The Villanueva State Park History of Title and History of the San Miguel del Bado Land Grant

Malcolm Ebright, President

Center for Land Grant Studies

Submitted to the Commission for Public Records pursuant to Contract #09-36099-008720

3/31/2009

Table of Contents

1. Introduction – Scope of the Project ............................................................................4 2. Pecos Pueblo: Early History to 1838 ..........................................................................5 3. Pecos Pueblo: Privatization of the Pecos Pueblo League – 1838 to the present..........11 4. The San Miguel del Bado Grant ...............................................................................13 5. Villanueva, San Miguel del Bado and other communities.........................................19 6. Settlement on the San Miguel del Bado Grant and Neighboring Grants ...................24 7. Adjudication of the San Miguel del Bado Grant .......................................................35 8. Villanueva State Park Abstract: Narrative ................................................................44 9. Operation of Villanueva State Park ..........................................................................48 10. Conclusion ............................................................................................................50 Bibliography................................................................................................................52 Appendix A – Chain of Title of Villanueva State Park ...................................................53 Appendix B – 1803 Settlers at San Miguel del Bado.....................................................57 Appendix C – 1803 Settlers at San José del Bado ........................................................59 Appendix D – 1841 Census of San Miguel del Bado .....................................................60 Appendix E – Genízaros and Non-Pecos Indians in San Miguel Baptismal Records ......72 Appendix F – Map........................................................................................................74

Cover – San Miguel del Bado church, photo by Malcolm Ebright

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Table of Figures

Figure 1. Land ownership around the Ciénega of Pecos. ......................................11 Figure 2. San Miguel del Vado Grant, based on John Shaw Survey of 1879,

containing 315,300 acres. ....................................................................15 Figure 3. Sena [Puertecito] church.......................................................................20 Figure 4. The Upper Pecos Valley.........................................................................21 Figure 5. Villanueva [La Cuesta] church. .............................................................22 Figure 6. El Cerrito church and congregation, 1941. ...........................................23 Figure 7. Map of Northern New Mexico Land Grants............................................24 Figure 8. San Miguel del Bado grant allotted lands per 1903 Wendell Hall survey.43 Figure 9. Ruins located at Villanueva State Park. ................................................47 Figure 10. The Road to Villanueva State Park (State Road 3) runs beside the Pecos

River.....................................................................................................48 Figure 11. Children’s playground at Villanueva State Park.....................................49 Figure 12. Bridge over the Pecos River at Villanueva State Park. ............................50

Photo credits

Figure 1. Hall, Four Leagues of Pecos, 64.

Figure 2 Nostrand, El Cerrito, p. 5.

Figure 3. Photo by Malcolm Ebright

Figure 4. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 440.

Figure 5. Photo by Malcolm Ebright.

Figure 6. Nostrand, El Cerrito, 124.

Figure 7. Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits, 172.

Figure 8. Nostrand, El Cerrito,

Figure 9. NMSRCA, Governor Cargo papers.

Figure 9. Photo by Steve Hardin.

Figure 10. Young, State Parks of New Mexico, 152.

Figure 11. Photo by Malcolm Ebright.

Figure 12. Photo by Malcolm Ebright.

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1. Introduction – Scope of the Project

This report on the Villanueva State Park is rendered pursuant to a contract

between the Center for Land Grant Studies and the Commission of Public Records (the

Agency) dated September 9, 2008. Paragraph 1 of the contract provides for a review by

the Center for Land Grant Studies of each of seven abstracts to be provided by the

Agency. After making a detailed review of the abstract the contractor shall provide, “a

synopsis of the chain of title, identification of any discrepancies or breaks in the chain

of title, and a brief history of the land grant in which the State Park is located.” This

report covers the findings concerning the Villanueva State Park within the San Miguel

del Bado Land Grant (deliverable 1A4) and was written by Malcolm Ebright.

The abstract provided for the Villanueva State Park was incomplete with many

gaps that required additional research to fill in. For example, the latest patent from the

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) shown as tract 7 on the map is not listed in the

Territorial Title Abstract. It has been necessary to rely heavily on the abstract provided

by the New Mexico State Parks Division rather than the Territorial Title Abstract,

though I did examine all the deeds in the latter abstract (see section 8, Appendix A, and

map at Appendix F). The map attached as Appendix F relies on the New Mexico State

Parks abstract, showing graphically how the Villanueva State Park was acquired

initially with deeds from the Board of Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado Grant, later

augmented by land patented from the BLM and from the BLM and land deeded from

private land owners. These lands were once part of the San Miguel del Bado

community land grant: the BLM lands were part of the common lands, and the San

Miguel del Bado Grant board of Trustees land was part of the private lands confirmed to

the grant.

Because of the close connection between the San Miguel del Bado grant and the

Pecos Pueblo (the grantees apparently included some Pecos Indians), Sections 2 and 3

deal with a brief history of the Pecos Pueblo, before and after 1838 when the Pueblo was

abandoned. Section 4 deals with the San Miguel del Bado grant, section 5 and 6 with

settlement on the grant and neighboring grants and section 7 with the adjudication of

San Miguel del Bado grant. Section 8 describes how the Villanueva State Park was

created out of what had been the common lands and the private lands of the San

Miguel del Bado Grant and Section 9 describes the operation of the Villanueva State

Park. Finally the conclusion attempts to tie together the story of how this most famous

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of New Mexico land grants led to the creation of the flagship of the New Mexico state

parks.

Research assistance was provided by Carisa Williams Joseph, Moss Joseph,

former State Archivist Richard Salazar, map-maker Steve Hardin and community

members. Special thanks to Sandra Jaramillo, Christy Tafoya, Faith Yoman and

members of the staff of the State Records Center and Archives.

2. Pecos Pueblo: Early History to 1838

The following section and section three, dealing with the Pecos Pueblo people

prior to 1838 and with the Pecos Pueblo land after 1838 is largely taken from Frances

Levine, Our Prayers are in this Place: Pecos Pueblo Identity Over the Centuries.

