otecuhzoma II) experienced a series of omens. In The Aztec Image of Self and Society, Miguel Leon-Portillo states "It is recorded that the general public also saw some of those wonders, including something that resembled a spike of fire, like an aurora of fire that seemed to be pricking the sky." Moctezuma is also said to have seen in a mirror a vision of people mounted on deer. The arrival of white strangers in Mexico was interpreted by Aztec priest and sages as the return of Quetzacoatl (Leon-Portillo 113-114).
Nobokov also recounts the ancient Hopi prophecy that a White Man "with a strong faith and a righteous religion" would come. He tells of an Indian seer, on what is today Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, who said "a great white whale would foretell the coming of a strange white race who would crowd out the red men" (Nabokov 5). Among other accounts, Nabokov lists that of Canadian artist Norval Morriseau, "Copper Thunderbird" in his native Ojibway. Morriseau tells of a story portending the coming of the white man to Canada. In Morriseau's book, Legends of My People: the Great Ojibway, he states that the story was told to his grandfather many years ago.
About two hundred years ago, Morriseau writes, at Fort Hope, Ontario, there was a medicine man who would bring visitors from heaven to a wigwam shaped like a beaver house.
People would surround the tent in a circle. The medicine man would speak from inside the tent to the people seated outside. He would say, "Now we shall have visitors again." Then he would pound his medicine drum. "The great skies were clear and there was no wind." Suddenly, the wind would blow into the top of the wigwam and out of the holes on the side "came a refreshing breeze." People were heard rustling in mid-air, but not seen. Men, women and children could be heard talking inside the wigwam. The medicine man would tell the people outside, "Our visitors are here. Listen."
One night, out o...