Quetzalcoatl Myth is considered as the great epic of the Mesoamerica. This epic describes series of events where in its setting was in the city of Tollan Xicocotitlan or known at present as Tula, Hidalgo. The natives or the people of the Mesoamerican know what Quetzcotl was. They simply described it as a feathered serpent of the ancient Mexico but were not aware of who he was. Actually he was supposed to be the hero or a man rather who had to go back in the east to have his power back. The Mesoamerican had mistaken Hernan Cortes as the Quetzcotl.
Because of this incident, even if Hernan Cortes, a Spaniard part of the first colonization in the Americas, battled and defeated the Mesoamerican, they even tend to glorify them. His conquest of the Aztec empire was really a big massacre and therefore could be considered as a crime but, since the people have mistaken him for Quetzcotl, he was neither convicted. The natives acceptance of Cortes as Quetzcotl gave way for the former to kept on conquering and ruling the rest of the Aztec Empire, thus, his plans were not really clear to anyone, his mistaken identity was the key in conquering the place.
Quetzcotl was actually a myth wherein there are no definite accounts of his existence but only stories handed by generation to generation. The connection between Hernan Cortes and the Quetzcotl was not clearly stated but indeed, it gave way to the colonization in the Mesoamerica.
References
Katherine Guardado and David Shindle. Quetzalcoatl: The Man, The Myth, The Legend. (1999). http://weber. ucsd. edu/~anthclub/quetzalcoatl/quetzal. htm#home