Indians from what is now called Pecos Pueblo encountered Spanish explorers

very soon after the Spaniards first entered New Mexico. A man named Estevan who

traveled north from Mexico as part of the Fray Marcos de Niza expedition of 1539

entered an ancestral Zuni village; the next year the much larger expedition led by

Francisco Vasquez Coronado, reportedly consisting of more than 1500 people and well

provisioned, reached Zuni. Pecos Pueblo was the only group to send a contingent when

invited to meet with Coronado. The leader of this delegation, called Bigotes for his long

mustache, presented Coronado with gifts of tanned hides, shields, and headpieces, and

when Coronado’s troops reached Pecos they received gifts of cotton cloth, feather robes,

and animal skins. 1

Pedro de Castañeda, a chronicler of the Coronado expedition provides the first

image of Pecos at that time. The Pueblo was called Cicuye by Castañeda, likely a Tiwa

(Tiguex) name that the Spanish explorers learned, the name Pecos was probably a Towa

name glossed by the Spaniards.2 Castañeda described the pueblo:

“it is a square, situated on a rock, with a large court or yard in the middle, containing the estufas [kivas]. The houses are all alike, four stories high. One can go over the top of the whole village without there being a street to hinder. There are corridors going all around it at the first two stories, by which one can go around the whole village. These are like outside balconies, and they are able to protect themselves under these. The houses do not have doors below, but they use ladders which can be lifted up like a drawbridge, and so go up to the corridors which are on the inside of the village. As doors of the houses open on the corridor of that story, the corridor serves as a street. The houses that

1 Frances Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place: Pecos Pueblo Identity Over the Centuries, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), 11-13. 2 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 162, n. 8, citing Carroll Riley, The Frontier People: The Greater Southwest in the Protohistoric Period, Occasional Paper no. 1, Center for Anthropological Studies, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

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open on the plain are right back of these that open on the court, and in time of war they go through those behind them. The village is enclosed by a low wall of stone. There is a spring of water inside, which they are able to divert.” 3 “Other chroniclers of the Coronado expedition added that the village had eight plazas, reached four or five stories in places, and contained about 50 houses.”4

Coronado retreated further south in 1542. For various reasons it was forty

years before Spaniards again became interested in exploring the northern area

surrounding the Rio Grande. “In 1580 the expedition of Fray Agustín Rodriguez and

Captain Francisco Sánchez Chamuscado, the next Spanish explorers to travel through

the region, passed along the flanks of the Glorieta Mesa immediately to the west of

Pecos Pueblo en route to the buffalo plains. 5

The next Spaniards to visit the region were the expedition of Antonio de Espejo,

sent to New Mexico to rescue two friars who had remained behind when the

Chamuscado-Rodríguez party returned to Mexico. Espejo reached Pecos Pueblo in early

July 1583. It was described as the finest and largest of the Pueblos seen by the party.

Although the Pecos Indians initially refused to give the explorers any food, a

compromise was reached through the negotiations of a survivor of the Coronado

expedition, a Mexican Indian who was evidently in residence at the pueblo.6

The right to colonize New Mexico was won by Juan de Oñate in September 1595,

but he was not the first to attempt to claim the far north for Spain. Gaspar Castaño de

Sosa led an unauthorized expedition to New Mexico in the fall of 1590. He traveled up

the Pecos River, reaching Pecos Pueblo at the end of December 1590. His party was

greeted by an armed and hostile contingent of the village. Sosa’s journal reflects

mounting despair over bitter cold, the colonists’ dwindling food supplies, and a violent

clash with the Pecos.7 Sosa entered the village on January 1, 1591, and spent several

3 Winship, George Parker, “The Coronado Expedition, 1540-1542” in The Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1892-1893, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1896), part 1, 329-613; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 13. 4 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 13. 5 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 14-15. 6 John Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown: The Pecos Indians and New Mexico, (1979; reprint edition, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 42; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 15. 7 George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, The Rediscovery of New Mexico, 1580-1594: The Explorations of Chamuscado, Espejo, Castaño de Sosa, Morlete, and Leyta de Bonilla and Humaña, Coronado Cuarto Centennial Publications, 1540-1940, vol. 3 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1916); Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 15.

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days camped there.8 He provided a detailed description of the village, the dress of the

villagers, and the abundant stores of corn, herbs, squash, and chile. He noted great

quantities of pottery, including some colorful glazed ceramics, and plentiful firewood

and timbers for building. The expedition recorded 16 kivas, which were interpreted as a

form of winter housing.9 “After a few days Sosa took some of the food stores and

resumed his march toward his destination at Santo Domingo Pueblo. Sosa’s colony on

the Río Grande was short-lived. He was arrested and returned to Mexico in the spring

of 1591, where he was punished for this illegal entry.”10

Meanwhile Juan de Oñate was staging the expedition that would colonize New

Mexico. It took more than three years for Juan de Oñate to complete the task of

assembling the people, supplies, and authorizations needed before the settlers began

their journey north. Finally, in the winter of 1598, a caravan of some 80 ox carts and

wagons, 7,000 head of domestic livestock, and perhaps as many as 500 people headed

up the camino real. Oñate’s colonists, called pobladores in Spanish, extended the royal

road more than 600 miles to their base at San Juan Pueblo in the Tewa province. The

colonists reached San Juan Pueblo in the Tewa province. The colonists reached San

Juan in two groups during the summer of 1598. The Hispanic settlement, San

Gabriel, was built in the Tewa pueblo of Yunque, on the west bank of the Rio Grande.11

Oñate rewarded the pobladores with encomiendas, or grants of Indian labor, for

meritorious service. The encomenderos were obligated to defend the Pueblo

communities and to participate in their religious conversion. In return for this defense

and religious instruction, each Pueblo household was required to pay a tax, or ‘tribute,’

of one fanegas of corn and a cotton manta.12

Kessell identified only two encomenderos at Pecos in the period 1620 to 1680.

Francisco Gómez, a Portuguese colonist who came to New Mexico about 1605,

occupied the position of encomendero at Pecos from the 1620s until about 1656. His

son, Francisco Gómez Robledo, succeeded him, serving until the Pueblo Revolt in

8 Hammond and Rey, Rediscovery, 277-80, Albert H. Schroeder and Dan S. Matson, A Colony on the Move: Gaspar Castaño de Sosa’s Journal, 1590-1591 (Santa Fe: School of American Research, 1965), 107-112; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 15. 9 Hammond and Rey, Rediscovery, 277-278; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 15-16. 10 Schroeder and Matson, A Colony on the Move, 98-100; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 16. 11 Herbert E. Bolton, ed., Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706, (1908; reprint edition, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976), 201, Marc Simmons, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 93-97; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 16-17. 12 Charles W. Hackett, ed. and trans., Historical Documents Related to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington: 1937), 110; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 17.

