How about a dog story? Spanish explorers brought not only cows and horses and other European animals, they also brought dogs. Mostly mastiffs, greyhounds, and large attack dogs of war, trained to chase down and kill the dark-skinned Moors, whom the Spanish had just finished driving from Spain.
In the September 1999 Americas magazine, writer Louis Werner quotes and uses material from a 1983 book Dogs of the Conquest by John and Jeannette Varner, University of Oklahoma Press. In reading his quotes, I sympathized with the Waco and JFK fanatics who feel they haven't been told the whole truth. I never understood how looking up at a white man on a horse would make the Indians give up. Now for the "Rest of the Story."

When Moctezuma' s envoy returned with news of the approaching Spaniards, he took particular note of the dogs, which he found very different from their own fat and hairless variety. As Diaz del Castillo recounted the envoy's report, "They were very large. They had ears doubled over, great hanging jowls, blazing yellow eyes, thin flanks with ribs showing, and gaunt stomachs. They were tall and fierce and went about panting with tongue hanging. They were spotted like ocelots."

"And when Moctezuma heard this, he was filled with great dread as if he were swooning. His soul was sickened and his heart was anguished." Man-eating dogs sound much more scary than horses. "Their taste for human flesh had only been piqued in battling the Moors; they came to the New World for full satiation" says Werner. The Spaniards called hunting down Indians "la monteria infernal." The Spaniards copied the Mexico City custom of eating the small hairless dogs to such an extent that they quickly became extinct. A larger Peruvian hairless is the only breed left unmixed of the 17 breeds known in the Americas before the conquest.

Hernan De Soto' s companion Rodrigo Rangel put it bluntly: "The reader must understand that to set the dogs on the Indian is to make the dogs eat and kill them, tearing them to pieces." De Soto's dog Bruto was later killed in a fusillade of arrows, and according to Garcilaso La Florida, "This grieved the Governor (De Soto) and all his people very much because he was an extremely fine animal and much needed in the conquest, during which he made forays that caused no little wonder against the Indian enemies.

Ponce de Leon and Balboa' s dogs were named Becerrillo and Leoncillo. Becerrillo received a share of the spoils worth one and a half times that of a crossbowman, and Leoncillo took home 500 pesos in gold. 2,000 dogs accompanied Francisco de Orellana's expedition to the Amazon.

When we have massacres of our own, with Jewish kindergarteners killed, or Baptists killed for praying for Jews, we should review history a little. Feelings against the Jews and the Moors were very strong in Spain in the late 1400's when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella began to bring unity to the country. Driving out the unarmed Jewish merchants was easy, but the Moorish army and extensive settlements in the south took longer. Lessons learned by the Spanish army in ferreting out the Moors proved valuable in subjugating the Indians. The gruesome attacks of Spanish dogs on the Indians illustrate how bad we humans can get, but we don't have to look far to see other examples. Ethnic conflicts are occuring all over the world today. (And folks who dump unwanted pets by the roadside are repeating what some of our ancestors did with unwanted kids. Just carrying on the traditions.)