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Arroyo Hondo
Land Grant
Written By Denise
Holladay Damico
New Mexico's Taos Valley
is one of the longest-settled regions of New Mexico. Its
fertile soil and the
availability of running water made it an attractive
location, first for the Taos Pueblo Indians, and later for other settlers.
By the early nineteenth century, these competing interest groups came into
conflict over these finite resources. The Arroyo Hondo land grant, located
approximately ten miles northwest of Taos in the Taos
valley, is illustrative
of problems that may be faced in the struggle over land
and water in New Mexico.
Questions of law, interpretation, and power can also be
read in the history of the Arroyo Hondo grant. The original Arroyo Hondo
land grant documents contain two copies with differing details. How the U.S.
courts interpreted that documentation reveals the underpinnings of cultural conflict
in New Mexico. As with other New Mexican land grants, allegations of land grabbing in the
Taos Valley abound and in respect to the Arroyo Hondo Grant, the claimants, mostly Hispano
farmers, were accused of the land grab and Anglo miners and land speculators were the
accusers. The Spanish, Mexican, and American legal documents concerning the
Arroyo Hondo grant reveal the degree to which the different groups including Taos
Pueblo Indians, Hispano vecinos, and Anglo miners, competed for the grant resources of
land, water, and minerals.
The Arroyo Hondo grant
is one of many land grants that originated in the Taos
Valley in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this time
period, the Hispano population
of the area was growing rapidly and local officials were
eager to promote Hispano
settlement in the Valley and throughout New Mexico. To
facilitate this growth, they issued a decree that allowed for those
who did not own land to apply for a land grant. Nerio Sisneros, responded with a
March 27, 1815, petition for the land that would ultimately become the Arroyo Hondo
grant. In a petition addressed to the alcalde mayor José Miguel Tafoya, Sisneros
requested that the area known as Rio Hondo be granted to him and “various associates” so that
they could support their families.
To strengthen his
request, Sisneros wrote that approving the grant would
“not injure anyone, as
it is distant from the league of the Indians and is
suitable for the formation of a town” since “pasture, water, firewood and
timber [were] abundant.” “The league of the Indians” Sisneros referred to was
the four square leagues of land that Spanish law granted to each pueblo, usually
measured from the cross in the center of each pueblo's cemetery to the four cardinal
directions. It was important for Sisneros to establish
that the land grant
which he sought would not infringe upon Indian land
because “paternalistic Spanish
legislation protected [Indian lands] from encroachment by
outsiders” (see G. Emlen
Hall and David Weber). Sisneros' proviso that “pasture,
water, firewood and timber [were] abundant” reflects his knowledge of
the requirements used by Spanish colonial officials when approving land
grants. Officials refused requests for land grants that
did not guarantee
enough water and other natural resources to sustain the
proposed community. Communities
who lacked basic resources inevitably failed and depleted
valuable resources in
the process.
Following the usual
procedure, the alcalde, José Miguel Tafoya, forwarded
Sisneros' petition to
the governor, Alberto Maynez. Tafoya recommended that
Maynez approve the grant
since “it appears to me, it [would] work no injury to
anyone.” Governor Maynez followed Tafoya's advice and approved the
grant on April 2, 1815, on the conditions that: “no damage be done to third
parties;” that no settler receive more than he⁄she can cultivate, that each settler fence
his⁄her land, “to avoid damages” from grazing livestock; that “the commons remain public for
the pasturage of the stock of all;” and that “the small stock graze at a distance so that
they may not disturb the growing crops...” These conditions, fairly typical of
Spanish land grants in New Mexico, established the Arroyo
Hondo grant as a
community grant. Each settler received an individual
allotment of land, ranging
in size from forty to three hundred square varas. Most
settlers received either fifty or one hundred varas. The settlers would use
the common lands to graze their livestock. One hundred varas of land were also
set aside as a plaza which eventually became the village of Arroyo Hondo.
Shortly after Governor
Maynez's approval of the grant, Taos alcalde, Pedro
Martín, went through
the formal act of possession for the grant. The original
documentation for the act of possession is not extant. When those who
lived on the Arroyo Hondo grant petitioned for the grant to be confirmed by the
U.S. Government in the late nineteenth century, they submitted two different copies of
the act of possession, one copy made on July 23, 1820, and one made thirteen years later,
on March 19, 1833. There were discrepancies between the two copies of the Act of
Possession, including differences in the lists of names of
the settlers of the
Arroyo Hondo grant.
On the day after Deputy
Alcalde Martin went through the act of possession with the
Arroyo Hondo settlers,
the governor of Taos Pueblo, Josef Francisco Luján, wrote
a petition to Alcalde
José Miguel Tafoya protesting the encroachment of Hispano
settlers onto the Taos
Pueblo's four-league grant. The Hispano population boom
had led to increased
tensions between the Taos Pueblo Indians and Hispanos, as
evidenced by Luján's
petition. Governor Maynez, in his response to the
petition, ordered that the Taos alcalde arrange some compromise between the
Hispano settlers and the Indians as long as the compromise did no harm to the
Indians.
