Greetings Sparrow and Heather,

I have just read an essay in which this type of behaviour is described by Bartolome de Las Casas. In Jan Carew's essay "Columbus and the Origins of Racism in the Americas", Las Casas is quoted as describing (from first-hand eye witness observations) the behaviour of the Spaniard colonizers towards the Carib and Arawak Native populations:

"...The courtiers rode proudly through the streets...,their horses terrifying the poor Indians while their riders shook their plumed heads and waved their glistening swords. As they rode along their lances were passed into women and children, and no greater pastime was practised by them than wagering as to a cavalier's ability to completely cleave a man with one dextrous blow of his sword. A score would fall before one would drop the divided parts essential to winning the wager. No card or dice afforded equal sport. Another knight from Spain must sever his victim's head from the shoulder at the first sweep of his sword. Fortunes were lost on the ability of a swordman to run an Indian through the body at a designated spot. Children were snatched from their mother's arms and dashed against the rocks as they passed. Other children they threw into the water that the mothers might witness their drowning struggles.Babes were snatched from their mothers' breasts, and a brave Spaniard's strength was tested by his ability to tear an infant into two pieces by pulling apart its tiny legs. And the pieces of the babe were then given to the hounds that in theri hunting they might be the more eager to catch their prey. The pedigree of a Spanish blood-hound had nothing prouder in its record than the credit of half a thousand dead or mangled Indians. Some natives they hung on gibbets, and it was their reverential custom to gather at a time sufficient victims to hang thirteen in a row, and thus piously to commemorate Christ and the Twelve Apostles. ..."