Taino Period The Port-au-Prince area was part of the Xaragua chiefdom with the capital city, Yaguana being in Léoganes. There were multiple
Taino settlements in the area such as Bohoma and Guahaba. It is understood that most of the plain area was used as hunting grounds. The
Bahoruco mountain range in the north-east of Port-au-Prince was the scene of a Taino rebellion led by
Enriquillo resulting in a treaty with the Spanish.
Spanish colonization Prior to the arrival of
Christopher Columbus, the island of
Hispaniola was inhabited by the Taíno people, who arrived in approximately 2600 BC in large dugout
canoes. They are believed to come primarily from what is now eastern
Venezuela. By the time Columbus arrived in 1492 AD, the region was under the control of Bohechio, Taíno
cacique (chief) Xaragua. He, like his predecessors, feared settling too close to the coast; such settlements would have proven to be tempting targets for the
Caribs, who lived on neighboring islands. Instead, the region served as a hunting ground. The population of the region was approximately 400,000 at the time, but the Taínos were gone within 30 years of the arrival of the Spaniards. With the arrival of the Spaniards, the Amerindians were forced to accept a
protectorate, and Bohechio, childless at death, was succeeded by his sister,
Anacaona, wife of the cacique
Caonabo. The Spanish insisted on larger tributes. Eventually, the Spanish colonial administration decided to rule directly, and in 1503,
Nicolas Ovando, then governor, set about to put an end to the régime headed by Anacaona. He invited her and other tribal leaders to a feast, and when the Amerindians had drunk a good deal of wine (the Spaniards did not drink on that occasion), he ordered most of the guests killed. Anacaona was spared, only to be hanged publicly some time later. Through violence, introduced diseases and murders, the Spanish settlers decimated the native population. Direct Spanish rule over the area having been established, Ovando founded a settlement not far from the coast (west of
Etang Saumâtre), ironically named
Santa Maria de la Paz Verdadera, which would be abandoned several years later. Not long thereafter, Ovando founded
Santa Maria del Puerto. The latter was first burned by French explorers in 1535, then again in 1592 by the English. These assaults proved to be too much for the Spanish colonial administration, and in 1606, it decided to abandon the region. === Domination of the
filibustiers === For more than 50 years, the area that is today Port-au-Prince saw its population drop off drastically, when some
buccaneers began to use it as a base, and Dutch merchants began to frequent it in search of leather, as game was abundant there. Around 1650, French , running out of room on the
Île de la Tortue, began to arrive on the coast, and established a colony at Trou-Borded. As the colony grew, they set up a hospital not far from the coast, on the Turgeau heights. This led to the region being known as . Although there had been no real Spanish presence in Hôpital for well over 50 years, Spain retained its formal claim to the territory, and the growing presence of the French
flibustiers on ostensibly Spanish lands provoked the Spanish crown to dispatch Castilian soldiers to Hôpital to retake it. The mission proved to be a disaster for the Spanish, as they were outnumbered and outgunned, and in 1697, the Spanish government signed the
Treaty of Ryswick, renouncing any claims to Hôpital. Around this time, the French also established bases at Ester (part of
Petite Rivière) and
Gonaïves Haiti is bordered to the east by the Dominican Republic, which covers the rest of Hispaniola, to the south and west by the Caribbean, and to the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Cuba lies some 50 miles (80 km) west of Haiti's northern peninsula, across the Windward Passage, a strait connecting the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Jamaica is some 120 miles (190 km) west of the southern peninsula, across the Jamaica Channel, and Great Inagua Island (of The Bahamas) lies roughly 70 miles (110 km) to the north. Haiti claims sovereignty over Navassa (Navase) Island, an uninhabited U.S.-administered islet about 35 miles (55 km) to the west in the Jamaica Channel. Ester was a rich village, inhabited by merchants, and equipped with straight streets; it was here that the governor lived. On the other hand, the surrounding region, Petite-Rivière, was quite poor. Following a great fire in 1711, Ester was abandoned. Yet the French presence in the region continued to grow, and soon afterward, a new city was founded to the south,
Léogâne. While the first French presence in Hôpital, the region later to contain Port-au-Prince was that of the
flibustiers; as the region became a real French colony, the colonial administration began to worry about the continual presence of these pirates. While useful in repelling foreign
pirates, they were relatively independent, unresponsive to orders from the colonial administration, and a potential threat to it. Therefore, in the winter of 1707,
Choiseul-Beaupré, the governor of the region sought to get rid of what he saw as a threat. He insisted upon control of the hospital, but the
flibustiers refused, considering that humiliating. They proceeded to close the hospital rather than cede control of it to the governor, and many of them became
