spanish were being treated as gods.

But Cortez sure liked the idea. He tried to sell it to King Charles of Spain.

The idea was further expanded by a man named Bernardino de Sahagun, a missionary. He authored the General History of the Things of New Spain which includes the Florentine Codex, intended for other Aztecs, which depicted Montezuma as addressing Cortez as he would a god. It's not clear how well Sahagun understood this. He had native assistants who helped him prepare the codex and they may have had ulterior motives or pious interests.

Today it's generally thought that the story of Cortez as Quetzacoatl is something that came to be after the conquest. A conflation, maybe the native and Spanish sides meeting in the middle, to explain the conquest of New Spain. To the natives the story could serve a purpose. The Aztec were not a popular bunch before or after the Spanish arrived. Others may have liked depicting them as foolish and naive. The Spanish certainly liked the idea, as it justified their conquest of the Americas.

In either case, it's probably not something people at the time of contact thought. We can review first hand accounts of Cortez conquest of the Aztecs and despite claims to the contrary, they never seemed to regard the Spanish as gods. They were certainly wary but it's likely they already knew of the Spanish before Cortez arrived. The Aztec maintained extensive trade networks and used them for intelligence gathering. They easily could have heard tales of the strange new men and their brutality from distant trade partners.

Much of Montezuma's actions also weren't that abnormal for the Aztec. The basic strategy for Aztec empire was to reach out to new trade partners. Feel them out. Figure out who is in charge. Then you invite them to Tenochtitlan and hold them hostage until they give you a great 'trade' deal. It was basic diplomacy for them. No belief in godhood required, but the Spanish may well have bought into the idea as an explanation for why Montezuma at times seemed so incredibly accommodating. They mistook standard Aztec diplomacy for fear or reverence.

There's a great lecture series if you like Audio Books: Maya to Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed. It's a series from the Great Courses and is narrated by Edwin Barnhart. He also has a lecture series on South America (mostly the Andean civilizations). They're both amazing.