| One of the most enduring legacies of the Spanish and Mexican colonial experience in New Mexico comes from the process by which these governments distributed their land. Throughout history, governments have given land to citizens as rewards for service, to encourage the colonization of a frontier or promote economic growth. In the United States, for example, much of the West was settled through a land distribution process called homesteading. During the time New Mexico was part of Spain, and later, of the Mexican Republic, these governments distributed land to their citizens through a system of land grants. The success of this land grant system can be measured by the fact that many descendants of New Mexico's early pioneers still live on the land grants given to their ancestors as long as three hundred years ago.
After don Diego de Vargas reconquered New Mexico in 1692, the Spanish government began to distribute several types of land grants, as stipulated in the Recopilacion, 1
Pueblo Grants
were among the earliest. They were grants of land made to the Indian communities in New Mexico. All of New Mexico's Pueblos currently exist within a reservation which as its basis in a Spanish land grant.
Private Grants
were a series of grants made to individuals as rewards for their service to the government. They were called private grants because they were for the personal use of
individuals and their families, and became private property which could be sold by the owner.
Community Grants
were possibly the most important type of grant made by the Spanish and Mexican governments in New Mexico. These were grants of land made to groups as part of the process of settling and defending the vast and largely unpopulated New Mexican frontier. These were different from private grants because private grants were, as the name implies, private property. In a community grant, each individual in the group was given a parcel of land on which to build a home, and which they could irrigate and cultivate. The remainder of the grant, however, which often consisted of thousands of acres, was not allocated to individuals. Rather, it was reserved for the common use and benefit of all the settlers. Each person in the grant had access to these common, or community lands, so they could graze their flocks, gather firewood, cut timber, hunt, and utilize the resources within the grant to provide for their families. After an individual settler of a community grant satisfied a residency require-ment by living on and cultivating the land for a specified period of time, he was given a deed to the individual plot of land which had been allocated to him and that piece became his private property. He could sell it if he wanted to, but the common lands remained community property and could not be sold.
The process for acquiring a community grant normally began with a written petition to the governor. The grant application usually stated that the petitioners, as a group, had no land, or had land which was inadequate for them to support growing families. One such example is in the application Lorenzo Marques submitted to Governor Fernando Chacon for the San Miguel del Vado grant in 1794 on behalf of fifty–one residents of Santa Fe. The grant was necessary, Marques explained, because he found himself
“. . . with a growing family, as do those who accompany me, and although we all have some land in the Villa [Santa Fe], they are insufficient for our maintenance; for this and for the scarcity of water we are experiencing and the great number of people, we are unable to utilize it . . .” Typically, the application then described the parcel of land they wanted, noting it was, to the best of their knowledge, vacant public land, and promised to settle and cultivate it as required by law.
After the governor reviewed the petition, he typically ordered an alcalde, or other government official who lived near the land being requested, to investigate whether the land was indeed vacant and as described by the applicants. Once the alcalde determined there were no other claims to the land being requested, the governor would order the alcalde to place the applicants in legal possession of the land. To accomplish this, the alcalde escorted the families being given the grant to the property, where he would point out the boundaries of the grant. These were easy to recognize because grant boundaries were always described in terms of clearly visible features of the landscape, such as a mountain range, hill, a river, or an arroyo. After this was done, the settlers would then make a physical demonstration which sealed the act of possession.
The Land Records of New Mexico, more popularly known as the land grant records, reside in the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe. They contain a number of examples of this act of possession. Here is one example:
In 1769, Bartholome Fernandes, the alcalde mayor of the Keres jurisdiction in central New Mexico, was ordered to place several families in possession of the San Joaquin del Nacimiento community grant which was located along the Rio Puerco near present–day Cuba, New Mexico. After going through a number of preliminary procedures in which he described the boundaries of the grant and reviewed a number of conditions for the settlement and defense of the proposed community, he proceeded with the actual act of possession, noting,
. . . they all said they understood . . . [so] I took them by the hand and walked them through the said lands, they pulled up grass, threw stones, and shouted to the four winds three times in strong voices, ‘Long live the King and may God Guard Him,’ all as a sign of true possession . . .
This marvelous procedure demonstrates that in order to own property under the Spanish and Mexican land grant system, you had to physically step on the land, run your fingers through the soil, and make a public commitment to live on it, cultivate it, and, if necessary, defend it with your life. This was an important part of the land grant process. If this was not done, or done incorrectly, the settlers’ legal claim to the grant could be called into question. Under Spanish and Mexican rule, as well as in the late nineteenth century, when these grants were being adjudicated by the American government, some grants were declared invalid and lost because the settlers could not prove the alcalde had given them formal possession.
By making a physical demonstration of the agreement they had made on paper, these hardy pioneers made a commitment to live along New Mexico’s often dangerous frontier. They endured extraordinary hardships in order to keep their land. They took their commitment sincerely, as evidenced by the fact that although there are few extant community grants, many New Mexicans still live on the land assigned to their ancestors by the Spanish and Mexican governments many generations ago. The ceremony depicted in the document below is but one of the fascinating subjects which can be studied in the vast and (in many ways, still unutilized) documentary resources available in New Mexico’s own archival collections.
Land Records of New Mexico, as well as the Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 1621–1821, are available on microfilm which has been purchased by several research centers in the region. These include the Special Collections Library and the libraries at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, and New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas. If you cannot find these locally, you can still come to visit the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives at 404 Montezuma in Santa Fe. Hours are 8:oo am to 5:oo pm, with personal research assistance available 10:00 am to noon, and 1:00 to 4:30 pm. This facility is preparing for a move to larger, modern quarters at 1209 Camino Carlos Rey in Santa Fe. Look for further details in the Genealogist when they become available.
Copyright 1997, Robert J. Torrez, State Historian, NMSRCA
View a copy of a document from Act of Possession, Piedra Lumbre Grant. |
