Updated slightly from an article published in the 1990s. Supplement to tonight's earlier diary,
"The border Crossed Us". Both intended to address the mistaken notion that Mexicans weren't in the Southwest long before the
Murkins.
Of the current residents of Taos Valley, the Tiwa people at Taos Pueblo have been there the longest. They traditionally traded with other tribes, but were largely self-sufficient. Coronado was the first Spaniard to visit natives within the boundaries of present-day New Mexico in 1540. King Philip of Spain thereafter "granted" each of the Pueblos one square league of land - about 17,000 acres. The rest was open to settlement.
Oñate led the Spanish colonization of New Mexico, beginning in 1598, when the first Mission was established at Taos Pueblo. In 1615, the first Spanish settlers arrived, establishing the village of Ranchos de Taos. These villagers were also largely self-sufficient. Their subsistence economy was supplemented only by requisitions exacted from the Pueblo, and occasional visits from official supply wagon trains, which took 18 months to cover the 1,500 mile route to the extreme northern Spanish settlements.
The dominance afforded by gunpowder, gun barrels and metal shot was not conducive to happy relations between the two cultures. The Indians were forced into indentured service, and their religion and other cultural practices were suppressed. Sixty-five years after the first settlers arrived, the renowned Pueblo Revolt of 1680 erupted. It was one of many skirmishes between natives and settlers throughout New Spain. Uniting the frustrations of tribes throughout the region, this bloody campaign was coordinated out of Taos with the tradition of Pueblo runners, still important to this day. Word was spread by runners with knotted ropes. One knot untied each day, with attack upon untying of the last knot. The Pueblo Revolt successfully drove all of the roughly 3,000 Spanish out of present-day New Mexico to the relative safety of Chihuahua. (The ones they didn't kill, that is.) Santa Fe, originally a Tewa Pueblo, was torched, including colonial records.
It was not until 1744, over 60 years later, that Spanish settlers returned to the Taos area, again to Ranchos. This time, Spanish policy towards the natives was more decent and relations were better. And by then, pressures from settlement in the East was already being felt by the Plains Indians. They were pushed West, and raids were a serious problem in Taos. So much so, in fact, that villagers from Ranchos left their Cristobal de Serna Land Grant for the relative safety of the Pueblo in 1770. The Spanish-Comanche peace treaty of 1786 improved the situation, and land grants and settlements north of Santa Fe became quite common from around the turn of the century onwards.
Northern New Mexico was still quite isolated, its people fiercely self-reliant by necessity. Few could read or write, and there was little contact with the outside world. Lawyers, judges, and even law books were rare, so when disputes arose - over matters such as land or water - they rarely went to court in the sense we think of. Most disputes were settled by local officials, or alcaldes. Alcaldes were untrained in the law; their main authority was derived from "fairness" and personal respect. Written records were scarce, and most disputes were presented by oral argument and settled in accordance with local custom, which varied according to circumstance from place to place. Some written decisions were issued, but only rarely was a dispute referred for formal legal resolution in Chihuahua.
There were two varieties of land ownership under Spanish (and later Mexican) land grants: Pueblo Indian traditions were similar. There was individual property, on which an individual family's house and food crops were located. There was also community property, used by the whole village for diversion of irrigation water, wood-gathering, livestock grazing, hunting and other purposes. Decision regarding those resources were made by and for the local community as a whole. Common lands could not be sold, for example, to meet the debts of an individual.
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson was one of many Americans who insisted that the Rio Grande, from mouth to head water, was the true southwestern boundary of the Lousiana Purchase. In other words, that Taos, Santa Fe, El Paso, and an host of other long-time Spanish settlements were on French territory, presumably by virtue of the activities of a handful of French explorers and trappers. In fact, their names - such as DesGeorges or Ledoux - persist in New Mexico to this day.
Soon thereafter, Mexico won its independence from Spain, and a big influx of Americans to Texas had instigated its War of Independence from Mexico. (Remember the Alamo?) In 1845, Texas, nearly bankrupt, at least in part through expensive efforts to exterminate or expel the Indian population, was annexed as the 28th American state.
President James Polk, just elected on an expansionist platform, signed the Texas statehood act. On the night of his inauguration, Polk had reportedly told his Secretary of the Navy that annexation of California was an important goal of his administration. Sunset over the Pacific Ocean at the port of San Diego was officially on the young nation's wish list.
The United States adopted an unresolved border dispute between Texas and Mexico. The phrase Manifest Destiny was coined during the public debate which led up to the Mexican-American War. Not unlike today's Washington cabal, Manifest Destiny was believed to originate from God. Troops from both sides amassed along the Rio Grande at Matamoros (near the mouth of the Rio at the Gulf). Predictably, a small incident/pretense soon erupted into full-scale war.
The Americans fought all the way to Mexico City, winning the war. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo records the terms of surrender. All or part of modern day California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada were transferred from Mexican to American governance.