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1680. Gómez Robledo evidently shared Pecos with Pedro Lucero de Godoy, who held

the tribute of twenty-four houses in the village. Pecos was considered to be the richest

encomienda, owing to its central role in procuring buffalo hides, an important export

item, from the plains.13

The Spaniards used Catholic missions to encultrate native people throughout

the Americas. The missionaries’ goals went well beyond the teachings of Christianity.

Natives would be taught to live like Europeans, to eat like Europeans, and to think like

Europeans. By these means, the philosophy of the time held, the natives would be

uplifted to the spiritual level of Spaniards themselves. Oñate assigned friars to specific

pueblos to begin converting the people. The pace of conversion and of the construction

of mission complexes seems to have remained slow in the first decades of colonial

occupation.14

Alden Hayes traced the history of church construction at Pecos. There were

four churches at Pecos Pueblo, two built before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and two after

the Spanish Reconquest in 1692. The first church stood a short distance to the north

of the pueblo room blocks, perhaps indicating that the missionaries were not

immediately welcomed in the village. Also known as the ‘Lost Church,’ it was

abandoned even before it was completed. Construction of the second church began at

the south end of the mesita on which Pecos sits and south of the population center of

the community. This church, dedicated to ‘Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de

Porciúncula,’ was constructed by Fray Andrés Juarez (also written Suárez) in the early

1620s. Kessell estimated that the Pecos made nearly 300,000 adobes to complete

Juarez’s vision. When it was completed, Fray Alonso de Benavides described it

(sometime between 1625 and 1629) as a particularly beautiful church, large enough to

hold all of the people of the pueblo, then numbering 1,189 souls. This church was

destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. 15

At the time of the revolt, the Hispanic population numbered between 2,000 and

2,800 people living along the Río Grande from Taos on the north to the vicinity of

Socorro on [the] south. By then the Pueblo population had been reduced to 16,000 or

17,000 people living in about 30 settlements. This was approximately one-half to one-

third of the population recorded in the chronicles of the sixteenth-century expeditions.

13 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 163-4, n. 13, citing Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown, p. 504-506 and 186, 188. 14 Weber, David J., The Spanish Frontier in North America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 106; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 17. 15 Alden C. Hayes, The Four Churches of Pecos (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974), 2-5, 124, Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 124; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 18-19.

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Like many other villages, Pecos seems to have had factions allied with the Pueblo

liberators as well as factions loyal to the Spaniards. Fray Fernando de Belasco was

spared by the Pecos but later killed in the Tano pueblos. At least one priest and one

Spanish family were killed at Pecos, according to Kessell. Some Pecos Indians were

party to the attack on Santa Fe. Pecos would play an equally ambivalent role in the

reconquest. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 marked a hiatus in colonial occupation and an

attempted revitalization of native hegemony. In all, 380 colonists and 21 missionaries

were killed.16

The pueblos of Pecos, Zia, Santa Ana, San Felipe, and Tesuque did not join the

second Pueblo Revolt.”17 Kessell suggests that Pecos saw an economic advantage in

allying with the Spaniards. Ironically this helped because the Pueblo's decline as the

Pueblo’s trade was eclipsed by Spanish traders with more desirable trade goods.18

Vargas’s army of reconquest entered Pecos Pueblo on Tuesday, September 23,

1692. The village was empty. Tracks showed that the people had scattered to

mountain retreats. By September 27, Vargas had reclaimed Pecos, negotiating the

surrender through captive emissaries. In all of the Pueblo villages Vargas identified

relatives of Spanish colonists and relatives of Pueblo people who had retreated to El

Paso with the colonists and established the pueblo of Ysleta del Sur. At Pecos, there

were three Tewa women and their infants who were related to those in Ysleta del Sur.

There were also a Spanish-speaking Jumano, or Plains Indian, woman and the son of

the Spanish settler Cristóbal de Anaya, whom John Kessell and Rick Hendricks and

Fray Angélico Chávez identified as Francisco de Anaya Almazán. Vargas performed the

ritual repossession of Pecos on October 17, 1692. Two friars baptized 248 men,

women and children, about one-third of the resident population of the village.19

In the early years following the reconquest, non-Pueblo population centers grew

with recruits enlisted in Mexico by the Spanish government, although relatively few

colonists immigrated from Mexico and fewer from Spain until after 1790. The

‘Spanish’ towns were enlarged by an influx of Pueblo peoples as well. Ramón Gutiérrez

calculated that the ‘Spanish’ population of New Mexico – comprising people of

16 Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 232; Charles W. Hackett, ed., and C. C. Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680-1682, 2 vols. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), 3; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 21. 17 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, p. 22. 18 Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 263. 19 John Kessell and Rick Hendricks, eds., By Force of Arms: The Journals of Don Diego de Vargas, 1691-1693 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 421-34, 488 n. 67, Fray Angélico Chávez, Origins of New Mexico Families, (1954; reprint, Santa Fe: William Gannon, 1975), 4; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 22-23.

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European, Pueblo, and mixed ancestry – grew from about 800 in 1693 to 4,353 in

1749. This fivefold increase had its greatest concentration in the Santa Cruz-Expañola

area. For the same period, Gutiérrez calculated that the Pueblo population declined

from about 14,000 in 1693 to 8,388 in 1750. He concluded that the Pueblo population

decline and rapid Spanish population growth were closely related.”20 “A count of the

resident population of Pecos in 1694 recorded a total of 736 resident natives, including

186 men, 230 women, and 320 children below the age of 12 or 13.21

Pecos Pueblo may have housed a garrison of ten Spanish soldiers along with

family members from 1750 until the 1794 establishment of the San Miguel del Bado

Grant. These soldiers may have rotated among several garrisons, staying at Pecos only

part of the time, and in any case the “Spanish population was always quite small, and

confined mostly to the immediate vicinity of the church, convento, and casas reales,

(which housed the alcalde mayor, travelers, and served as the local courthouse).”22

The year 1838 is often given as the date that a group of Pecos accepted the

invitation to join Jémez Pueblo. Mariano Ruiz, the caretaker at Pecos Pueblo, told

Adolph Bandelier in 1880 that the last group of Pecos, five men whom he named, moved

to Jémez in 1840. Kessell found no record of these events in the Mexican Archives of

New Mexico, and the Jémez sacramental records for that time period were missing, but

Levine found Pecos emigrants on the 1845 census of Jémez Pueblo.23

Jemez Pueblo and the contemporary community of Pecos continue to venerate

Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de Porciúncula (also spelled Porcingula) at feast-day

celebrations in August. Jémez Pueblo celebrates the feast on August 2. The

community of Pecos holds its annual feast day at Pecos National Historical Park on the

first Sunday in August.24

20 Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away, 166-175, Tzarks, “Demographic, Ethnic, and Occupational Structure of New Mexico, 1790,” 59 n. 33; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 24. 21 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 164, n. 18, citing Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown, 276. 22 Hayes, The Four Churches of Pecos, 15, 58, Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown, 380; Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 90. 23 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 165, n. 21, citing Charles H. Lange, Carroll L. Riley, and Elizabeth M. Lange, editors and annotators, The Southwestern Journals of Adolph Bandelier, 1885-1888, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975). 24 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 164, n. 19, citing Frances Levine, Marilyn Norcini and Morris Foster, An Ethnographic Overview of Pecos National Historical Park, manuscript on file, National Park Service, Southwest Region, Santa Fe, 1994.

