author
Tadéas Xavier Henis
b. 1711
A Jesuit chronicler of the Guaraní missions, he left behind a rare firsthand account of the conflict that followed the 1750 treaty between Spain and Portugal. His surviving work captures the tension, politics, and human cost of a turbulent moment in colonial South America.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in 1711, Tadéas Xavier Henis is identified in library and reference records as a Spanish Jesuit and 18th-century chronicler. The basic facts of his life are sparse in the sources I could confirm, but his dates are commonly given as 1711–1767.
Henis is remembered above all for Diario histórico de la rebelión y guerra de los pueblos guaranís, situados en la costa oriental del río Uruguay, del año de 1754. Catalog and public-domain sources describe it as a work by a member of the Society of Jesus, originally written in Latin and later published in Spanish translation. The book is a valuable contemporary account of the Guaraní conflict that grew out of the 1750 border treaty between Spain and Portugal.
What makes his writing stand out is its closeness to the world of the Jesuit missions and the Guaraní communities caught in that struggle. Even with so little biographical detail preserved, Henis remains an important witness to a decisive episode in the history of colonial South America.