attackfish

Part of it is that the "explorer from Medieval-Europe-Land arrives in Pre-Columbian-Central-America-Land and is ... wait for it ... greeted by the natives as their white-skinned savior god." and then "helps them defeat their hereditary enemies and fulfills his expected role with grace, good humor, and a fair amount of self-reflective humility." This spanks of "what these people need is a honky!" They can't fix their problems on their own. They need this white man to come in and fix all their troubles. These sorts of stories are written by white people to assuage. They don't reflect reality and deny agency to the people represented in the non-European fantasy counterpart cultures.