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3. Pecos Pueblo: Privatization of the Pecos Pueblo League – 1838 to the present

By 1838 the population of Pecos Pueblo had dwindled to a handful of

inhabitants and the remaining Pecos Indians decided to move to Jemez Pueblo. That

left the lands of Pecos Pueblo, most of which had been acquired by their Hispanic

neighbors, completely vacant. Like other Indian villages vacated by their Indian

inhabitants (San Marcos, La Cienega, and Galisteo), the Pecos Pueblo league of

approximately 17,000 acres became the subject of complex land transactions. Hispanic

land speculators such as Juan Estévan Pino, Donaciano Vigil and smaller land owners

started the process. In 1824 and 1825 irrigated land in the north and south part of the

Ciénega of Pecos in the heart of Pecos Pueblo was granted by the New Mexico Territorial

deputation (legislature) led by Juan Estévan Pino to various non-Indians as shown on

the map below.

Figure 1. Land ownership around the Ciénega of Pecos.

The original inhabitants of Pecos Pueblo, led by Rafael Aguilar and José Cota

had vigorously protested this privatization of Pueblo lands, which was based on earlier

decrees25 of the Spanish Cortes regarding privatization of “unused” Pueblo lands. The

Indians of Pecos retained the central portion of the Cienega of Pecos (as shown on the

25 For a discussion of these decrees see, G. Emlen Hall and David J. Weber, Mexican Liberals and the Pueblo Indians, 1821-1829, New Mexico Historical Review, 39 (January 1984) 5-32.

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map above) until 1830. On September 22 of that year José Cota switched sides, signing

a deed with an X, Cota conveyed the rest of the Cienega of Pecos to Juan Estévan Pino,

stating that he was acting on behalf of the entire Pueblo of Pecos.26 With the best,

irrigated lands in the hands of non-Indians, it was only a few more years before the

remaining Pecos Indians were forced to leave. “Hispanic Pecoseños, according to the

Indians, killed the pueblos few remaining animals and poisoned its water holes between

1830 and 1840. Life became increasingly isolated and intolerable for the Indians.”27

Partly through the machinations of the owners of the neighboring Alexander Valle and

Los Trigos grants, the rest of the 17,000 plus acre Pecos Pueblo league was soon

privatized.

The later history of this land, which ironically led in part to the establishment of

the Pecos National Monument in 1965 to protect the “ancient Indian Pueblo” is well

summarized in the book Our Prayers Are in This Place.28

“The land [of the Pecos league] was resold and divided through lawsuits that

lasted well into the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1897, Gross, Kelly and

company, a mercantile company with immense landholdings and commercial ventures

in New Mexico, acquired the Pecos grant. The new owners attempted to clear title to

their holdings through a quiet title suit, but they did not attempt to settle any claims

that the Pecos descendants might have had. They presumed, perhaps, that earlier sales

had terminated the pueblo’s rights to the grant. A suit heard in San Miguel County

District Court in 1919 upheld the Gross, Kelly claim to the majority of the land of the

Pecos Pueblo league.29 Soon after the suit was settled, the company sold its interest in

the Pecos league. By 1924, a tract of almost 10,890 acres of the Pecos league and

about 6,144 of the neighboring Los Trigos community land grant were consolidated in

the ownership of Continental Insurance Company. Continental sold its land in the

Pecos league to the rodeo cowboy and entrepreneur J. V. “Tex” Austin and a partner,

William Mann, formed the Forked Lighting Ranch in 1927, operating it as a cattle

ranch, dude ranch, and trading post. The magnificent headquarters building that they

constructed along the river was designed by Santa Fe architect John Gaw Meem. By

1933, the operation failed and went into receivership. Austin lived in Santa Fe until his

suicide in 1938.30

26 G. Emlen Hall, Four Leagues of Pecos: A Legal History of the Pecos Grant, 1800-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 31-66. 27 Hall, Four Leagues of Pecos, 60. 28 Levine, Our Prayers are in This Place, n. 14, 179-180. 29 Hall, Four Leagues of Pecos, 212-220. 30 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 180.

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A portion of the Austin property, totaling 5,200 acres, was acquired from

creditors in 1936 by W. C. Curry. Curry held the ranch for only five years then sold it

to E. E. “Buddy” Fogelson. Fogelson acquired additional tracts of land in the Pecos

league and Los Trigos grant, gradually expanding his holdings to 13,000 acres.

Fogelson and his wife, the actress Greer Garson, used the ranch for a vacation home

and operating cattle ranch known as the Forked Lightning Ranch.31

A state monument was created surrounding the immediate vicinity of Pecos

Pueblo in 1935. The state of New Mexico received the land through a series of

donations from the Gross, Kelly principals and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, which had

retained an interest in the church and mission complex. In 1965, Pecos National

Monument, an area of 342 acres, was created under federal law to protect the ‘remains

and artifacts of the seventeenth-century Spanish mission and ancient Indian Pueblo’.32

The Fogelsons donated additional land to the monument over the years, enlarging the

area to 365 acres. The multicultural heritage of the Pecos area was recognized in June

1990, when Pecos became a national historical park.33 The purpose of this legislation

was to permit expansion of the area protected by the National Park Service and “to

recognize the multitheme history, including interaction among diverse groups of people,

of the Pecos area and its ‘gateway’ role between the Great Plains and the Rio Grande

Valley.” The legislation contemplated the addition of Forked Lightning Ranch to the

expanded Park. Mrs. Fogelson sold the Forked Lightning Ranch, encompassing some

5,500 acres, to the R. K. Mellon Foundation in January 1991. The ranch was donated

to the National Park Service in May 1993.”34 Thus the lands of the once mighty Pecos

Pueblo (2,000 – 3,000 inhabitants in 1598), lost when the Pueblo dwindled to a handful

of members in 1838 were in a sense regained – not for the Indians but for the general

public – when the Pecos National Historic Park was established.

