Marien

Marién was a Taíno chiefdom of northern Hispaniola, whose leader Guacanagarí welcomed Christopher Columbus in 1492. Its communities occupied a coastal country of rivers and plains, with villages near the bay where Columbus’s ship Santa María ran aground.

With Guacanagarí’s assistance, the stranded Spaniards used timber from the ship to establish a small post called La Navidad. Columbus left men there when he returned across the Atlantic in 1493. On his return later that year he found the post destroyed and its occupants dead. The settlement had stood close to an established Indigenous community, whose relationships with the newcomers had changed in his absence. The episode marked the beginning of a turbulent relationship between the Indigenous people of Marién and the expanding Spanish presence on the island.

The later city of Cap-Haïtien lies here.