Spanish Captain Feeding His Dogs on an Indian Babe

What it is

This is an 1858 engraving titled 'Spanish captain feeding his dogs on an Indian babe', with printed text above and below the image. It shows a Spanish captain in armor raising a sword while dogs attack a naked infant held in the air. Native huts stand in the background, and a woman with raised arms stands at right beside a large tree. The record does not name the engraver. The print is a later illustration, made long after the events it depicts.

Why it matters

The engraving illustrates an atrocity that the curator's note says is attributed to the conquistadors in De Soto's narrative. Images like this were used in nineteenth-century books to make readers feel the cruelty of the conquest. Students should see that the picture presents one shocking account, and that the people who made it had their own purposes for choosing this scene.

Look closer

• What does the caption claim happened, and how does the image present that claim?
• Which figures are shown as helpless, and how does the artist draw the viewer's eye to them?
• What would we need to know about De Soto's narrative and other sources before accepting this scene as a record of what occurred?