Anacaona

(1474–1503), a legendary Taíno queen , famed as a poet among the indigenous peoples of the West Indies and remembered as the ruler whose chiefdom was the last to fall to Spanish conquest on Hispaniola. She was the wife of Caonabo , the cacique of the Maguana people on Hispaniola, and she was the sister of, and successor to, the cacique Behechío of the Jaraguá people on the same island.

According to chronicles of the time, Anacaona was a kindhearted, cultured woman of great beauty. Her compositions, in the form of songs and poems, were performed in the areitos, communal festivals in which, under the cacique's direction, the myths of creation were sung and re-created. The name and glory of the queen of Jaraguá became a symbol in Taíno poetry; in the aboriginal language, her name meant “Golden Flower.” She was forced to marry the fierce cacique Caonabo, but it seems she lived near her husband only for short periods. She usually accompanied her brother Behechío, helping him govern the prosperous neighboring kingdom of Jaraguá.

Anacaona exercised a degree of authority that manifested most clearly in the pressure she exerted on her brother to join the general revolt against Guacanaric, the cacique of Marien, who had imprudently welcomed the Spaniards. Anacaona seems to have taken the initiative in all the affairs of the kingdom (in league with other women of the time), from presiding over festivals (in 1496 she arranged a splendid reception for Christopher Columbus's brother Bartholomeo) to issuing the orders of government. Evidently her brother Behechío let her reign in his stead,perhaps enacting early the succession that would otherwise have taken place upon his death, since he left no descendants.

Anacaona's intelligence, grace, and beauty attracted the attention of the first Spanish conquistadores, who settled on Hispaniola in 1492. At first she expressed admiration and awe toward the Spaniards, but their continued abuses against the indigenous people converted that admiration into hatred and antipathy. Upon the death of her brother, Anacaona became the official cacique of the kingdom of Jaraguá, the only indigenous bastion on the island that had not yet submitted to the conquistadores. When Nicolás de Ovando came to the island to govern it on behalf of Spain in 1502, he announced a “peaceful visit” to Jaraguá but brought with him a well-armed contingent of three hundred infantry and seventy cavalry. The visit turned into a massacre in which the many dozens of Taíno dignitaries that Anacaona had assembled as a reception party were burned alive or lanced to death. Anacaona herself was declared guilty of instigating native rebellion against the Spaniards. In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542), a firsthand and denunciatory chronicle of the Spanish abuses of the Taíno, the Spanish bishop Bartolomé de las Casas records that Queen Anacaona—whom he called a “a noble person and a great lady”—was put to death by hanging, “as a mark of respect and out of deference to her rank.” The Spaniards then thoroughly ravaged the kingdom of Jaraguá, and the native people who were able to save themselves were reduced to slavery.