Jicarilla Apache and Ute: Hunters in a High Valley
Near Red River, New Mexico
Long before miners arrived with their picks and dynamite, the high valley of the Red River was visited each summer by the Jicarilla Apache and the Ute peoples, who knew this country as hunting ground. The elevation and terrain produced exactly what they were looking for. Bighorn sheep moved along the rocky ridgelines. Mule deer and elk gathered in the meadows along the stream. Ducks settled on the quieter pools. Mountain cottontail were plentiful in the brush along the banks.
Neither the Jicarilla Apache nor the Ute maintained permanent settlements in the upper Red River valley, which winters hard and deep at nearly nine thousand feet. But each summer the valley became a destination, a place to hunt, to camp, and to move between different parts of a seasonal territory that stretched across the mountains of northern New Mexico.
The Jicarilla Apache have lived in the mountains and high plains of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado for centuries. Their name comes from the Spanish word for a small basket, reflecting a craft tradition the Spanish observed. The Ute, whose traditional lands extended across a vast swath of the southern Rocky Mountains, also claimed the Sangre de Cristos as part of their seasonal range. Both nations hunted in these high valleys long before the idea of a gold camp ever existed. Their trails through these mountains predate every road you can drive today.
