ENCYCLOPAEDIA of Rebellions

Type a location (e.g. Barcelona), or a year (e.g. 1638) or a category of event (e.g. uprising) to filter the corresponding results.

Early Taino resistance 1493-1504

Synopsis
Shortly after Columbus’s first voyage in 1492, the Spanish began in La Hispaniola their first venture of conquest and colonization in the Americas. They employed methods that would become typical: founding urban settlements, introducing religious orders, building convents, churches, and fortresses, maintaining a military presence, and distributing encomiendas to settlers. These encomiendas provided both tax revenue and access to the native labor force needed to exploit economic resources, especially gold. In response to the newcomers, the Indigenous Taíno population—organized into five main chiefdoms or cacicazgos—reacted with a combination of resignation, alliance, and resistance, depending on the stance of their leaders, the degree of Spanish pressure, and the unfolding of events. The first act of violent resistance occurred as early as 1493, with the destruction of the La Navidad fort and the killing of its occupants. Over the next eleven years, nearly all the chiefdoms, or segments within them, rose in rebellion one after another: Maguana and Magua in 1494 (ending with the Battle of La Vega in 1495), again in Magua with the conspiracy of 14 leaders (1497), in the northern El Cabrón mountain range (1498), in Higüey (1502 and 1504), and then in the island’s eastern region—first in Xaragua, culminating in the July 1503 massacre in which several dozen caciques were burned alive, followed by the hanging of the female leader Anacaona—and finally in the independent chiefdoms of Guahava and Aniguayagua (1504). These uprisings, which mobilized thousands under their native rulers, were all ultimately suppressed by the Spanish, usually with great brutality: military campaigns, punitive expeditions, imprisonment or execution of rebel leaders, and the enslavement of natives.
Additional info

Starting date: . Ending: . Duration: 11 years. Name in sources: Resistencia de los Taínos. Location: All over the Island La Hispaniola (La Española, Santo Domingo) Country (current): Dominican Rep.. Monarchy: Spanish. Main participants: Indigenous, Local elites. Number of participants: >500. Main reasons & motivations: Anti-colonial, Resistance to conquest. Leadership: Guarionex, Caonabo, Bohechío, Cayacoa, Guatiguaná, Anacaona, and other caciques. Relevance: medium.

Further reading
BRAUN, Harald E. (2023). “Genocidal Massacres in the Spanish Conquest of the Americas: Xaragua, Cholula and Toxcatl, 1503–1519”, in B. Kiernan et al. (eds), The Cambridge World History of Genocide. Cambridge: CUP, vol. 1, pp. 622-647. BUENO JIMÉNEZ, Alfredo (2023). “Primeras resistencias indígenas y conquistas castellanas en la isla de La Española. De la batalla campal de la Vega real a las resistencias de Higüey y Xaraguá, 1495-1505”, in Un Mar de Encuentros. El Caribe: arte, sociedad y cultura (siglos XV-XVII). Madrid: Ediciones Complutense, pp. 167-193. MIRA CABALLOS, Esteban (2022). “La resistencia a la dominación de los indígenas de La Española (1492-1533)”. Ciencia y Sociedad, 47(3), 9-34.
Cite this entry

Serrão, José Vicente (2025). "Early Taino resistance 1493-1504", in J. V. Serrão and M. S. Cunha (coord), Rebellions in the Early Modern Iberian World. http://atlas.cidehusdigital.uevora.pt/revolt/early-taino-resistance-1493-15045/ (accessed on 02 August 2025).