War Dogs !!!

[David]

Here are the furious fighting felines Monk (the Magnificent) and Ravi (the Rave Ravster) fighting it out to the death in flurry of claws and fur.....well....sorta.

[Norman McCormick]

Otto the Bold, gadabout, late night reveller and all round no good dude.

[Norman McCormick]

BEWARE vicious Guard Dog heating paws on kitchen stove.

[Gonzalo G]

Pallas, from your quotes, I see that you only have a primary source, which is Fray Bartolomé Las Casas. This quote comes from his little opuscule titled "Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias", title which we can traslate freely as "A Very Short Enumeration of the Destruction of the Indies", which was written in 1552 (I have the complete text). Also, I don´t have any doubt about the description of the behaviour of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. In fact, I don´t have the slightiest doubt about the atrocities, unecessary cuelties, tortures, sistematic rapes and genocide from the conquistadors, which mexicans from my generation learnt about very well from childhood in the school. I can even make a more extensive description of them, quoting primary sources from spanish and indian witness. Only in the 16th Century Las Casas calculated more than 15 million killings of indians in the Caribbean and today´s Mexico. Not to mention the epidemics, which caused more million killings, leaving uninhabited extense areas, previously very populated.

My only point was about the race of the dogs (the kind of breed), and about the killing of war prisioners. Those were you main points in your post. The spaniards do used dogs along all the conquest, in the way already described, but I question they used mainly the spanish alano (alan?), but the mastiff. And yes, when the spaniards were determined to exterminate all the population of a specific village, or only all the men, they feed the dogs with the flesh of the dead. The point which I doubt, is they used man already taken previously as prisioners, or the practice of bringing slaves to war parties only to feed the dogs. That would be "uneconomic". To the eyes of the spaniards, indians were less than animals, but they had specific utilitarian aims in their killings, independently of their cuelty. In battle or at the end of battle they killed for a specific purpose, but they take captives only when determined to use them as slaves. Their greed was superior even to their cruelty, and this is much to say. But if you refer to war prisioners as the men surrendered and inmediately after battle, I agree with you. It seems that there is no much difference among this statements, but I only wanted to precise this points, as I am concerned with historic exactitude. It must be also said that the spanish crown and many churchmen had a deep distaste for many of this practices, and legislative measures, uneffective to a certain point, were taken to stop them. Maybe you can see this as too "academic", but many myths are reproduced in the taste of the "tremendist" or in the "justificationist" inclinations of some people. Maybe my companion forumites see me as too punctillous, but I am convinced that this a forum with a good academic level, and a space where we can discuss historic subjects pertaining to the matter of the threads, in order to know better. Thank you for your attention.
Regards

Gonzalo

[Gonzalo G]

Sorry David, I didn´t see your post when writting my last one. It was not my intention to be off-topic, but you know how digressions are made on the road.
My regards

Gonzalo

PD: Just to be precise: there is not any Jerónimo de Motolinia. Did you mean Fray Toribio de Benavente "Motolinia", or Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta, Manolo? Just to be precise, as I don´t mean a "cheap" attack to your erudition.

[Gonzalo G]

Some of my war dogs:

[inveterate]

Gonzalo, The top dog looks like an Aussie "Blue Heeler" or Cattle dog is it? Rod