The narrow official mind, brought into contact with native life, never develops in the direction of humanity; and Ovando had now for some time made the great discovery that it was less trouble to kill people than to try to rule over them wisely.

There had evidently always been a streak of Spanish cruelty in him, which had been much developed by his residence in Espanola; and to cruelty and narrow officialdom he now added treachery of a very monstrous and horrible kind.
He announced his intention of paying a state visit to Anacaona, who thereupon summoned all her tributary chiefs to a kind of levee held in his honour.

In the midst of the levee, at a given signal, Ovando's soldiers rushed in, seized the caciques, fastened them to the wooden pillars of the house, and set the whole thing on fire; the caciques being thus miserably roasted alive.

While this was going on the atrocious work was completed by the soldiers massacring every native they could see -- children, women, and old men included--and Anacaona herself was taken and hanged.
All these things Diego Mendez had to witness; and when they were over, Ovando still had excuses for not hurrying to the relief of the Admiral.
He had embarked on a campaign of extermination against the natives, and he followed up his atrocities at Xaragua by an expedition to the eastern end of Espanola, where very much the same kind of business was transacted.

Weeks and months passed in this bloody cruelty, and there was always an excuse for putting off Mendez.