Land grants in New Mexico and Colorado
The principal objectives of the land grants were to encourage the foundation of new communities and to expand the settled area on the frontiers of New Mexico for defense from Indian raids.
By the early 20th century, the Hispano grantees and their descendants had lost a large percentage of the grant land to Anglos and public domain national forests.
Hispano protests, legal action, and occasional violence to regain or retain their traditional rights to usage of grant lands continued into the 21st century.
The initial settlement comprised more than 500 soldiers and settlers, including at least 129 men of fighting age, ten Franciscan missionaries, and more than 7,000 head of livestock.
New Mexico was at the time 600 miles (970 km) north of the nearest Spanish settlement of Santa Bárbara, Chihuahua.
They did not attempt to reimpose the encomienda system but rather made grants of land to communities (including Pueblo villages) and individuals.
[5] Subsequently, the Spanish and their Pueblo subjects were forced into becoming allies due to raids, often retaliatory, by the surrounding Indian tribes, especially the Comanche who after 1706 became a major threat to the New Mexican colony.
The land grants later judged by the U.S. to be legal ranged in size from 200 acres (81 ha) for Cañada Ancha (now a suburb of Santa Fe) to 1,714,765 acres (6,939.41 km2) for the Maxwell Land Grant on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains extending northward into Colorado.
As of 2015, about 35 of the community grants in New Mexico continued to function, had boards of trustees, and owned in common about 200,000 acres (810 km2) of land.
Uses made of the common land included pastures for livestock, water, timber, firewood, hunting, fishing, foraging, and rock quarrying.
[16] When the United States acquired New Mexico, it initially regarded the Pueblos as full citizens and not entitled to any special protection.
Legal disputes concerning land ownership and the respective rights and obligations of the Pueblos and the U.S. government continued into the 21st century.
[10] [13] During the last years of Mexican rule, the New Mexican governor made several large individual grants to reward supporters and cronies, bolster possession of land on the periphery of New Mexico, and counter growing U.S. influence, including fear of invasion of New Mexico by either the U.S. or Texas which was independent from 1836 to 1845.
[22][23] In 1854, the U.S. established the Office of the Surveyor General for New Mexico to investigate land grants and recommend their disposition to the U.S. Congress.
The notorious Santa Fe Ring of lawyers and politicians, often in league with the Surveyors General, abused the adjudication system.
Attempts to expel both Hispano and Anglo settlers from the Maxwell Land Grant resulted in violent resistance from 1866 until 1899.
Las Gorras Blancas (the White Caps) in San Miguel County from the 1880s until the 1920s cut pasture fences and committed several violent acts.
[27] In 1967, the Alianza Federal de Mercedes, led by Reies Tijerina, raided the Rio Arriba County Courthouse.
The objective was to make a citizen's arrest of the district attorney "to bring attention to the unscrupulous means by which government and Anglo settlers had usurped Hispanic land grant properties."
