Jicarilla 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-jah", 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.