grandparents, unmarried children, and their remarried daughters' nuclear families. The Mescalero also practiced matrilocal residence patterns. When a woman married, the couple would move into a new tipi or wickiup close to her parents' home. Origin of name The Mescalero's autonym, or name for themselves, is Shis-Inday ("People of the Mountain Forests") or Mashgalénde / Mashgalé-neí / Mashgalé-ńde ("People close to the mountains" or "Mescalero Apache People"). The Navajo (in Mescalero: 'Indaa bixú-ńde, modern name: Chushta 'íízha-ńde), another Athabascan-speaking tribe, call the Mescalero Naashgalí Dineʼé. Like other Apache peoples they often identify simply as Inday / Indee / Ndé / Nndé-í / Nndé-ne / Nndé-ńde ("The People", "Apaches"). Neighboring Apache bands called the Mescalero Nadahéndé ("People of the Mescal"), because the mescal agave (Agave parryi) was a staple food source for them. In times of need and hunger, they depended on stored mescal for survival. They adopted and call identify today also as Naa'dahéńdé ("The People of the Mescal"). Since 1550 Spanish colonists referred to them as the Mescalero. Mescalero Apache bands were often referred to by European colonists and settlers by different names, some related to their geographic territory. They were recorded in documents by a wide number of names: Apaches de Cuartelejo, Apaches del Río Grande, Apachi, Faraones, Mezcaleros, Natage (more correctly, one of the Lipan Apache subdivisions, along with the Nahizan), Natahene, Querechos, Teyas, Tularosa Apaches, and Vaqueros. They were also distinguished as Sierra Blanca Apaches, Sacramento Mountains Apaches, Guadalupe Mountains Apaches, Limpia Mountains Apaches. according to their homelands in northern or southern Mescalero territory. Tribal territory Originally the different Mescalero bands and local groups ranged in an area between the Rio Grande (Tú 'ichii-dí - "the water that is the color of red ocher") in the west and the eastern and southern edge of the Llano Estacado and the southern Texas Panhandle in Texas in the east; from present-day Santa Fe (Yuutu') in the northwest and the Texas Panhandle in the northeast, down to the Big Bend of Texas and what became the Mexican provinces of Chihuahua and Coahuila to the south. The diverse landscape of this area has high mountains up to 12,000 feet, as well as watered and sheltered valleys, surrounded by arid semi-deserts and deserts, deep canyons and open plains. The Mescalero Apache Reservation is located at geographical coordinates . Mescalero identity is filled with legends of the past. For instance, four mountains