4. The San Miguel del Bado Grant

After the Comanche Peace Treaty was signed by Governor Juan Bautista Anza35

in 1786, the entire periphery of Spanish settlement from Abiquiú to Ojo Caliente to

Picuris, Las Trampas, Truchas, and Pecos was opened up for expansion of Hispanic

settlements. New Mexico population figures begin to show a rapid increase at this time,

31 Levine, Our Prayers are in This Place, 180. 32 (PL 89-54, 79 Stat. 195, June 28, 1965). 33 (PL 101-313, 104 Stat. 278, June 27, 1990). 34 Levine, Our Prayers are in This Place, 180-81. 35 For further discussion see, Ebright and Hendricks, The Witches of Abiqiúiu, 8 and n. 35, 277.

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as new settlements were formed within land grants in the Taos and Pecos areas. It is

within this expanding of the edge of Spanish settlement that the San Miguel del Bado

Grant came into existence in 1794. In late November of that year, Lorenzo Marquez, for

himself and on behalf of fifty-one other Santa Fe families, asked Governor Fernando

Chacón to make them a grant of lands at the place called “El Vado,” and surrounding

area.36 Marquez was living in Santa Fe at the time he presented the petition to

Governor Chacón, but he was familiar with the area around Pecos Pueblo, possibly as a

presidio soldier. Marquez and one of his co-grantees Domingo Padilla, “show up in the

1780s in the Pecos books as godfathers and marriage witnesses.37

Lorenzo Marquez described the fifty-one men who joined him in the petition as

having large families, and small amounts of land in Santa Fe not sufficient for their

support due to “the scarcity of water which owing to the great number of people [in

Santa Fe] we cannot all enjoy.” It is likely that a large portion of the fifty-one families

were either Genízaros, Indians or mestizos. The petition states that thirteen of the fifty-

two petitioners were Indians, probably mostly Pecos.38 Three decades earlier the

population of Santa Fe was said to have been fourteen percent Genízaro.39 The best

description of the make up of the settlers of the San Miguel del Bado Grant is by Fray

Angélico Chávez, an early authority on Genízaros:

“San José and San Miguel del Vado were settled by Spanish military personnel and the genízaro colony of Santa Fe; also by Indians of other pueblos, including the more progressive Pecos Indians, who entered into a genízaro status and thus contributed to the depopulation of their pueblo; the San José and San Miguel Genízaros also assimilated many converts from the Comanche and other Plains tribes.”40

36 “In 1792, Lorenzo Márquez, the original petitioner for the neighboring El Vado land grant, was padrino at one of the two baptisms at Pecos for the year. In 1793 padrinos at four of the five baptisms at Pecos Pueblo were El Vado settlers names on the 1803 list of settlers. Lorenzo Marquez was a padrino in three of these,” Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 87. The mission center was moved from Pecos to San Miguel del Bado prior to 1818, due to the “expertly prepared petition of Comanche genízaro José Cristóbal Guerrero,” Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 95. The documents use both “El Vado” and “El Bado.” I have used El Bado, unless quoting a document, because the Board of Trustees of the grant have consistetnly used San Miguel del Bado Grant in their deeds and other documents. Malcolm Ebright, and Rick Hendricks, The Witches of Abiquiú: The Governor, the Priest, the Genízaro Indians, and the Devil (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 277, note 35 and Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 76-77. 37 Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown, 418. 38 Petition of Lorenzo Marquez et al. for the San Miguel del Bado Grant, PLC 25, Roll 35, fr. 599 Spanish original), 664-65 (translation). 39 Ebright and Hendricks, The Witches of Abiquiú, 30. 40 Fray Angelico Chavez, Archives, 205.

14

The petition and granting decree seem to follow a form similar to other land

grants of that period, suggesting that there was a form or model followed during the

latter part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Arroyo Hondo grant

near Taos is almost identical in its wording.41

The petitioners ask for land at El Vado described as follows:

“on the north the Rio de la Vaca, from the place called the Rancheria to the Agua Caliente, on the south the Cañon Blanco, on the east the Cuesta, with the little hills of Bernal, and on the west the place commonly called the Guzano.”42 The following map, based on the 1879 survey by deputy surveyor John Shaw

shows how these boundaries were located on the ground.

Figure 2. San Miguel del Vado Grant, based on John Shaw Survey of 1879, containing 315,300 acres.

41 Arroyo Hondo grant, SG 159, Roll 24, fr. 601 et seq. 42 Petition of Lorenzo Marquez, et al for the San Miguel del Bado grant, November 1794, San Miguel del Bado grant, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 599 (Spanish original), 627 (translation).

15

The petitioners said they had twenty-five guns among themselves and promised

to “enclose ourselves in a plaza well fortified with bulwarks and towers,” as well as

supply themselves with more firearms and ammunition. They told the governor there

was room enough on the land for themselves and “for everyone in the province not

supplied.” It is clear from the petition that protection against Indian raids was one of

the primary concerns of the settlers.43

Governor Fernando Chacón made the grant to the petitioners on November 25,

1794 and directed Alcalde Antonio José Ortiz to put the grantees in possession of the

grant.44 On November 26, 1794 Alcalde Ortiz brought the fifty-two petitioners to El

Vado (today’s San Miguel del Bado) and performed the traditional ceremonies of delivery

of possession to the grantees, though he did not allot them specific tracts of land. The

list of petitioners attached to the petition has been lost, as was often the case, so other

than Lorenzo Marquez, we do not know who the grantees of the San Miguel del Bado

grant were.

The alcalde notified the grantees of five conditions, which were as follows:

“First. That the tract aforesaid has to be in common, not only in regard to themselves, but also to all the settlers who may join them in the future. Second. That with respect to the dangers of the place, they shall have to keep themselves equipped with firearms, and bows and arrows, in which they shall be inspected as well at the time of settling as at any time the alcalde in office may deem proper, provided that after two years settlement all the arms they have must be firearms, under the penalty that all who do not comply with this requirement shall be sent out of the settlement. Third. That the plaza they may construct shall be according as expressed in their petition; and in the man time they shall reside in the pueblo of Pecos, where there are sufficient accommodations for the aforesaid fifty-two families. Fourth. That to the alcalde in office in said pueblo they shall set apart a small, separate piece of these lands for him to cultivate for himself at his will, without their children or successors making any objection thereto; and the same for his successor in office. Fifth. That the construction of their plaza, as well as the opening of acequias, and all other work that may be deemed proper for the common welfare, shall be performed by the community with that union which in their government they must preserve.45

These conditions make it clear that the San Miguel del Bado Grant was intended

to be a community grant with a defensive plaza at San Miguel del Bado. All members of

the community were required to have firearms within two years, though there is no

43 Petition of Lorenzo Marquez, et al for the San Miguel del Bado grant, November 1794, San Miguel del Bado grant, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 599 (Spanish original), 627 (translation). 44 Grant by Governor Fernando Chacón, November 26, 1794, San Miguel del Bado grant, SG 119, Roll 24, fr 600 (Spanish original), 628 (translation). 45 Act of possession by Alcalde Antonio José Ortiz, San Miguel del Bado grant, November 26, 1794, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 600 (Spanish original), 627-28 (translation).

