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.

Chapter three is dedicated to the tradition of the apotheosis in the Andes. It opens with the context of the Inca Empire and the civil war between Atahualpa and Huascar, and a summary of Spanish penetration from 1532. There follows a fictive reconstruction of dialogue between the Inca ruler Atahualpa and his counsellors. The chapter then analyzes the Andean identification of the Spaniards with the god Viracocha, and considers evidence that there are no references at all to the Spaniards as gods, or as associated with Viracocha, from the period of first contact with Andean peoples. There follows discussion of misunderstanding about Viracocha as a creator god. The chapter moves on to analyze two key concepts of Andean thought, camac (“life force”), and huaca/wak’a (“being with transcendent power”) and explores how Andeans used the history of huacas to interpret the Spanish invasion. To call the Spaniards Viracochas did not mean that they were gods in the European sense; rather, it was a way of linking them to the Andean past and the Andean worldview.