Jicarilla

Jicarilla Apache

Young Jicarilla Apache boy, 2009
Total population
3,300
Regions with significant populations
United States ( New Mexico)
Languages
English, Jicarilla
Religion
Christianity, traditional tribal religion, Native American Church
Related ethnic groups
Southern Athabaskan peoples (Chiricahua Apache, Kiowa Apache, Lipan Apache, Mescalero Apache, Navajo, Tonto Apache, Western Apache)

Jicarilla Apache refers to the members of the Jicarilla Apache Nation currently living in New Mexico and speaking a Southern Athabaskan language. The term jicarilla, pronounced "heek-ah-REE-yah", comes from Mexican Spanish meaning "little basket". Their autonym is Tinde or Dinde, meaning "the People". To neighboring Apache bands like the Mescalero and Lipan they were known as Kinya-Inde ("People who live in fixed houses"). The Jicarilla called themselves also Haisndayin translated as "people who came from below", because they believed to be the sole descendants of the first people to emerge from the underworld, the abode of Ancestral Man and Ancestral Woman who produced the first people.

The Jicarilla Apache lived in a semi-nomadic existence in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and plains of southern Colorado, northern New Mexico and ranged into the Great Plains starting before 1525 CE. They lived a relatively peaceful life for years, traveling seasonally to traditional hunting, gathering and cultivation along river beds. The Jicarilla learned about farming and pottery from the Puebloan peoples and learned about survival on the plains from the Plains Indians and had a rich and varied diet and lifestyle. Starting in the 1700s Colonial New Spain, pressure from other Native American tribes, like the Comanches, and later westward expansion of the United States resulted in significant loss of property, expulsion from their sacred lands, and relocation to lands not suited for survival.