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evidence in any community of settlers being ejected from the community because they

had not acquired firearms. Finally, as a means of compensating the alcalde for his

services, he was to receive a small tract of land that would pass to the next alcalde

when the first alcalde retired and would not pass to the heirs of the first alcalde.46

Other than the last mentioned condition, these were standard conditions included in

many of the land grants of this period.47

Finally, Alcalde Ortiz notified the grantees of the boundaries, indicating that the

pastures and watering places were to be held in common, and then performed the

traditional ceremony of possession followed in all Spanish and Mexican land grants,

whereby title passed from the king to the grantees. Alcalde Ortiz “led them over said

lands, and they plucked up grass, cast stones, and shouted ‘Long live the king!’ taking

possession of said land quietly and peaceably, without any objection.”48 It is likely that

the grantees started farming, digging acequias and building their houses as soon as the

grant was made if not before, but formal allotments of land were not made until 1803.

On March 12 of that year Pedro Bautista Pino, an official of the cabildo of Santa Fe,

traveled to San Miguel del Bado to distribute “the lands under cultivation to all the

individuals who occupy said settlement.” Pino, whose family would become heavily

involved in land speculation in the Pecos/ San Miguel del Bado area, measured the

cultivated lands from north to south and attempted to divide them equally between the

fifty-eight families then living in the community. Because of the numerous bends or

ancones in the river it was impossible to make the division in strict equality. Pino had

the settlers draw lots to determine the amount of land each would get, most receiving

50 or 65 varas. A few received between 100 and 150 varas and Juan José Sandoval

received 230 varas. This may have been the tract set aside in the granting decree for

the current alcalde. Additional irrigated land was set aside to be worked in common

and the products of which “are to be applied annually to the payment of three masses

46 Condition four San Miguel del Bado grant, November 26, 1794, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 601 (Spanish original), 628 (translation). 47 For a grant with similar conditions, see the Arroyo Hondo grant, SG 159, Roll 29, fr. 197 et seq., excerpt from the Act of Possession of Pedro Martín, April 10, 1815: That said tract has to be in common not only among themselves but also among all others who may join them in the future; that with respect to the danger at the place, they shall have to keep themselves equipped with fire arms lances, with which they shall pass review at the beginning or at any time deemed proper by the alcalde in charge, it being understood that all the arms they may have shall be firearms, with the penalty that all who do not comply shall be ordered out of town; that the public square they may make be according as proposed in their petition . . .” 48 Act of Possession by Alcalde Antonio José Ortiz, [San Miguel] del Bado grant, November 26, 1794, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 600 (Spanish original), fr. 627-28 (translation).

17

for the benefit of the blessed souls in purgatory.”49 The allotted lands stretched from

“boundaries of said tract from north to south, being on the north a hill situated at the

edge of the river above the mouth of the ditch which irrigates said lands, and on the

south the point of the hill of pueblo and the valley called Temporales, a large portion of

land remaining to the south, which is very necessary for the inhabitants of this town

who may require more land to cultivate, which shall be done by the consent of the

justice of said town, who is charged with the care and trust of this matter.” After the

allotments at San Miguel, Alcalde Ortiz gathered the settlers together and told them

they must “erect mounds of stone on their boundaries,” and they could not sell their

allotted tracts for ten years from that date. 50

Two days later, Pedro Bautista Pino made additional allotments of land to forty-

five men and two women at the community of San José del Bado, two miles upstream

from San Miguel. The procedures and conditions were similar to those at San Miguel

del Vado. On March 30, 1803 Governor Fernando Chacón approved the allotments of

land made at San José del Bado. 51

In his 1812 book Pedro Bautista Pino singled out the experience of these two

allotments of land, one at San Miguel del Bado, the other at San José del Bado for

special mention. He recalled that “during the administration of Señor Chacón, I was

commissioned to found at El Vado de[l Rio] Pecos two settlements, and to distribute

lands to more than 200 families (an exaggeration). After I concluded this operation, and

upon taking leave of them (having refused the fee they were going to give me for my

labor), my heart, at that moment as never before, was overcome with joy. Parents and

little children surrounded me, all of them expressing, even to the point of tears, their

gratitude to me for having given them lands for their subsistence.”52

Everyone at this time knew that the lands these settlers would depend upon for

subsistence consisted of the allotted lands measured by Pedro Bautista Pino in 1803 as

well as the common lands described by Antonio José Ortiz in his act of possession, and

by Governor Fernando Chacón in his grant both in 1794. The settlers knew this

49 Allotment of lands by Pedro Bautista Pino, San Miguel del Bado, March 12, 1803, [San Miguel] del Bado grant, November 26, 1794, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 603-607 (Spanish original), 630-33 (translation). 50 Allotment of lands by Pedro Bautista Pino, San Miguel del Bado, March 12, 1803, [San Miguel] del Bado grant, November 26, 1794, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 603-7 (Spanish original), fr. 630-33 (translation). 51 Allotment of lands at San José del Bado, March 14, 1803, and Approval by Governor Fernando Chacón, SANM I: 887. 52 H. Bailey Carroll and J. Villasana Haggard, Three New Mexico Chronicles, The Exposición of Don Pedro Bautista Pino, the Ojeada of Licenciado Antonio Barreiro, 1832, And the Additions by Don José de Escudero, 1845 (Albuquerque: The Quivira Society, 1942).

18

because they relied on the common lands for grazing their livestock and their flocks of

sheep and the officials knew this because they needed these frontier settlements to

survive to protect the other New Mexico settlements including Santa Fe. The only way

they could survive was to have all the resources required for subsistence, while they

waged an effective defensive war against raiding nomadic Comanche Indians. The story

of the settlement of the communities within the San Miguel del Bado grant is told in

section 5, while settlement on adjacent land grants is discussed in section 6.

