author

Tadéas Xavier Henis

b. 1711

A Jesuit chronicler of the Guaraní missions, he is remembered for a vivid account of the mid-18th-century conflicts that followed the Spanish-Portuguese treaty over South American borderlands. His surviving work offers a close, contemporary view of colonial power, war, and Indigenous resistance.

1 Audiobook

Diario histórico de la rebelion y guerra de los pueblos Guaranis situados en la costa oriental del Rio Uruguay, del año de 1754

Diario histórico de la rebelion y guerra de los pueblos Guaranis situados en la costa oriental del Rio Uruguay, del año de 1754

by Tadéas Xavier Henis

About the author

Born in 1711, Tadeo Xavier Henis is chiefly known as the author of Diario histórico de la rebelión y guerra de los pueblos guaranís, situados en la costa oriental del río Uruguay, del año 1754. Sources consistently present him as a Jesuit, and later editions describe the book as a Spanish version of a work he originally wrote in Latin.

Henis's book focuses on the Guaraní missions and the conflict that followed the 1750 treaty between Spain and Portugal, which attempted to redraw borders in southern South America. Modern descriptions of the work characterize it as a chronicle of the struggle over Guaraní territory in the region of present-day Río Grande do Sul and along the Uruguay River.

Because reliable biographical detail about his life is scarce in the sources found here, it is safest to remember him through that single achievement: a firsthand-style historical narrative that has remained valuable to readers interested in the Jesuit missions, colonial frontier politics, and Guaraní resistance.