FluxBlog

Among history’s bad boys, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León’s infamous war dog, Becerrillo, remains a daunting apparition half a millennium after his death, though few people have likely heard of him today.

Becerrillo (“little bull”) is believed to have been a mastiff, and was among legions of Spanish war dogs, outfitted with spiked collars and protective armor, that struck fear in the hearts of indigenous peoples from Spanish Florida to Hispaniola and Peru in the early 1500s.

Ponce de León unleashed Becerrillo during battles with Native Americans and in grisly executions in an effort to subdue and subjugate the indigenous peoples, and the dog reportedly disemboweled and killed hundreds of victims – 33 during one battle alone, until he was eventually brought down by a hail of arrows at a time when he was not wearing his usual armored jacket. It is easy to picture rounds of high-fives among the indigenous warriors when the notorious menace expired.

Becerrillo is described as the first European canine known to have been born in the Americas, though the exact location of Ponce de León’s New World kennel is unknown, and some sources claim it actually belonged to Diego Columbus, the eldest son of the famous explorer, who reportedly introduced war dogs to the Americas on his second voyage, in May 1494.

I happened upon this dark corner of human history while searching for clues to why my own dog, Zeke, is so brilliant and weird. Amid all this pathos, there is a happy ending, but first, there is an absolute motherlode of pathos.

War dogs have been used throughout human history, but the Spanish appear to have taken the practice to horrific new heights in the Americas. Spanish war dogs were trained first by men protected by heavy animal skins, then by unleashing them on unfortunate captives wearing little or nothing, whose bodies they afterward consumed. Thus the war dogs were taught to see Native Americans as prey. According to one historical account, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro’s war dogs were so fierce that “in two bites with their cruel teeth they laid open their victims to the entrails.”

Another historical account notes that Spanish war dogs were bred from mastiffs (huge, ferocious) and greyhounds (fast, obviously). The war dogs were said to be able to differentiate between Spaniards and Native Americans but were independent and sometimes behaved with autonomy. On one occasion, Becerrillo is said to have refused to kill an elderly Native American woman after she appealed to him for mercy, though he did pee on her.

Artist rendering of Spanish war dogs attack

Spanish war dogs arrived in what is today the southeastern United States in the 1540s, in expeditions by explorer, plunderer and occasional mass murderer Hernando de Soto, whose own demise paved the way for the story’s first major plot twist. For our purposes, the answer to the question, “Who let the dogs out?” is de Soto and his men.

After de Soto died of fever and his men secretly disposed of his body in the Mississippi River (which he is famously credited with discovering, at least for Europeans), his expedition disbanded and his men fled into the wilderness, leaving their notorious war dogs behind in what is today either Arkansas or Louisiana — accounts differ. Some of the dogs gravitated to Native American camps, the peripheries of which were haunted by scavenging red wolves, where they cross-bred with the wild animals. The result was a mixed breed that the Indians were able to domesticate and use for hunting large game such as bear, deer and feral hogs (also left behind by the Spaniards).

Backwaters of Louisiana’s Catahoula Lake

The next plot turn came after the lower Mississippi River region passed from Spanish to French control. French colonists found the Indians’ wolf dogs attractive and began breeding them with what were known as Beaucerons, dogs used for herding in France. The offspring were adept at both hunting and herding and were said to be more docile than their forebears, and better around children. They retained their keen senses, skittishness around strangers and intense loyalty to their owners, as well as their ancestors’ propensity to occasionally make decisions on their own. They could be quirky in other ways, perhaps because they were one of the few breeds that both hunted and herded – most do one or the other. I can personally attest to the fact that the breed is prone to mixed messages.

Beaucerons

This cross between a Spanish war dog, a red wolf and a French shepherd was, until fairly recently, not officially recognized, but came to be known as a Catahoula cur, named for the eponymous lake in Louisiana which was originally inhabited by the Avoyelle, Tunica, Ofo and Choctaw tribes. The Catahoula’s origin story is confirmed by the AKC website, which notes that it is today a recognized breed. The Catahoula leopard dog, as it is known, is sometimes cited as the only domesticated breed of dog to originate in North America.

