Cacicazgo of Jaragua

The Cacicazgo of Jaragua, also spelled Xaragua, was the largest of the five Taino chiefdoms of the island of Hispaniola, spanning the island's entire southwest and formed as a union of two earlier cacicazgos, Zui and Yaquimo. Ruled by the cacique Bohechio from his seat at Guava, near present day Leogane in Haiti, the chiefdom was divided into 26 nitainos, or subordinate districts, and was closely allied with the neighboring cacicazgo of Maguana through the marriage of Bohechio's sister Anacaona to its ruler Caonabo. In July 1503 Spanish governor Nicolas de Ovando invited Anacaona, by then the chiefdom's ruler, and dozens of other caciques to a gathering at Guava and there ordered his roughly 300 soldiers to seize and burn about 80 of them alive while attacking others outside, after which Anacaona was arrested, tried for conspiracy and hanged, ending Jaragua's independence.