The fact that the Taos
Pueblo submitted their petition the day after the Arroyo
Hondo land was granted
to Hispano settlers suggests that the grant was cause for
concern. Further
evidence that the Arroyo Hondo grant was of particular
concern comes from Governor
Maynez's note at the end of the decree concerning the
petition. “If the damages which the Indians of Taos have described to
me result from the planting permitted to the residents in the cienega (wet or
marshy place) of Arroyo Hondo, they cannot plant. The alcalde shall settle this point in
the most just and advantageous way,” he wrote.
The Arroyo Hondo grant
was in fact, outside of the Pueblo's league grant, as
Alcalde Martin (who
had gone through the formal act of possession on the
Arroyo Hondo grant) reported
to the governor on May 3, 1815. Though other Hispano
settlements (approximately
190 families), were within the Taos Pueblo four square
leagues of land, the Arroyo
Hondo grant was not among them. “...the settlement at
Arroyo Hondo does not injure
either the Indians or the residents,” he wrote, “because
they are more than ten thousand
varas distant from the league.”
In 1821, Mexico became
independent from Spain. Unlike the Spanish government, the
Mexican government
allowed New Mexicans to carry on trade with the U.S. and
other countries. This
laissez-faire attitude led to the opening of the Santa Fe
Trail later that same
year. The opening of the Santa Fe Trail brought French and
American fur trappers, traders,
and merchants to the Taos Valley. Among these was Simeon
Turley, who, at some
point in the early 1830's, built a “two story adobe flour
mill beside the Rio Hondo” after purchasing land from Juan de Jesus
Valdes and David Waldo for forty reales.
A decade later, the
United States and Mexico were at war. By September of
1846, the US occupied
New Mexico. A few months later, in January 1847, Simeon
Turley, along with
several others, including the first American governor of
New Mexico, was killed by a group of Taos Pueblo Indians and Hispanos in
an incident known as the Taos Rebellion.
The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War. Mexico ceded
New Mexico, along with
the rest of the American Southwest, to the US. Arroyo
Hondo residents filed
some title papers in the US Surveyor General's office on
June 17, 1861, and
others on July 21, 1881, but did not petition for the
confirmation of the Arroyo Hondo grant until 1887. On December 9 of that year,
seventy-three claimants filed a petition seeking confirmation of the grant.
The U.S. Surveyor
General, George Julian, heard the Arroyo Hondo case in
March of 1888. Julian
recommended to Congress that the Arroyo Hondo grant be
confirmed. Julian wrote
that he relied on both the grantees' testimony and the
grant documents filed by the claimants, to come to his decision. Though
the claimants had not produced the original grant and Act of Possession, Julian
wrote that the 1833 copy was “a faithful and legal copy of a like copy taken from the
original by the Alcalde Juan Dios Peña, dated May 12th 1820...” In Julian's opinion, the
grantees' testimony showed that “the grantees took possession of their particular
allotments, and that they and their heirs and legal representatives have ever since held
continuous and peaceable possession of their lands.” Julian's summary of the
original grant papers indicates his understanding of the nature of the Arroyo Hondo grant as
a communal one, with small, individual tracts for each family, a commons area for grazing
livestock, and a community plaza.
As was the case with
many of New Mexico's land grants, Congress did not confirm
the Arroyo Hondo grant
despite Julian's recommendation. It was not until 1891
that Congress attempted
to resolve the huge backlog of unconfirmed grants by
creating the Court of Private
Land Claims (CPLC). On March 31, 1892, Julian A. Martínez,
Juan C. Rael and Nemecio
Abilo filed a petition with the CPLC to confirm the Arroyo
Hondo grant on their behalf
and that of “other claimants.”
The CPLC heard the case
in November of 1892 and in its decree of December 17,
1892, stated that the
“title and claim” of the Arroyo Hondo grant were “good and
valid.” Judge Reed
decreed that the grant encompassed a total of 24,000
acres, or eleven square leagues.
There were problems with
the survey of the Arroyo Hondo grant almost immediately.
On March 22, 1894,
Deputy Surveyor General Sherrard Coleman reported that he
found it “impossible
to make a survey of the Arroyo Hondo tract according to
[the Surveyor General's]
instructions.” None of the landmarks specified in the
Court's decree, confirming the grant, corresponded with the actual lay
of the land.
Certain individuals and
groups from the Arroyo Hondo area were ready and eager to
exploit the resulting
confusion to their own advantage. A closer look at who was
involved in the
various objections to the Surveyor General's office and
the Court of Private Land Claims decisions, illustrates the growing
power of Anglo land speculators and miners in New Mexico at the end of the
nineteenth century, and the effects of that power on the processes of land grant
confirmations. Objections to the CPLC's decree of the
Arroyo Hondo grant's
boundaries came from Anglo miners who were interested in
the mountainous and
potentially mineral-rich area under dispute.