Most of the Treaty's 23 articles deal with matters long forgotten. For example, it's been a long time since the right of free passage up the Colorado River by boat from the Gulf of California could be honored. There's no water left to travel on, since the powers that be have decreed that it's needed for golf courses in Phoenix and extravagant fountains in Las Vegas.
The international boundary was redefined by the Gadsden Purchase. Many of the Articles dealt with the logistics of military disengagement, and trade relations between the two nations. (Reworked several times since, most recently by NAFTA.)
The fate of Mexican nationals in the ceded territories received relatively little by comparison. Article VIII, which deals with their rights remains of interest today. It reads:
Mexicans now established in territories previously belonging to Mexico, and which remain for the future within the limits of the United States, as defined by the present treaty, shall be free to continue where they no reside, or to remove at any time to the Mexican republic, retaining the property they possess in the said territories, or disposing thereof, and removing the proceeds wherever they please, without their being subjected, on this account, to any contirbution, tax or charge whatever.
Those who shall prefer to remain in said territories, may either retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens, or acquire those of citizens of the United States [to be elected within one year]
In the said territories, property of every kind, now belonging to Mexicans not established there, shall be inviolably respected. The present owners, the heirs of these, and all Mexicans who may hereafter acquire said property by contract, shall enjoy with respect to it guarantees equally ample as if the same belonged to citizens of the United States.
No mechanism to assure that "property of every kind" would be "inviolably protected" was given. Article X had specified that property titles valid under the standards of Mexican law should be protected. However, this provision was stricken from the treaty by the US Senate, at the urging of President Polk. Mexico, just resoundingly defeated in war, was in no position to do anything about it. America, its juices flowing over these magnificent new lands, hardly wanted to recognize that most of the best land was already taken.
An 1871 federal survey of western lands produced lovely landscape photographs of the broad Rio Conejos Cañon, an upstream Rio Grande tributary in Colorado. The caption praises it suitability for agricultural homesteading. It described the land as wide open for settlement, commenting that it was only used by Mexican to graze their livestock. To the Army surveyors, this meant the land didn't "belong" to anyone.
The process of land title adjudication began shortly after the war. Resentments over associated injustices are still alive today. Active litigation continues; altercations flare up from time to time. There were several serious problems in the title review process.
First, the two legal systems had very different philosophies at base. The brand-new Mexican -American citizens were faced with an unfamiliar system, conducted in a foreign language. The American legal system did not recognize the existing Spanish/Mexican legal legacy. Thus, land titles in century-old villages were not recognized if, for example, written records could not be produced. The Mexican system, with its emphasis on prevailing custom and tradition, would have accepted the very existence of a village as proof of ownership, and common lands would have been assumed as a social custom known to all. Instead, there were people who had to purchase their own family homes back from the U.S. Government after they had been declared "public property".
To a great extent, the common portino of land grants was interpreted by the US Courts as having been the property of the Mexican government, rather than the local village. In New Mexico, these lands were taken over the federal government, and form the basis of National Forests, Wildlife Refuges, National Parks, White Sands Missle Range, Los Alamos & Sandia National Labs, several military bases, and so on. Some of the land was opened to homesteading. Proving title was an involved, expensive process, sometimes appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Some of the most favorable decisions for land grants occurred after a land speculator acquired the rights of all its heirs, and assumed ownership as soon as the title was cleared. Arthur Manby of Taos, an opportunistic black sheep from an aristocratic English family, obtained substantial property around Taos in this way. Not that it did Manby much good in the end: his decapitated body was found in his Taos home, July 4, 1929. His grave, as well as Kit Carson's (another story entirely) can be found near the Taos Plaza.
The wheels of justice moved more slowly, if at all, for Mexican claimants. The official Court of Public Land Claims, which presided over the process for more than a decade, validated only 6% of the land grant claims which came before it. Furthermore, decisions most often were decided in favor of wealthier, more powerful parties, such as Manby. The United States government, which had promised by treaty (the highest law of the land) to "inviolably respect" the property of the former Mexicans, was often in court against these very people, claiming their lands as public domain.
Corruption and fraud were also rampant. Laws were passed and enforced in violation of the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Supreme Court ruled that only the Republic of Mexico, as signatory to the treaty, was eligible to challenge these laws, leaving no legitimate avenue for redress of grievance. When it came to Indians, there was additional question whether they would be afforded even the rights of other Mexican citizens.
For one thing, a lot of white Americans held fervent beliefs that Indians were not human at all. For another, there had been enough intermarriage between Spaniards and Indian that there was no easy way to draw a clear line between the two. In the end, Pueblo Indians were afforded the right to retain their property (or some of it, anyhow) as citizens, and declared legally distinct from "savage", nomadic tribes such as the Apaches, Comanches, etc.
This historical perspective perhaps makes it clearer why feelings about Forest Service restrictions on firewood cutting (and other matters) run so deep amongst traditional people in northern New Mexico. For, as Malcolm Ebright quotes from the unsentimental Machiavelli in the closing of his excellent 1994 book Land Grants and Law Suits in Northern New Mexico.
[A] prince should...refrain from [taking] the property of others, for men are quicker to forget the death of a father than the loss of a patrimony.