The AKC site also notes that if properly socialized from puppyhood, Catahoulas are not aggressive toward people, though they tend to be wary and aloof around strangers. They are keen watchdogs with strong senses of vision, hearing and smell, require a good bit of mental stimulation, and can be independent and stubborn but are intensely loyal. Though typically known for their mottled “blue” phase, Catahoulas can be black or brown, often with patches of gray or white.

Catahoula Parish, Louisiana is across the river from where I live, which is how my dog Zeke enters the story. In the winter of 2016-2017, a stray blue Catahoula mama had five puppies in a brushy area near my house, a not uncommon occurrence in the rural South. I recognized her breed, and two of the puppies were identical to her, but two others were black with white patches and one was brown, which initially led me to assume there had been more than one baby daddy.

Three of the pups

I ended up finding homes for the mama and all of the puppies except one black one, which I kept. This was Zeke, who, based on what I’ve learned about the breed’s lineage, I now assume is a full-on Catahoula. I’ve never known a dog that was more observant, alert or prone to making unilateral decisions, during which “it’s OK!” invariably falls on deaf ears. Zeke has the best vision, hearing and sense of smell of any animal I’ve encountered, and is extremely observant, but skittish. In short, he is precisely the kind of dog I would want around the campfire in my post-apocalyptic tribe, though for now he tends to slink into the shadows at large outdoor gatherings, haunting the periphery. For a long time I blamed this tendency on a timid meter reader with a can of pepper spray. Now I know it’s way more involved than that – I know what happened.

Feral dogs tend to reflect whatever domesticated breed is in fashion at the time, and in my part of Mississippi, the current core ingredients reflect the mixed human population. Strays typically include Labrador retrievers and/or pit bulls in their genetic mix. In that context, the Catahoula pups born by my house were outliers. It was as if the story of the interbreeding of Spanish war dogs, red wolves and Beaucerons was experiencing a brief reprise.

A few miles north of my place is the site of a former French colonial outpost, Fort St. Pierre, the inhabitants of which were annihilated by Native American tribes in 1729. It occurred to me that perhaps Catahoulas had also been there. My friend Jessica, an archaeologist whose organization owns the site of the fort, has a copy of a hand-painted schematic that shows the stockade, structures and a formal parterre identified as jardin, or garden. As a veteran scavenger of plants from lost house sites, I knew that some specimens – most often, bulbs – survive for centuries after the humans who planted them are gone, and sure enough, when we roamed the now overgrown site of the fort’s garden, the woods were full of garlic. Here was a surviving outcropping of the distant past, not unlike the Catahoula cur. Whoever planted that garlic likely died a terrible death, but the garlic lived on. So it was with the Catahoulas.

I’m always interested in continuity, for better or worse, and in any kind of origin story – basically, in what happened and what it says about what is happening today. In this case, what happened during a tumultuous period five centuries ago brought me Zeke.

Zeke in his domain

This version includes a correction: Fort St. Pierre was destroyed in 1729, not 1720, as previously cited.

Notes

Ancient-origins.net: Becerrillo: The Terrifying War Dog of the Spanish Conquistadors

Medium: The Disgusting Spanish War Dogs — The Truly Horrific Fact Deleted From History

History Defined: Unveiling the Violent History of Spanish War Dogs

American Kennel Club: Catahoula Leopard Dog

Hillspet.com: Catahoula Leopard Dog

Abneycatahoulas.com: History of the Catahoula

Images: Conquistador with war dogs (unattributed); Spanish war dog attack (Wikicommons); Catahoula Lake (Visit Kisatchie); Baucerons (Wikicommons); the pups (author); Zeke in his domain (author)

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