Jicarilla Apache
Jicarilla Apache, one of several loosely organized autonomous bands of the Eastern Apache, refers to the members of the Jicarilla Apache Nation currently living in New Mexico and speaking a Southern Athabaskan language. The term jicarilla comes from Mexican Spanish meaning "little basket", referring to the small sealed baskets they used as drinking vessels. To neighboring Apache bands, such as the Mescalero and Lipan, they were known as Kinya-Inde.
The Jicarilla called themselves also Haisndayin, translated as "people who came from below" because they believed themselves to be the sole descendants of the first people to emerge from the underworld. The underworld was the home of Ancestral Man and Ancestral Woman, who produced the first people. The Jicarilla believed Hascin, their chief deity, created Ancestral Man and Ancestral Woman, as well as all the animals, the sun, and the moon.
The Jicarilla Apache led a seminomadic existence in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the plains of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. They also ranged into the Great Plains starting before 1525 CE. For years, they lived a relatively peaceful life, traveling seasonally to traditional sites for hunting, gathering, and cultivation along river beds. The Jicarilla learned about farming and pottery from the Puebloan peoples and about survival on the plains from the Plains Indians. Their diet and lifestyle were rich and varied. The Jicarilla's farming practices expanded to the point where they required considerable time and energy. As a result, the people became rather firmly settled and tended to engage in warfare less frequently than other Eastern Apache groups. Starting in the 1700s, the Jicarilla experienced encroachment by colonial New Spain, pressure from other Native American tribes such as the Comanches, and subsequent westward expansion of the United States. These factors led to significant loss of property, expulsion from their sacred lands, and relocation to lands unsuited for survival.
The mid-1800s to the mid-1900s were particularly difficult for the Jicarilla. Their tribal bands were displaced, treaties were made and broken with them, and they experienced a significant loss of life due to tuberculosis and other diseases. Additionally, they lacked opportunities for survival. By 1887, they received their reservation, which was expanded in 1907 to include more suitable land for ranching and agriculture. Over several decades, they discovered the rich natural resources of the San Juan Basin beneath the reservation land.
Tribal members transitioned from a seminomadic lifestyle and are now supported by various industries on their reservation, including oil and gas, casino gaming, forestry, ranching, and tourism. The Jicarilla are renowned for their pottery, basketry, and beadwork.
History
Early history
The Jicarilla Apaches are one of the Athabaskan linguistic groups that migrated out of Canada by 1525 CE, possibly several hundred or more years earlier. They eventually settled on what they considered their land, bounded by four sacred rivers in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado–the Rio Grande, Pecos River, Arkansas River, and Canadian River–and containing sacred mountain peaks and ranges. The Jicarilla also ranged out into the plains of northwestern Texas and the western portions of Oklahoma and Kansas. By the 1600s, they inhabited the Chama Valley in present-day New Mexico and the western part of present-day Oklahoma. Before contact with the Spanish, the Apache people lived in relative peace.The Jicarilla people of the 1600s were seminomadic, engaging in seasonal agriculture they learned from the Pueblo people and Spaniards of New Spain, along the rivers within their territory.
The Apache have historical connections to the Dismal River culture of the western Plains. This culture is often associated with the Paloma and Quartelejo Apaches. Jicarilla Apache pottery has also been found at several Dismal River complex sites. Over time, some of the people from the Dismal River culture joined the Kiowa Apache in the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota. Due to pressure from the west by the Comanche and from the east by the Pawnee and French, the Kiowa and the remaining people of Dismal River culture migrated south, where they eventually joined the Lipan Apache and Jicarilla Apache nations.
By the 1800s, the Jicarilla were planting a variety of crops along the rivers, especially along the upper Arkansas River and its tributaries, sometimes using irrigation to aid in growing squash, beans, pumpkins, melons, peas, wheat, and corn. They found farming in the mountains safer than on the open plains. They primarily hunted buffalo into the 17th century, and, thereafter, hunted antelope, deer, mountain sheep, elk, and buffalo. Jicarilla women gathered berries, agave, honey, onions, potatoes, nuts, and seeds from the wild.
