When all were assembled, and the square crowded with unarmed Indians, Ovando gave a signal, and instantly the horsemen rushed into the midst of the naked and defenceless throng, trampling them under foot, cutting them down with their swords, transfixing them with their lances, and sparing neither age nor sex.
Above eighty caziques had been assembled in one of the principal houses: it was surrounded by troops, the caziques were bound to the posts which supported the roof, and put to cruel tortures, until in the extremity of anguish they were made to admit as true what their queen and themselves had been charged with.
When they had thus been made, by torture, to accuse themselves, a horrible punishment was immediately inflicted. Fire was set to the house, and they all perished miserably in the flames.
As to Anacaona, she was carried to St. Domingo, where, after the mockery of a trial, she was pronounced guilty on the testimony of the Spaniards, and was barbarously hanged by the people whom she had so long and so greatly befriended.
After the massacre of Xaragua, the destruction of its inhabitants went on. They were hunted for six months amid the fastnesses of the mountains, and their country ravaged by horse and foot, until, all being reduced to deplorable misery and abject submission, Ovando pronounced the province restored to order; and in remembrance of his triumph, founded a town near the lake, which he called Santa Maria de la Verdadera Pas (St. Mary of the true peace.)
Such was the tragical fate of the beautiful Anacaona, once extolled as the Golden Flower of Hayti; and such the story of the delightful region of Xaragua, which the Spaniards, by their own account, found a perfect paradise, but which, by their vile passions, they filled with horror and desolation.
After this work of destruction, they made slaves of the remaining inhabitants, and divided them amongst them, and many of the sanguinary contests among themselves arose out of quarrels about the distribution.
We cannot help pausing to cast back a look of pity and admiration over these beautiful but devoted regions.
The white man had penetrated the land! In his train came avarice, pride, and ambition; sordid care, and pining labour, were soon to follow, and the paradise of the Indian was about to disappear for ever.