Adjudication of the San Miguel del Bado grant resulting in its shrinking from

approximately 300,000 acres to 5,207 acres is discussed in section 7.

5. Villanueva, San Miguel del Bado and other communities

The village of Villanueva was initially called La Cuesta and though it was

founded after San Miguel and San José it soon surpassed those villages in the number

of baptism of children from the village as listed in the Pecos baptism books.53 La

Cuesta the village was named after the land mark describing the eastern boundary of

the San Miguel del Bado grant: “on the east La Cuesta and Los Cerritos de Bernal.”54

La Cuesta is said to have been founded in 1808 with the first appearance of a baptism

from La Cuesta in the Pecos baptismal books in 1819. By 1835 La Cuesta had

surpassed San Miguel and San José in the number of baptisms recorded.55

La Cuesta, along with El Cerrito, was furthest away from the political and

military center of San Miguel and therefore had to rely on themselves primarily for

protection against Plains Indian attacks. La Cuesta was like Abiquiú, Las Trampas and

Truchas as it was a buffer community in the frontier acting as the first line of defense

against Indian raids. Like the other communities in the area, it was a place where trade

with Plains Indians took place, often trade in captives or Genízaros. In the period

between 1810 and 1828 four Indian captives were baptized from La Cuesta.56

By 1835 La Cuesta had surpassed San Miguel and San José in the number of

baptisms recorded with 41 for La Cuesta, 34 for San Miguel and 35 for San José. This

trend continued for the next four years except 1836 when San Miguel exceeded Cuesta

in the number of baptisms (San Miguel 31, Cuesta 23, total 161). Other communities

53 Archives of the Archidiocese of Santa Fe, books B-19 (Box 22) and B-20 (Box 22). 54 Petition of Lorenzo Marquez, et al for the San Miguel del Bado grant, November 1794, San Miguel del Bado grant, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 599 (Spanish original), 627 (translation). 55 Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 373 and T. M. Pearce, ed. New Mexico Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), 176. 56 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 105.

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in the 1836 baptisms include: Puertecito [Sena], El Pueblo, El Cerrito, Antón Chico, El

Gusano, Las Mulas, Garambullo, Rio de la Baca, La Entranosa, Pecos, Cañon de Pecos,

Los Trigos.57 The following map shows the location of most of these communities

strung along the Pecos River from El Cerrito on the south to Cañon de Pecos on the

north, well within the Pecos League.

Figure 3. Sena [Puertecito] church.

57 Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 145.

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Figure 4. The Upper Pecos Valley.

1836, the year before the remaining Pecos Pueblo Indians moved to Jemez, is

the last year baptisms were recorded for inhabitants from Pecos Pueblo (two) and Cañon

de Pecos also recorded two baptisms. As the Pecos Pueblo members moved to Jemez, a

few remained in the area. In 1849 a Pecos Indian at Jemez named “Hosta” identified as

the governor of Pecos told Lieutenant James H. Simpson that of the remaining eighteen

Pecos Indians fifteen were living at Jemez, one was at Cañon de Pecos, one at Santo

Domingo, and one at La Cuesta. The inclusion of a Pecos Indian living at La Cuesta in

21

1849 shows the diverse nature of the community and probably indicates its

preparedness for frontier defense.58

As La Cuesta grew a church was built around 1831 made of native stone. The

church, dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, still stands today.59

Figure 5. Villanueva [La Cuesta] church.

As La Cuesta grew it became the stepping-stone of the settlements of Antón

Chico and El Cerrito. In 1822 the petition of Salvador Tapia and 36 others for the

Anton Chico grant was approved and between 1824 and 1827 El Cerrito was settled

58 James H. Simpson, Journal of a Military Reconnaissance from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the Navajo Country (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, and Company, 1852); Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place, 115. 59 The license for the building of the La Cuesta (then called La Cuesta del Vado) church was issued May 18, 1831. Fray Angélico Chavez, Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, 1678-1900 (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History: 1957), 140.

22

with several residents of La Cuesta. El Cerrito continued as a community while Antón

Chico was abandoned in 1827 and resettled in 1834.60

Figure 6. El Cerrito church and congregation, 1941.

60 Richard Nostrand, El Cerrito, New Mexico: Eight Generations in a Spanish Village (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 21.

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6. Settlement on the San Miguel del Bado Grant and Neighboring Grants

Figure 7. Map of Northern New Mexico Land Grants.

When the San Miguel del Bado community land grant was settled in the early

1800s, it was the culmination of a gradual movement of Hispanic settlement out of the

protection of the Villa de Santa Fe to the rich but exposed grasslands of the

northeastern high plains of New Mexico. The settlement of this area is a complicated

story of overlapping land grants and competition between small farmer-ranchers and

large-scale sheep and cattle operators for grazing lands. To gain control of these lands,

ricos like Antonio Ortiz, Santiago Ulibarrí, and Luis María Cabesa de Baca, tried to

acquire large private grazing grants or control parts of the common lands of community

land grants. Small scale farmer-ranchers like the settlers on the Las Vegas community

grant often fought these expansionist efforts with varying degrees of success. The

resulting pattern of settlement and land ownership included a complex overlay of

24

private and community land grants, several of which are still operating as community

land grants to this day.61

Permanent settlement of the area north and east of the Villa de Santa Fe began

by at least 1794 when the San Miguel del Bado Grant was made by New Mexico

Governor Fernando Chacón to Lorenzo Márquez and fifty-one others, including thirteen

Genízaros (ransomed Plains Indians who lived as Hispanos).62 San Miguel lies twenty

miles downriver from Pecos Pueblo at the place where the trail to the plains, used by

comancheros and ciboleros, crosses the Pecos River. Thus the name San Miguel del

Bado.63 Settlement at San Miguel (then often called simply Bado), took root slowly. It

was not until 1798 that a settler from San Miguel del Bado appeared in the marriage

registers of the Pecos Pueblo parish, and it is likely that settlement on the grant did not

begin until about that time.64 In 1803 formal allotments were made to fifty-eight

families at San Miguel and to forty-seven families at San José, three miles up the Pecos

River.65 By 1811 the San Miguel settlers had finished their church, and in 1812 the

priest at Pecos Pueblo received permission from the diocese in Durángo to move to San