Sacred land and creation story
In the Jicarilla creation story, the land enclosed by the four sacred rivers was provided to them by the Creator. It included select places for communicating with the Creator and spirits, as well as sacred rivers and mountains to be respected and conserved. Additionally, there were very specific places for obtaining items for ceremonial rituals, such as the white clay found southeast of Taos, red ochre north of Taos, and yellow ochre on a mountain near Picuris Pueblo. The Jicarilla people believe the "heart of the world" is located near Taos.Traditional Jicarilla stories, such as White Shell Woman, Killer of the Enemies, Child of the Water, and others, feature people and places that are special to them. These places include the Rio Grande Gorge, Picuris Pueblo, the spring and marsh near El Prado, Hopewell Lake, and particularly the Taos Pueblo and the four sacred rivers. Additionally, the Jicarilla created shrines in locations that held spiritual significance, some of which were shared with the Taos Pueblo in the Taos area.
In 1865, Father Antonio José Martínez, a priest from New Mexico, documented a connection between the Jicarilla people and Taos. He wrote that the Jicarilla had a long history of living between the mountains and the villages, with pottery making being an important source of income. The clay used for the pottery came from the Taos and Picuris Pueblo areas.
Pressures for Jicarilla Apache land
The Apaches' traditional culture, economy, and lifestyle became strained by the arrival and growth of other populations, Manifest Destiny, and the Indian Wars. Many people died due to famine, the Indian Wars, including the Battle of Cieneguilla, and diseases not indigenous to the American continent, to which they had no resistance.When the Comanche, who had obtained guns from the French, and their close allies and kin, the Ute, were expanding onto the plains, they pillaged the various eastern Apache peoples who occupied the southern plains in a bid for control. As they were pushed off the plains, the Jicarilla moved to the mountains and near the pueblos and Spanish missions, where they sought alliance with the Puebloan peoples and the Spanish settlers. In 1724, several Apache bands were annihilated by the Comanches, who forced them to "give up half their women and children, and then they burned several villages, killing all but sixty-nine men, two women, and three boys." The Jicarilla people were forced to seek refuge into the eastern Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. Some moved to the Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico or joined the Mescalero and Lipan bands in Texas. In 1779, a combined force of Jicarilla, Ute, Pueblo, and Spanish soldiers defeated the Comanche, who, after another seven years and several more military campaigns, finally sued for peace. After that, the Jicarilla reestablished themselves in their old tribal territory in southern Colorado.
Ollero and Llanero bands
The geography of the Jicarilla tribal territory consists of two fundamental environments that helped shape the tribe's basic social organization into two bands: the Llaneros, or plains people, and the Olleros, or mountain valley people.Beginning in the 19th century, after being pushed out of the plains, the Jicarilla split into two bands:
- The Olleros, the mountain people - pottery making clan, a.k.a. Northern Jicarilla, lived west of the Rio Grande along the Chama River of New Mexico and Colorado, settled down as farmers, became potters and lived partly in Pueblo-like villages. They began subsidizing their livelihood through sales of micaceous clay pottery and basketry and learned to farm from their Pueblo neighbors. Ollero is Spanish for "potters." Their name for themselves is Saidindê for "Sand People," "Mountain People," or "Mountain Dwellers." The Spanish rendering is Hoyeros meaning "mountain-valley people." The Capote Band of Utes lived east of the Great Divide south of the Conejos River and east of the Rio Grande, west towards the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, in the San Luis Valley, along the headwaters of the Rio Grande and the Animas River, centering in the vicinity of present-day Chama and Tierra Amarilla of Rio Arriba County. They formed an alliance with the Olleros, similar to the Muache alliance with the Llanero, against the Southern Plains Tribes such as the Comanche, Southern Arapaho, Southern Cheyenne, and Kiowa, their former allies. They maintained trade relations with Puebloan peoples.
- The Llaneros, the plains people clan, a.k.a. Eastern Jicarilla, lived as nomads in tipis, called kozhan by the Jicarilla. They hunted buffalo on the plains east of the Rio Grande, centering along the headwaters of the Canadian River. During the winter, they lived in the mountains between the Canadian River and the Rio Grande. They camped and traded near Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico, Pecos, New Mexico, and Taos, New Mexico. Their name for themselves is Gulgahén for "Plains People"; the Spanish picked it up as Llaneros - "Plains Dwellers".