Santo Domingo, the first city the Spaniards built in the Americas (moved and rebuilt in stone from 1502)
A hurricane flattened the settlement in September 1502; the governor moved it across the Ozama and it was rebuilt in cut stone with wide, ordered streets. The crown's own chronicler, who lived there, says no town in Spain of its size was better built save Barcelona — and, two paragraphs after calling that governor a father to the Indians, records forty caciques burned in a hut and Anacaona hanged.
Why this wins its question: The standard treatment of early Santo Domingo is a claim about firsts — first cathedral, first grid, oldest street in the Americas — asserted without a text, and the standard treatment of Xaraguá cites Las Casas, whom readers discount as a partisan. This object does neither. It puts the physical city and the massacre side by side out of the same three chapters of the crown's own chronicler: the wide ordered streets, the quarries and tapiería, the Barcelona comparison, the ferry and the household slave kept solely to fetch water, the unbuilt aqueduct from the Haina, the four men named as the first to build in stone and the crossing called Quatro Calles — and then, two paragraphs after Oviedo calls Ovando a father to the Indians, the forty caciques burned in a hut and Anacaona hanged. The counterweight needs no hostile source because the friendly one supplies it.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Everything asserted below comes from one witness: Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Libro III of the Historia general y natural de las Indias, chapters X to XII, in the Real Academia de la Historia's edition of 1851. Oviedo was a crown official who lived in the city and held the fortress there, so he is an insider on both counts — the praise of the buildings and the account of what was done to the caciques are the same man's, in the same chapters, and neither is imported from a critic.
The chapter heading states the subject exactly: "De la governaçion del comendador mayor, don Frey Nicolás de Ovando, é de cómo se passó la veçindad desta cibdad, que estaba de la otra parte del río, adonde agora está, y de las iglesias y perlados dellas … é de los edifiçios desta cibdad de Sancto Domingo". Ovando reached Santo Domingo "á los quince del mes de abril de mill é quinientos y dos años", the settlement then standing on the far bank of the river.
What forced the move was weather, and Oviedo gives the indigenous word for it: "ovo una tormenta que los indios llaman huracan á los doçe dias del mes de septiembre que derribó todas las casas é buhios desta cibdad, ó la mayor parte dellas". The rebuilding is the point of the object: "E ya esta cibdad la avia hecho passar donde agora está el comendador mayor; é de allí adelante se començaron á edificar é labrar casas de piedra é de buenas paredes y edifiçios."
Oviedo refuses to praise the decision, and the refusal is the most informative passage on the page. "Pero yo no le pienso loar aver passado aqui la cibdad, ni averla quitado de la otra costa ó ribera deste rio, donde primero fué fundada; porque en la verdad de nesçessidad seria mas sano asiento é vivir del otro cabo". His reasons are drainage and water: the morning fogs are thrown over the city when the sun rises; the good spring that supplies most of the town is across the river; the river is too deep for a bridge, so the city pays for a ferry; and a household must keep "un esclavo ó mas otros moços ocupados solamente en proveer la casa de agua".
He also prints the remedy, which is a piece of early American water engineering proposed in the 1530s and not built: it was "muy possible traerse el agua á esta cibdad desde un rio que se llama Hayna, que está á tres leguas de aqui, de muy buena agua é pueden façer que venga á la plaça desta cibdad é á todas las casas que aqui hay: con lo qual seria una de las poblaçiones muy buenas del mundo, é assi cessaria el defeto del agua."
His explanation of why the town was moved at all is institutional cynicism recorded by an officeholder about officeholders: the change may have been caused by the fact that "siempre los gobernadores nuevos quieren enmendar las obras de los passados, ó dar forma cómo se olvide lo que los anteçessores en el ofiçio obraron, para escuresçer la fama del que passó".
The rebuilt city is described as laid out, not merely built up. "Es aquesta cibdad toda tan llana como una mesa, é al luengo della, de norte á sur, passa el rio de la Oçama, que es navegable"; the sea beats on the south side, so river and sea enclose half the town or more, and to the west and north "se extiende mas la poblaçion de hermosas calles é muy bien ordenadas é anchas, é tiene de parte de la tierra muy hermosos prados y salidas". Quarries stand next to the city on the river bank, there is lime and a singular earth for tapiería that makes walls "como muy fuerte argamassa", and the town has "muy buenas é muchas casas prinçipales, en que cualquier señor é grande se podria aposentar".
