Bajos de Haina
municipality of the Dominican Republic
Bajos de Haina (Standard Spanish pronunciation: [ˈbaxos ðe ˈajna]), mostly known simply as Haina, is a town and municipality in the San Cristóbal Province, of the Dominican Republic. It is close to the capital Santo Domingo, and may be regarded as part of the metropolitan area of Greater Santo Domingo. The municipality had a population of 188,767 in 2024.
History
According to some versions, Miguel Díaz, who had migrated from La Isabela, arrived in Haina after having injured a man who was intimately related to the Spanish authorities. Once he settled there, he married a native woman named Catalina who told him of a gold deposit in the western bank of the Haina River. After confirming the existence of the precious metal, he returned to La Isabela where he told Christopher Columbus and his brother Bartholomew of his discovery. The Admiral sent his brother to confirm the existence of the deposit, since he had to leave for Europe.
Bartholomew realized that there indeed was gold and decided to build a fort that he named San Cristóbal, which served as lodging for the soldiers that participated in this activity.
A very large gold nugget was found in 1502, at the western bank of the Haina River, eight kilometers from Villa Altagracia, in a place known as Madrigal. The nugget was sent to Spain, but the ship that carried it sank along with Governor Francisco de Bobadilla, cacique Guarionex and dozens of Spaniards.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bajos de Haina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.