A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Anacoana
ANACOANA,
Or "Flower of gold," was the sister of Behechio, cacique or king of Xaragua, one of the five kingdoms into which Hayti was divided, at the time of the discovery of the island by Columbus, in 1492. She was the wife of Caonabo, a Carib, who had made himself master of another of these kingdoms, called Maquana, and was the most powerful chief of the island. Caonabo made war upon the Spaniards, and was seized and carried off by them, when his widow went to live with her brother, whose kingdom she assisted to govern. She at all times manifested great partiality for the white strangers, and was greatly pleased when a young Spanish cavalier, Don Hernando de Guevara, proposed to marry her daughter Higueymota. Obstacles were, however, thrown in the way of the marriage by Roldan, the governor of the district, who is said to have been himself enamoured of the bride elect; the suitor was ordered to leave the island, divisions ensued in which Columbus himself was implicated, and when, on the death of her brother, Anacoana succeeded to the sovereignty of his kingdom, she is reported to have detested the Spaniards as much as she formerly liked them.
In 1503, Don Nicholas de Ovando succeeded Robadilla as governor of the island, and, acting on the impression of her supposed animosity, seized the queen of Xaragua while at an entertainment to which he had invited her and the chief persons of the country, and hanged her, burning in the house in which they were assembled, the rest of the Indians. The Spanish historians generally agree in representing this ill-fated princess as "a woman of remarkable beauty and accomplishments, with an inquiring and intelligent mind, and famous among her subjects for her power of composing 'areytos,' or legendary ballads, chanted by the natives as an accompaniment to their national dances."