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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.
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