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Updated: June 3, 2025
At the time of the conquest it was the home of a numerous Indian population; later when owned by the Jesuits it had well-kept plantations; to-day it is almost uninhabited. Not far away are the smaller islands of Catalina and Catalinita, which possess valuable timber but like Saona are uninhabited.
On Thursday being the 19 our Viceadmirall, from whom we departed at Dominica, came to vs at Saona, with whom we left a Spanish Frigate, and appointed him to lie off and on other fiue daies betweene Saona and Mona to the ende aforesaid; then we departed from them at Saona for Cape Tyburon.
General Bonaparte was, by order of the representatives of the people, Salicetti and Albitte, arrested at his headquarters in Saona, because, as the warrant for arrest, signed by both representatives, asserted: "General Bonaparte had completely lost their confidence through his suspicious demeanor, and especially through the journey which he had lately made to Genoa."
That chieftain had retired to the little island of Saona, about two leagues from the coast of Higuey, in the centre of which, amidst a labyrinth of rocks and forests, he had taken shelter with his wife and children in a vast cavern. A caravel, recently arrived from the city of San Domingo with supplies for the camp, was employed by Esquibel to entrap the cacique.
He knew that the latter kept a vigilant look-out, stationing scouts upon the lofty rocks of his island to watch the movements of the caravel. Esquibel departed by night, therefore, in the vessel, with fifty followers, and keeping under the deep shadows cast by the land, arrived at Saona unperceived, at the dawn of morning.
From the appearance of this fish, and by other tokens in the sky, the admiral suspected an approaching storm, and took shelter therefore within an island called Adamanoy by the Indians, but which the Spaniards name Saona, which is about two leagues in length, having a strait between it and Hispaniola about a league in breadth.
From Deseada or Guadeloupe, however, the Flota steered north-west, passing Santa Cruz and Porto Rico on the north, and sighting the little isles of Mona and Saona, as far as the Bay of Neyba in Hispaniola, where the ships took on fresh wood and water.
On the 14 we departed from Mona, and the next day after wee came to an Iland called Saona, about 5 leagues distant from Mona, lying on the Southside of Hispaniola neere the East end: betweene these two Ilands we lay off and on 4 or 5 dayes, hoping to take some of the Domingo fleete doubling this Iland, as a neerer way to Spaine then by Cape Tyburon, or by Cape S. Anthony.
Ovando then began a war of extermination and the Indians were killed off by thousands, Cotubanama resisted heroically but in vain, and after being beaten in a number of desperate battles he withdrew to the island of Saona, southeast of Santo Domingo.
He states that a public square in that city bore the name of Platea Columbi, toward the end of the 14th century; that the Ligurian government gave the name of Jurisdizione di Colombi to that district of the republic, under the persuasion that the great navigator was a native of Savona; and that Columbus gave the name of Saona to a little island adjacent to Hispaniola, among his earliest discoveries.
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