European settlement The island of what was known by the Spanish as
Hispaniola was inhabited for thousands of years by
indigenous peoples. The first European settlement in the southwest area was the town of
Salvatierra de la Sabana, founded by the Spanish explorer
Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar in 1504.
Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a co-founder of this town and lived there for several years trying to raise pigs as a business. Balboa gave up that enterprise and left the town hiding in a barrel of a Spanish expedition going to explore the Gulf of Uraba, Panama.
Vasco Núñez de Balboa, later on 25 September 1513 would discover the South Sea, today known as the Pacific Ocean. This settlement was abandoned in 1540. The area was uninhabited until the French colonial administration founded the town of
Aux Cayes ("On the
cayes"), so named due to its proximity to
Île-à-Vache. The town was destroyed twice by
hurricanes in 1781 and 1788. In July 1793, the whites in Les Cayes were massacred.
Asylum for independent insurgencies Simón Bolívar arrived in Les Cayes on 24 December 1815, and on 2 January 1816 was introduced to
Alexandre Pétion, President of the
Republic of Haiti by a mutual friend seeking assistance for his insurgency against the Spanish colonial government in
Venezuela. Bolívar and Pétion impressed and befriended each other and, after Bolívar pledged to free every slave in the areas he occupied, Pétion gave him money and military supplies. Mexican nationalists,
Francisco Javier Mina and
José Joaquín de Herrera took asylum in Les Cayes and were welcomed by Pétion during the
Mexican War of Independence.
United States occupation of Haiti '' illustration of the
Les Cayes massacre On 5 December 5 1919, American planes bombed Les Cayes in a possible act of intimidation. American pilots were investigated for their actions, though none were condemned. These actions were described by anthropologist Jean-Philippe Belleau as possibly "the first ever carried out by air on civilian populations". President
Herbert Hoover had become increasingly pressured about the effects of occupying Haiti at the time and began inquiring about a withdrawal strategy. In early December 1929, protests against the American occupation began at the Service Technique de l’Agriculture et de l’Enseignement Professionnel's main school. The massacre resulted in international outrage, with President Hoover calling on Congress to investigate conditions in Haiti the following day.
Natural disasters In the wake of the
12 January 2010 earthquake, the Cuban military set up a
field hospital in the region. On 4 October 2016,
Hurricane Matthew made landfall in Les Cayes causing severe damage. On 14 August 2021, a
magnitude 7.2 earthquake occurred near the city. It was the largest earthquake to strike Haiti in modern history, even stronger than the
2010 earthquake near the Haitian capital. The earthquake killed over 2,200 people and injured around 12,700 others, most of them in Les Cayes and its surrounding areas. == Tourism ==