Anacaona stages the reception that later gets her kingdom killed

Xaragua, in the west of the island the Taino called Ayiti, was the richest and most populous of its five chiefdoms, and its capital Yaguana stood where Leogane stands today. In 1496 Bartholomew Columbus, brother of Christopher and governor in his absence, came there as a guest. Anacaona took charge of the welcome. She set the order of the festivities, gave the instructions, and drew on a people known across the island for its songs, dances and hospitality, while her aging brother Behechio left the governing to her. She was already a samba, a composer and performer of the sung and danced poems called areytos, and rulers elsewhere on the island borrowed her compositions, her court manners and her ornaments. Not one of her areytos survives. What survives is the memory of a reception so lavish that a later Spanish governor asked for the same treatment, and used it to gather her whole court in one place.