Columbus fed natives to dogs

In the book A Dog’s History of America, author Mark Derr described the horrific pasttime of Columbus and his men: using dogs to hunt natives instead of foxes. This hellish sport was referred to as the monteria infernal. Derr also described how the dogs brought over from Spain were bred specifically to have a bloodhound’s scent, with the long legs and crushing jaws of a mastiff, used to hunt down and kill natives.

Natives were even pitted against these dogs in barbaric, gladiator-style death matches. A native would be armed with nothing but a stick and stripped naked, and colonists would entertain themselves by watching the dogs maul the natives by decapitating them with their jaws. The natives grew to fear being thrown to the dogs as the worst form of death.