IN THE NEWS (again): vicious dogs

The shrewd Archdeacon of Seville, Juan Rodgriguez de Fonseca - the king's personal chaplain, in charge of the supplies for the explorer's fleet - felt otherwise, however, and made sure that on Columbus's second journey, in September 1493, his force was equipped with men, arms, and a pack of 20 purebred mastiffs and greyhounds... We have no accurate record of how many such beasts Hernán Cortés took with him when, on February 10th 1519 he sailed out of Havana en route to Veracruz, Mexico, but there is no doubt whatever that they played a key role in subduing the Indian population, during the conquest and for many years afterwards.

The codex image shown here was drawn as part of a manuscript (completed around 1529) - the Coyoacan Codex - that was used later by conquered Indian peoples as evidence submitted to prove cases of Spanish brutality. In Professor Gordon Brotherston's words 'Cortés himself is indicted here (top left), together with his interpreter Marina... who holds a rosary in her hand. The victim of their crime, hands tied and held on a chain, is being savaged by a mastiff, a form of intimidation, indeed a pastime much favoured by the Spaniards.

'[Bartolomé de] Las Casas [a Spanish friar sympathetic to the Indians] wrote that it was not unusual for one Spaniard to say to another: "Lend me a quarter of a Villaine (an Indian) to give my Dogs some meat, until I kill one next."' The term 'dogging' was one used frequently by the Spanish to refer to one of their many barbaric methods of inflicting 'justice' on the native population. A Maya priest imprisoned by the Spanish used a more graphic expression, witnessing mastiffs 'destroying the faces' of his people.

It's worth noting that attacking dogs had, centuries before, been employed in the armies of the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans - not only as messengers, sentinels and trackers but as actual combatants against their enemies. Learn more at Wikipedia (link below).

(Info from Dogs of the Conquest by J G and J J Varner, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1983 and Image of the New World by Gordon Brotherston, Thames & Hudson, London, 1979. Main photo by Ian Mursell - detail of a screen mural by Roberto Cueva del Río, 1976, of the Spanish Conquest. Other images scanned from the above two books)