The tradition of the apotheosis probably arose through the confluence of native and European beliefs and actions, rather than as simply a one-sided European creation or imposition. Indigenous understandings of the significance of white men originated not with Europeans but with native peoples themselves. Natives are on record as rejecting European claims, and they formed their own view independently. There is no evidence for an apotheosis in Mesoamerica or the Andes in the original sixteenth-century sources, especially those written at the time of the Spaniards’ arrival. The myth of Viracocha and the myth of Quetzalcoatl both reflect a retrospective view rather than one held at the time of the Spaniards’ arrival. Europeans channeled a life force that made them “more-than-human,” or “human-plus.” Both native peoples and Europeans interpreted their mutual contact in terms of their preexisting mythology. The traditional contrast between scientific, rational, modern Europeans, on the one hand, and myth-bound, irrational, premodern indigenous peoples, on the other, is entirely misleading. Both groups made interpretations based on reason and rational enquiry, and at the same time employed mythological explanations.