Prior to the Spanish settlement of Santa Fe in the 1600s, the territory in-and-around what is now Rancho Viejo was used for hunting and gathering, and occasionally occupied by what archaeologists call Paleoindians, Archaics, and Puebloans
The colonizing Spanish divided those open spaces into land
grants. (1) The majority of it was
declared common land for the general support of the community. (2) Some privately owned (“proprietary”)
plots were awarded to favored subjects and loyalists of the Spanish government,
Pueblo communities or families of ten or more, and “sito” or ranch grants
ranging in size from one square league (nine square miles) to hundreds of
thousands of acres were allocated to individuals and families. And (3) some were declared royal or vacant
lands, which also were used by the general populace. Unfortunately for
historians and real estate lawyers, during the Pueblo Rebellion in 1680 – an
uprising by the indigenous Pueblo people against their Spanish colonizers – the
Palace of the Governors (built in 1610) containing records of many these early
land grants was burned to the ground and many of the documents were
destroyed.
The situation was exacerbated between 1869 and 1871 when New
Mexico Governor William Pile was in office.
According to newmexicohistory.org, “A major debacle occurring during
Pile’s term concerned the territorial archives. Ira M. Bond, the territorial
librarian who was an appointee and friend of the governor, sold and destroyed
some of the archives of New Mexico. [Among them some of the land grant
documentation.] This action was apparently taken at Pile’s suggestion, who
wanted for office use the space occupied by archival material in the Palace of
the Governors. Pile was condemned at public
meetings in Santa Fe and Albuquerque for this decision.”
Dr. Richard Melzer of UNM Valencia in a talk at El Rancho de
las Golondrinas told his audience that among these documents were records of
the early land grants. When an effort
was made to retrieve them it was found that many of them had been used as
scraps to start fires, others in outhouses, and as butcher wrapping paper.
After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821 it
continued the land grant laws with the one addition of allowing foreigners to
acquire them – something not allowed by the Spanish.
After the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, when the United
States took over the New Mexican Territory, the land began to be further
divided and titles reassigned –raising interesting questions about how the land
came into Anglo ownership after Hispanic proprietorship – and if there were any
legal shenanigans involved to transfer the right of possession. Or as stated in “Windmills and Dreams” (a
history of nearby Eldorado at Santa Fe), “unparalleled land stealing in New
Mexico.”
Such as, the Native Pueblo Indians might say, had been done
to them.
Spanish and Mexican land grants were officially protected
under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo – but this provision was not strictly
enforced.
William P Barrett writes in his online article “Who Owns New
Mexico” that the Treaty “protected grant holders who had perfected their titles
[all liens or other defects had been removed]. But the U.S. Senate refused to
ratify a provision that would have vested grantees merely in the process of
establishing that the claim was good and valid. Indeed, much of New Mexico's
vast federal acreage today is the result of disallowed Mexican or Spanish land
grants. The result was decades of
litigation--and fraud, as all kinds of dubious documents surfaced in purported
support of these ancient rights.”
Inconsistencies between Anglo and Spanish land laws,
indefinite land grant boundaries, and the inability of many claimants to
provide proof of title led to legal and political entanglements and occasional
violence in territorial New Mexico. And
the “Santa Fe Ring” – a group of powerful attorneys and land speculators (basically
all the Republican politicians in the state capital during the late 19th
and early 20th centuries – among them the aforementioned William
Pile) – amassed a fortune through political corruption and fraudulent land
deals.
Ultimately the Office of the United States Surveyor General
for New Mexico was created in 1852 to investigate Spanish and Mexican land
grants and recommend to the U.S. Congress those claims that had actual proof.
“Even so land grant issues remain vexing in New Mexico owing
to the unfulfilled promise of the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo,” wrote Stephen
Sayles and Jerry L. Williams in discussion of Land Grants from “New Mexico in
Maps” by UNM Press.
Eldorado at Santa Fe, the census-designated place to the
west and somewhat south of Rancho Viejo has proof of being a part of both the
then adjacent Lamy and Canada de Los Alamos Spanish Land Grants – with current
day Eldorado taking up most of the former. Windmills and Dreams, a history of
Eldorado tells us, “Lorenzo Marquez
was deeded the [Canada de Los Alamos] in 1785.
