Still Searching Aztec Montezuma’s Lost Treasure

The missing gold of Montezuma, ninth Emperor of the Aztec Empire was buried by the Aztecs, the Utes protected it, the Spanish killed for it, and the Mormons looted it, but is the bulk of it still out there? On November 18, 1519, Spanish conquistadors under the command of Hernando Cortés entered the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, overthrowing indigenous control and imprisoning Montezuma, the ruler of the empire. Cortés had sailed east from Cuba before marching his soldiers overland from Vera Cruz. Their objective was, despite what church leaders wrote about missionary endeavors, to harvest gold and riches. With the capture of Tenochtitlan, their objectives were realized almost beyond belief. The amount of gold they discovered surmounted their wildest dreams. But avarice is fueled by the word “more.” The amount of riches bestowed upon them by Montezuma, who hoped to buy the Spanish invaders off, did not satisfy their greed, it merely inflamed it. Cortés wanted more.

Portrait of Moctezuma II (1466-1520),  attributed to Antonio Rodriguez (Public Domain)

Quetzalcoatl The Feathered Serpent God

The reason Cortes’ military objectives were at first so easily obtained was due to an historical mystery that he did not understand at that time.  Mesoamerican cultures have different versions of this story, but there are certain commonalities in their tales:

Quetzalcoatl, the ‘feathered serpent’, was chief God of the Aztec religious system. He was represented by Venus, the solar light, and the morning star. His twin brother, Xoloti, was the evening star.  In Catholic biblical imagery, Venus is called the morning star. According to Isaiah 14:12, however, the ‘morning star of light’ became a ‘fallen” star of darkness’: “ How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” In other words, the opposition of Jesus and Lucifer, good and evil, was about to come into fruition in the persons of Quetzalcoatl and Cortés.

Two forms of the god Quetzalcoatl in Codex Laud, (15th century) as the feathered serpent, celestial deity (left) and as the god of the wind Ehecatl (right) (Public Domain)

According to many historians, Quetzalcoatl, the ‘feathered serpent’, or the ‘plumed serpent’ whom many Mesoamerican peoples claim was their ancestor, was an hombre blanco, a white man, with a flowing beard. He condemned sacrifices that polluted the people. He taught them how to use proper cooking fires, and showed them how to ” live together as husband and wife.”

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Jim Willis is author of 17 books on religion and spirituality, he has been an ordained minister for over 40 years while working part-time as a carpenter, the host of his own drive-time radio show, an arts council director and adjunct college professor in the fields of World Religions and Instrumental Music. His next book (October 2024) is Lost Loot: Cursed Treasures, Blood Money and Finding Mayhem. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink Press

Top Image: ” The Meeting of Cortés and Montezuma,”from the Conquest of Mexico series

Mexico (1650+) Jay I. Kislak Collection (Public Domain)

By: Jim Willis