Henia

The Henia were the northern of the two related peoples, Henia and Kamiare, whom the Spaniards lumped together under the nickname Comechingón, in the wooded Sierras Pampeanas of Córdoba province in Argentina. Sedentary farmers divided into about a dozen tribes under local curaca chiefs, they lived in communal stone houses half sunk into the ground against the mountain winter, kept herds, gathered algarrobo fruit, and covered the rocks of Cerro Colorado with painted and carved petroglyphs.

Expeditions in 1529 and 1543 opened their country to Europeans, and in 1573 Jerónimo Luis de Cabrera founded Córdoba and moved its Henia villagers elsewhere.

Encomiendas, land grants and epidemics then broke up the chiefdoms, while colonial policy favoured Quechua over the native tongue, which disappeared. By the end of the seventeenth century the Henia had mostly been killed, relocated or absorbed.