Nicolas de Ovando

Nicolas de Ovando Full Name: Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres Alias: Nicolas Ovando Origin: Brozas, Extremadura, Spain Occupation: Governor of the Indies Goals: "Pacify" the South American natives (succeeded) Crimes: Mass murder Slavery Type of Villain: Oppressive Governor

Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, mostly known as Nicolas de Ovando (1460 - 1511), was a Spanish soldier and Governor of the Indies from 1502 until 1509. He was responsible for the brutal oppression of the native Taíno people, who were murdered en masse under his administration.

Biography

Ovando was born in the Spanish province of Extremadura in 1460. As a Commander of the military Order of Alcántara, he became a favourite of the so-called "Catholic Monarchs" (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon), and so was dispatched to the "New World" of South America to replace former governor Francisco de Bobadilla. Ovando thus set sail on February 13, 1502, with a fleet of thirty ships carrying a total of 2,500 colonists, the largest fleet to set sail for the New World. Hernán Cortés was initially supposed to be part of this expedition, but injured himself escaping from the bedroom of a married woman he was sleeping with and did not come. As Cortés was a distant relative of Ovando, Ovando still rewarded him with a land grant and made him a notary.

Ovando reached the New World in April 1502, at which point he assumed the position of Governor. One of his first actions as governor was to order the importation of the first Spanish-speaking black slaves into the New World, who he allowed nobles to use as servants in their homes. African slaves were not the only group of people he oppressed; the indigenous peoples of Hispaniola were violently suppressed by Ovando's government. One particularly heinous atrocity was the Jaragua Massacre, which occurred during a celebration in the village of Guarva in 1503. Men sent by Ovando, supposedly on a goodwill visit, suddenly turned on the natives present and slaughtered them, including the children.

In 1503, a group of native Taíno rebelled against Ovando's oppressive government and attacked a garrison in Higüey, killing eight soldiers. Ovando responded by sending a 300-strong force led by Juan Ponce de León to subdue the revolution, leading to the outright massacre of the Taíno people in the area and the killing of their leader. Suspecting further rebellions, in 1504 Ovando lured the Haitian monarch Anacaona to a feast before accusing her of treason and having her executed. This was followed by the extermination of most of her subjects, the Xaraguans, in a brutal war. Ovando also established a labour system known as encomienda, which allowed the Spanish settlers to use the natives as slave labour in the gold minesand led to many of them being worked to death. Ovando's mistreatment of the natives was so extreme that the population of natives in Hispaniola dropped from 500 000 to 60 000 during his tenure as governor. He also developed the mining industry, introduced the cultivation of sugar cane with plants imported from the Canary Islands, and commissioned expeditions of discovery and conquest throughout the Caribbean.

In 1509, King Ferdinand responded to Ovando's crimes against the natives by stripping him of his position and recalling him to Spain, although he was allowed to retain all property he brought back from the Americas. Ovando died on May 29, 1511 in Madrid.