habitans (farmers) the first long-term European inhabitants in the region. Although the elimination of the
flibustiers as a group from Hôpital reinforced the authority of the colonial administration, it also made the region a more attractive target for marauding
buccaneers. In order to protect the area, in 1706, a captain named de Saint-André sailed into the bay just below the hospital, in a ship named
Le Prince. It is said that M. de Saint-André named the area
Port-au-Prince (meaning "Port of the Prince"), but the port and the surrounding region continued to be known as
Hôpital (the islets in the bay had already been known as
les îlets du Prince as early as 1680). Pirates eventually refrained from troubling the area, and various nobles sought land grants from the French crown in Hôpital; the first noble to control Hôpital was Sieur Joseph Randot. Upon his death in 1737, Sieur Pierre Morel gained control over part of the region, with Gatien Bretton des Chapelles acquiring another portion of it. By then, the colonial administration was convinced that a capital needed to be chosen, in order to better control the French portion of Hispaniola (
Saint-Domingue). For a time,
Petit-Goâve and
Léogâne vied for this honor, but both were eventually ruled out for various reasons. Neither was centrally located. Petit-Goâve's climate caused it to be too
malarial, and Léogane's topography made it difficult to defend. Thus, in 1749, a new city was built, Port-au-Prince The Place du Champ-de-Mars—the site of a number of historically notable structures in the centre of the city—was hit hard by the 2010 earthquake. The National Palace (rebuilt in 1918) collapsed. Other notable landmarks include the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the adjacent colonial cathedral, both of which also collapsed in the 2010 earthquake, and the National Archives, National Library, and National Museum.
Foundation of Port-au-Prince In 1770, Port-au-Prince replaced Cap-Français (the modern
Cap-Haïtien) as capital of the colony of
Saint-Domingue. In November 1791, it was burned in a battle between attacking black revolutionaries and defending white plantation owners. It was captured by
British troops on 4 June 1794, after the
Battle of Port-Républicain. In 1804, it became the capital of newly independent Haïti. When
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was assassinated in 1806, Port-au-Prince became the capital of the
mulatto-dominated south (Cap-Haïtien was the capital of the
black-dominated north). It was re-established as the capital of all of Haiti when the country was unified again in 1820 Port-au-Prince was the centre of the political and intellectual life of the country and is the seat of the
State University of Haiti (established in 1920). A traditionally picturesque site has been the brash and bustling Iron Market, with its mostly female vendors. Recreation for the privileged centres around European-style social clubs, but the house of the local voodoo priest is still the heart of the urban poor community. Most of the Haitian elite (nearly all mulatto or nonblacks) live in the suburb of Pétionville in the 1,000–1,500-foot- (300–450-metre-) high hills southeast of Port-au-Prince. Haiti's small but politically important Black middle class is also concentrated around Port-au-Prince. Squalor and neglect surround most of the Black urban working class even more than it does the subsistence farmer, and constant migration from the countryside continues to exacerbate their misery. Slums such as Cité Soleil are among the largest and most deprived in the Americas. Pop. (2009 est.) city, 875,978; metropolitan area, 2,296,386. The second floor of the
Presidential Palace was thrown into the first floor, and the domes skewed at a severe tilt. The
seaport and
airport were both damaged, limiting aid shipments. The seaport was severely damaged by the quake and was unable to accept aid shipments for the first week. The airport's control tower was damaged and the US military had to set up a new control center with generators to prepare the airport for aid flights. Aid was delivered to Port-au-Prince by numerous nations and voluntary groups as part of a global relief effort. On Wednesday 20 January 2010, an aftershock rated at a magnitude of 5.9 caused additional damage. The City Hall (Mairie de Port-au-Prince) and most of the city's other government
municipal buildings were destroyed in the 2010 earthquake. Ralph Youri Chevry was the mayor of the city at the time of the earthquake.
Hurricanes The worst hurricane season experienced by Haiti occurred in
2008 when four storms
Fay,
Gustav,
Hanna, and
Ike negatively impacted Haiti. Nearly 800 people were killed; 22,000 homes were destroyed; 70% of the country's crops were lost, according to reliefweb.org. Then, in 2012,
Hurricane Sandy, while not making direct impact, resulted in 75 deaths, $250 million in damage and a resurgence of cholera that was estimated to have infected 5,000 people. In 2016,
Hurricane Matthew caused catastrophic damage across Haiti, and over 500 deaths were associated with the storm in Haiti alone, along with at least $3 billion in damage. The storm also caused a massive humanitarian crisis shortly after. ==Geography==