The Hispano claimants
and the U.S. government went through several rounds of appeals. In the end, the CPLC
decided in February of 1898 that its original December 1892 decree confirming the Arroyo
Hondo Grant had been “erroneous but not void.” The decree had been erroneous in that it
confirmed the common lands of the grant, which, according to later court decisions,
were in fact public domain, not owned by the grant claimants. The court also decided
that the U.S. government's claim that the grant boundaries were incorrectly stated
in the final decree, and that the U.S. Government's objections to the boundaries, though
filed after the appeal period had expired, had been filed in the “regular course of
procedure.” This decision reduced the size of the Arroyo Hondo grant from 30,674 acres as
originally claimed to just over 20,000 acres.
After several years of
quibbling over who would pay the surveyor's bill, N.B.
Laughlin, the attorney
for the claimants of the Arroyo Hondo Grant, finally
received the patent for the grant on April 20, 1908.
The long history of the
Arroyo Hondo grant illustrates the struggles by those who
lived on or near the
grant to obtain and maintain rights to the various natural
resources available on
the grant. These resources, according to the original
grantees of 1815, included “pasture, water, firewood and timber;”
“fields for planting;” “pasturage for livestock;” and the potential mineral resources so
coveted by mining interests in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Ultimately, the
Arroyo Hondo grant proved not to contain the vast quantities of gold, silver, and
copper the miners had hoped for. Conflict over land, water
and land grants continues
today.
Chronology
March-April 1815: Nerio
Sisneros and others petition for the Arroyo Hondo land
grant; Governor Maynez
approves the grant and Alcalde Pedro Martín grants formal
Act of Possession.
Governor of Taos Pueblo, Josef Francisco Luján, protests
Hispanic encroachment
onto Taos Pueblo's four-league grant. Governor Maynez
decrees that the alcalde
should determine if Taos Pueblo will be damaged by the
Arroyo Hondo settlers. Alcalde
Martín reports that the Arroyo Hondo grant is outside of
the Pueblo's league.
23 July 1820: First copy
of the Act of Possession.
1821: Mexico becomes
independent from Spain; opening of the Santa Fe Trail.
1830s: Simeon Turley
builds a mill on the grant.
19 March 1833: Second
copy of the Act of Possession.
1846-1848: US and Mexico
at war.
January 1847: Taos
revolt; Simeon Turley killed and Turley's mill destroyed.
17 June 1861: Arroyo
Hondo residents file some title papers in the Surveyor
General's office.
21 July 1881: Additional
title papers filed in Surveyor General's office.
December 1887 - March
1888: Arroyo Hondo grant claimants petition for
confirmation of the
grant; Surveyor General George Julian hears the Arroyo
Hondo case; Julian recommends
confirmation of the Arroyo Hondo grant.
1891: Court of Private
Land Claims established.
March – December 1892:
Julian A. Martínez, Juan C. Rael and Nemecio Abilo file petition with the CPLC to confirm
the Arroyo Hondo grant, on their behalf and that of “other claimants”; CPLC hears Arroyo
Hondo case; CPLC decrees that the “title and claim” of the Arroyo Hondo grant
were “good and valid.”
1893-1898: Various
interests, including mining companies, contest the grant's
boundaries before the
CPLC.
February 1898: CPLC
decrees that the grant is in fact valid but reduces its
size from over 30,000
to 20,000 acres.
20 April 1908: Patent
received by Arroyo Hondo claimants' attorney.
Sources Used
Surveyor General Report
159, State Records Center and Archives, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Court of Private Land Claims
Case File Number 5, State Records Center and Archives, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Baxter, John O. Spanish
Irrigation in the Taos Valley (Santa Fe: New Mexico State
Engineer's Office, 1990).
Bowden, J. J. "Private
Land Claims in the Southwest," 6 vols. (Master's thesis,
Southern Methodist
University, 1969.
Hall, G. Emlen, and
David J. Weber, “Mexican Liberals and the Pueblo Indians,
1821-1829,” New Mexico
Historical Review 59:1, 5-31.
Jenkins, Myra Ellen.
“Taos Pueblo and Its Neighbors,” New Mexico Historical
Review 41: 2 (April
1966).
Related Materials:
1815 Arroyo Hondo Grant
Original Documents
Arroyo Hondo Testimonial
Surveyor General's
Opinion
Summons for 1892 Arroyo
Hondo CPLC Case
U.S. Attorney's Answer
to Arroyo Hondo Claimants' Case
Replication of Complaint
to Answer the Defendant (USA) in CPLC Case
Final Decree of CPLC
Case
Petition to Correct East
Boundary, 1892
Petition to Correct CPLC
Decree, 1894
Motion to Set Aside CPLC
Decree, 1898
Letter from Plaintiffs'
Attorneys, 1898
Opinion by Chief Justice
Reed
Dissenting Opinion by
Associate Justice Murray
Objections to Survey
Defendant Exhibit B,
1894