At that time, and until 1892, the grant was a basically square piece of
property containing 13,700 acres. It was
bounded on the north by the main road from Pecos Cerrillos; on the west by a
wooded ridge; on the south by Canada de la Tierra including the Colorado
Mountains; and on the east the boundary line dropped due south from the
junction of Old Las Vegas Highway and U.S. Highway 285 to a few miles north of
the present town of Lamy.”
The first owner of record of the Lamy Grant was Diego
Antonio Baca who “sometime in 1807 was given the land in exchange for a house
and lot to be used for barracks by government troops in the Presidio of Santa
Fe. The grant was described as being
bounded: On the North, by the road leading from Santa Fe to Pecos; on the east
by Cononcito de los Apaches, including the water of said canon; on the south by
the road leading from Galisteo to its junction with the soldier’s bridle path;
and on the west by the soldier’s bridle path and Cerro Colorado, including said
Cerro.”
The next owner, circa 1817, was Carlos de Herrera, a
sheepherder who had 500 consignment sheep stolen from him – and being unable to
pay for the purloined ovines, devised a “back door” transfer of the property to
the Catholic Church. However selling
land to the church was not allowed under Spanish or Mexican law. So, “in order to clear up the situation”, in
1856 Bishop (later Archbishop) Jean Baptiste Lamy secured a quitclaim covering
the grant from its heir Francisco Herrera.
“Lamy alleged that the will had been lost or misplaced; he also offered
no explanations or apologies for his lack of documentation regarding the
validity of the original Baca claim.”
Archbishop Lamy was the subject of Willa Cather’s novel “Death Comes to
the Archbishop.”
A map of Spanish and Mexican Land Grants published in “New
Mexico in Maps” shows the Lamy and Canada de Los Alamos grants as adjacent gray
shapes in Southern Santa Fe Country ,with white space to the east and west and
most of the south except for the relatively small (1,895 acres) San Marcos
Pueblo Grant to the southwest, and the San Cristoval Grant attached to the
southernmost extremity of the Lamy Grant.
Immediately north of Canada de Los Alamos is the Sebastian de Vargas
Grant.
My interpretation of this diagrammatic representation is
that the Spanish/Mexican origins of what is now Rancho Viejo lies in the white
space to the east and south – indicating to me that the property was never
privately granted land or, if it were, that any records of such grants do not
exist. The land may have been communal,
Royal, or simply vacant.
Oh well – no Colonialism, in this case Spanish, in our
property’s lineage. But Marsha and I are
used to such things being second generation Americans who moved to Santa Fe
from Connecticut’s oldest incorporated town (1634) with a rich British Colonial
history, and a significant number of residents with direct familial ties to
that past.
But, on the plus side, now we don’t need to stay awake
nights worrying about the ghost, or heirs, of Archbishop Lamy showing up at our
door to reclaim their heritage. The
couple who live next door to us, however, are the Herreras, so…who knows.
An Additional Note:
A September 2001 Report to Congress “TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO
– Definition and List of Community Land Grants in New Mexico reported the
following:
“Land grant documents contain no direct reference to
“community land grants” nor do Spanish and Mexican laws define or use this
term. We did find, however, that some grants refer to lands set aside for
general communal use (ejidos) or for specific purposes, including hunting
(caza), pasture (pastos), wood gathering (leña), or watering (abrevederos).
Scholars, the land grant literature, and popular terminology commonly use the
phrase “community land grants” to denote land grants that set aside common
lands for the use of the entire community. We adopted this broad definition in
determining which Spanish and Mexican land grants can be identified as
community land grants.
“We identified 154 community land grants (or approximately
52 percent) out of the total of 295 land grants in New Mexico. We divided these
community land grants into three distinct types: 78 of these were grants in
which the shared lands formed part of the grant according to the original grant
documentation; 53 were grants that scholars, grantee heirs, or others believed
to contain common lands; and 23 were grants extended to the
indigenous pueblo cultures in New Mexico.”