The comparison Oviedo draws is with Spain, and he names the one exception: the city is "tan bien edificada, que ningun pueblo hay en España, tanto por tanto, mejor labrado generalmente, dexando aparte la insigne é muy noble cibdad de Barçelona". He adds that he has himself seen the Emperor lodged, in very good towns of Spain, in houses not as good as some of these. Registered at confidence below 0.9: this is a resident's boast about his own city, offered without a measure, and it is repeated here as his judgement rather than as an established fact.
The cathedral is described as under construction and already fine: "muy bien edificada en lo que está fecho, é acabada, será sumptuosa é tal que algunas de las cathedrales de España no le harán ventaja; porque es de fermosa é fuerte cantería". Its erection was procured by Ferdinand the Catholic and Queen Juana; the first bishop, fray García de Padilla of the Franciscans, died before crossing; the second was Alessandro Geraldini; the third, holding the see when Oviedo wrote, was Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal, who was also "presidente que fué de la Audiençia Real que aqui reside" and was afterwards sent to New Spain with the same office of president "para reformar aquella tierra".
The port explains why this city and not another became the hinge of the Indies. Ships anchor twelve or fifteen paces from land, in four fathoms, and the houses on the river bank stand as close to the ships "como en Nápoles, ó en el Tiber de Roma, ó en Guadalquivir en Sevilla é Triana"; smaller vessels come near enough to run out a plank and land casks without a boat. Guarding the entrance is a castle "assaz fuerte para la defension é guarda del puerto y de la cibdad: el qual edificó el comendador mayor don frey Nicolás de Ovando en el tiempo de su gobernaçion."
Oviedo names the first builders individually, so that "no pierdan las graçias los que las meresçen por primeros edificadores": the first to found a stone house "al modo de España" in the city was Francisco de Garay, then frey Alonso del Viso of the Order and knighthood of Calatrava, third "el piloto Roldan, en las Quatro Calles", and fourth Juan Fernández de las Varas; after them the fortress was begun and other buildings followed, and more were being raised every day "por el gran aparejo de los materiales que hay para la fábrica". The street name Quatro Calles is itself evidence of a crossing plan.
The city's function was to seed the rest, and Oviedo also records the cost of that function to itself. Santo Domingo is "cabeça é madre é nudridora de todas las otras partes deste imperio", since "desde aqui se ha descubierto é poblado é proveydo siempre lo mas de las Indias"; but the news from Peru and elsewhere drew people away, and of those who left he writes that many "han açertado á empobresçer, por no reposar". By his own reckoning the city was no longer as populous as in 1525, when he had reported on it to the Emperor in his Sumario.
The cost to the island's people is on the record in the same chapters, from the same pen, and it is worth reading in the order Oviedo printed it. He first calls Ovando the best governor the Indies had seen — "nunca hombre en estas Indias le ha fecho ventaja", "favoresçió á los indios mucho", he treated the Christians under him "como padre" and held the land "en mucha paz é sosiego". Two paragraphs later he narrates Xaraguá: informed in 1503 of a plot, Ovando went with seventy horse and two hundred foot, ordered a game of canes as cover, had the caciques gathered into his lodging, and "prendió muchos dellos, é á mas de quarenta caçiques, metidos en un buhio, les hizo pegar fuego é quemáronse todos", Anacaona being hanged three months afterwards; her nephew Guaorocaya was hunted into the Baoruco by a hundred and thirty Spaniards and hanged, and war was then carried to Guahava, Savana, Amigayahua and Guacayarima.
What these chapters do not supply, and no reader should infer from them. Oviedo describes the quarries, the lime and the tapiería, and names four Spaniards as the first builders, but never says whose hands cut or carried the stone; there is no labour, no wage and no encomienda in his account of the fabric, and no Taíno builder is named. Nor does he give the island's indigenous population here, so the demographic collapse that runs alongside this construction has to be established elsewhere. This is one witness, writing at the height of the city he is praising.