In the decade before the Spanish arrived in Mexico,
Aztec Emperor Montezuma II and his people were filled with a
sense of foreboding. A series of evil omens had foretold of
calamities to come. A fiery comet crossed the sky. The temple
of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, burst into flames. The Lake
of Mexico boiled and rose, flooding into houses. A weeping woman
passed by in the middle of the night, crying "My children, we
must flee far away from this city!" Fishermen discovered a bird
that wore a strange mirror in the crown of its head. Montezuma
looked into the mirror and saw a distant plain, with people making
war against each other and riding on the backs of animals resembling
deer.
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