War Dogs !!!

[celtan]

Spanish War Dogs were specifically bred to hunt and utterly destroy americans, english, dutch, etc. and even the very own spanish. They were Weapons of War, not lap doggies. The Perros Dogos were treated even better than the owning soldier's family, and with good reason, they often were the difference between life and death for their owners.

Las Casas was indeed an apostle for the indians, but he was quite the opossite at his arrival, and he didn't extend his mercies to his african slaves either. Most of the things he wrote about were exagerated and embellished tall tales told to him by indians he met, and heard after the umpteenth repetition and agrandizement . Fray Jeronimo Motolinia, who was Las Casas companion during the Conquest, and one of his most acerbic detractors, often stated that Las Casas never saw or was remotely close to any of the scenes he so luridly describes. Nonetheless, lies, exaggerations et al, did serve the purpose at the Cortes of having the "Laws of Indias"written protecting the Americans at least as theoretical equals of the Europeans. Of course, from the cobbled streets of Madrid and Toledo, to the mud and thatched houses of America, those edicts often did very little to protect the americans from the europeans, be them Spanish, English, French or whatever...

Virtually all of the blood and gore atributed to the Spanish come from 16th C English and Dutch propaganda, the so-called Black Legend, and have no historical basis, although they are still being repeated ad-nauseum as historical facts.

Indeed one of the reason Charles I forbade the colonization of America by his German and Dutch vassals, was because they had the quaint custom of surrounding indian villages, killing everyone inside, then taking away whatever they fancied, without any attempts to first approach the natives and asking for either surrender or "vasallaje".

The Spanish Church was horrified by this practice, since the "Indians" so killed didn't have the chance to convet to catholicism, and thus went to Hell to engross the Devil's armies.

OTOH, when you look at the European Wars in Germany, Holland, England and even in Spain (see Cathars/Albigenses), you'll see that taking whole cities (sometime from their own side) and slaughtering their inhabitants was nothing too strange. So, the Conquistadores simply brought to America the kind of War they had learnt in Europe.

Dogs were, and are still trained and used by modern governments to attack and kill enemy forces, and sometimes even defenseless civilians.
Heck, If I were in an urban or jungle combat situation, I'd love to have a Mastin beside me, the enemy's heads be darned.

Best

M

Originally Posted by pallas

Mark Derr's A Dog's History of America (North Point Press: 2004; see Washington Post book review) offers a broad portrait of the use of war dogs in the Americas. According to Derry, the Conquistadors' dogs were "specifically bred and trained to hunt down and disembowel Indians," and they followed the "practice of bringing along on any campaign chained Indian slaves as food for the dogs."


From Pestilence and Genocide (excerpted from the book American Holocaust by David Stannard, Oxford University Press, 1992: "...[Vasco Núñez de Balboa] had his own favorite dog-Leoncico, or "little lion," a reddish-colored cross between a greyhound and a mastiff-that was rewarded at the end of a campaign for the amount of killing it had done. On one much celebrated occasion, Leoncico tore the head off an Indian leader in Panama while Balboa, his men, and other dogs completed the slaughter of everyone in a village that had the ill fortune to lie in their journey's path. Heads of human adults do not come off easily, so the authors of Dogs of the Conquest seem correct in calling this a "remarkable feat," although Balboa's men usually were able to do quite well by themselves. As one contemporary description of this same massacre notes: "The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain like brute beasts. ...Vasco ordered forty of them to be torn to pieces by dogs."




Atrocities of the Spanish Conquistadors in the West Indies Account from Bartolome de Las Casas (missionary and conquistadore) circa 1513: "...The Spaniards with their horses, their spears and lances, began to commit murders and other strange cruelties. They entered into towns and villages, sparing neither children nor old men and women. They ripped their bellies and cut them to pieces as if they had been slaughtering lambs in a field....Most tried to flee. They tried to hide in the mountains. They tried to flee from these men. Men who were empty of all pity, behaving like savage beasts. They are nothing more than slaughterers and enemies of mankind. These evil men had even taught their hounds, fierce dogs, to tear natives to pieces at first sight...."