According to Warren and Ferguson, Bernadino Sahagun, a sixteenth century Spanish priest, wrote: "And when Don Hernando Cortes came [to Mexico] they thought it was He [Quetzalcoatl] and they received Cortes as such until his conversation, and that of those Spaniards who came with him, undeceived them"(Sahagun Book 8:21).
Juan de Torquemada, a Catholic priest born about 1564, arrived in Mexico from Spain early in the seventeenth century and describes Quetzalcoatl as a:
"white man, large of body, wide of forehead, large eyes, long and black hair, large and round beard . . . They held him in great esteem, . . . and in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters this Quetzalcoatl was supreme, a great priest. . . . They say about this God, Quetzalcoatl, that while living in this mortal life, he dressed in long clothes down to his feet. He was perfect in moral virtues and they say that He is alive and He is to return."
The Fair God of ancient Mexico and Central America was known by many symbolic names. But in central Mexico the most common symbolic names for him was Quetzalcoatl. Two symbols, the Quetzal bird and the serpent, identify this ancient deity as the "Life of the World." In Guatemala this ancient god was commonly called Gucumatz -- a Quiche Maya term identical in meaning to the Aztec name Quetzalcoatl. . . . In Yucatan the Messiah was known as Itzamna, the Son. . . . A belief in his divine power as creator and in his second coming was general throughout the ancient Mesoamerican world. [Bruce W. Warren and Thomas Stuart Ferguson, The Messiah in Ancient America, p. 3-5]