[The following takes place during a series of European (mostly, but not all, Spanish) expeditions to find an Andean civilization called Muisca.]
However, those who did fight the Europeans had little answer to the depredations in terms of either tactics or weapons. The fate of one tribe, the Guaicari of Venezuela, will serve to illustrate the wider military consequences of European/American conflict. Confronting one of the Coro-based expeditions led by another young German officer, Nicolaus Federmann, the Guaicari allowed themselves to be lured into negotiation.
While Federmann engaged them in peace talks, he ordered his mounted troops to surround the 800 warriors. After an initial cavalry charge, the foot soldiers followed up and ‘slaughtered [them] like pigs’, while the horses ran down those who attempted to escape. Some of the Guaicari then hid amongst the tall grass or beneath the corpses of their fellows, ‘but these were found and many of them beheaded’. Federmann, described by his contemporaries as ‘a man of exceptional intelligence’, claimed 500 Guaicri were killed. His methods demonstrated that there was nothing peculiarly Spanish about the tactic of ruthless deception and wanton slaughter.
Source:
Cocker, Mark. “Gold – The Castration of the Sun.” Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples. Grove Press, 2001. 99. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Federmann, Historia Indiana, quoted in Hemming, The Search for El Dorado, p. 29.
Further Reading:
Nikolaus Federmann (Spanish: Nicolás de Federmán)
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