Miguel. By that time San Miguel's population outnumbered that of the once-mighty

Pecos Pueblo which was declining in numbers and complaining about Hispanic

encroachment on their lands. Soon after Mexico's independence from Spain, San Miguel

del Bado elected an ayuntamiento and became the administrative headquarters for the

entire northeastern plains region of New Mexico.66

By 1815 Hispanic settlement had spread beyond the San Miguel del Bado grant,

following the Pecos River north to the Los Trigos grant and to what would become

known as the Alexander Valle grant.67 While this movement up the Pecos was going on,

61 The Las Vegas, Tecolote, and Anton Chico grants are all currently operating as community land grants under the laws of New Mexico. See New Mexico Statutes Annotated (hereinafter N.M.S.A.) Sec. 49-6-1 to 49-6-14 for Las Vegas, Sec. 49-10-1 to 49-10-6 for Tecolote, and Sec. 49-1-11049-1-21 for Anton Chico. 62 For a detailed definition of genízaro, see Steven M. Horvath, “The Genízaros of Eighteenth Century New Mexico: A Reexamination,” Discovery, XII (Fall 1977): 25-40. 63 A vado or bado is a place where one fords a river; a river ford. For the San Miguel del Bado grant see, NMLG-PLC, Roll 35, case 25, frame 664 et seq.; Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown; J. J. Bowden, “Private Land Claims in the Southwest,” 6 vols. (LLM thesis, Southern Methodist University, 1969) 3: 734-44; and G. Emlen Hall, “San Miguel del Bado and the Loss of the Common Lands of New Mexico Community Land Grants,” NMHR 66 (October 1991): 413-32. 64 On 28 November 1798, the marriage of Juan de Dios Fernández, a Pecos Indian, to María Armijo, the daughter of grantee Juan Armijo, was recorded in the church records. Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown, p. 418. 65 Partition of land by Alcalde Pedro Bautista Pino, San José del Bado, 14 March 1803, SANM I, No. 887. Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown, pp. 418–19 and Hall, Four Leagues of Pecos, 5–6. 66 Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown, 426–27; Hall, Four Leagues of Pecos, 8. 67 For Los Trigos see NMLG–SG, Roll 13, report 8, frame 310 et seq.; for Alexander Valle see NMLG–SG, Roll 14, report 18, frame 675 et seq. See also, Hall, Four Leagues of Pecos, 17–26.

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three large grants were being made further east on the high plains, in part to provide

pasture for increasingly large flocks of sheep owned by wealthy ranchers from Santa Fe

and the Rio Abajo region.68 Two of these were private grants and one was a community

grant.

When Santa Fe resident Antonio Ortiz requested a private land grant east of the

San Miguel del Bado Grant in 1818, it appeared as a threat to alcalde Vicente

Villanueva of San Miguel, who objected to the grant because it was contrary to the

interests of the livestock owners of San Miguel del Bado. The alcalde believed that

grazing lands in the area previously available to these ranchers would be closed to them

if the Ortiz grant was made. In spite of this objection Governor Facundo Melgares

granted the land to Antonio Ortiz, who used it to graze his animals.69 Ortiz's sheep

operation was particularly successful; some of his flocks were later herded to California

for sale at a healthy profit in San Francisco and at the gold camps.70

In 1823 Juan Estevan Pino, the son of the famous Pedro Bautista Pino, received

a grant which became known as the Preston Beck grant because of its sale to Beck

twenty years later by Pino's sons and their wives. Pino's grant was bounded on the

north by the Antonio Ortiz grant, and like the Ortiz grant, it had to be abandoned when

Indian raids became too severe.71 Ironically, Navajo depredations in the Rio Abajo area

had been the initial cause of the movement by powerful rancher-merchants to the north

and east in search of greener pastures.72 It is also supremely ironic that fifty years later

Thomas B. Catron acquired the Beck and Ortiz grants once again for their prime

grazing lands.

The Antón Chico community grant thirty miles southeast of San Miguel del Bado

was made to a group of thirty-seven settlers in 1822. Attacks by Comanche and other

Indian tribes caused the abandonment of the grant around 1827, but it was resettled in

1834, and this time the settlement took firm root.73 Since the northern boundary of the

68 John O. Baxter, Las Carneradas: Sheep Trade in New Mexico, 1700–1860 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), pp. 92–93 and 125. 69 Antonio Ortiz Grant, NMLG–SG, Roll 17, report 42, frame 407 et seq.; see also Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 706–10. 70 Baxter, Las Carneradas, 125. 71 Preston Beck Grant, NMLG–SG, Roll 12, report 1, frame 6 et seq.; see also Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 677–86. Pedro Bautista Pino was New Mexico’s delegate to the Cortes or Spanish parliament held at Cadíz, Spain between 1810 and 1814. For Pino’s report to the Cortes, see H. Bailey Carroll and J. Villasana Haggard, trans. and eds., Three New Mexico Chronicles (Albuquerque: The Quivera Society, 1942). 72 Baxter, Las Carneradas, p. 93. 73 Anton Chico grant, NMLG–SG, Roll 16, report 29, frames 490–et seq.; Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 689–97; Michael J. Rock, “Anton Chico and Its Patent,” Journal of the West 19 (1980): 86.

26

Antón Chico grant was also the Antonio Ortiz grant, a substantial overlap between the

Beck grant and Antón Chico resulted. This later caused major litigation when both the

grants were confirmed by Congress.74

Another grant made during this period was Tecolote, northeast of San Miguel

and southwest of the later Las Vegas grant. First made in 1824, this community grant

followed the pattern of the earlier San Miguel del Bado and Antón Chico grants, with a

period of partial abandonment after the grant was first made. The 1824 Tecolote grant

was made to six individuals75 but only two of them remained in 1838 when allotments

were made to sixty-nine heads of families at Tecolote and to nineteen at San

Gerónimo.76

The settlement pattern on the Tecolote grant was different than on the two

private grants to Ortiz and Pino, which were grazing grants where sheepherders were

the primary occupants. But Tecolote, as well as San Miguel del Bado and Antón Chico,

were community grants, where groups of settlers established small communities along

the rivers within the grants. These community land grants east of Santa Fe made

settlement on the Las Vegas grant feasible by advancing the settled area closer to those

large grassy meadows — las vegas grandes — so sought after by early land grant

petitioners. One of those early pioneers was Luis Maria Cabesa de Baca, who received

the first grant in the Las Vegas area, a short-lived private grant.

Luis María Cabesa de Baca has been described as one of the most notable men

of his time.77 He lived at Peña Blanca where he owned a ranch purchased from Cochiti

Pueblo. Cochiti's attempt to annul the sale of that land in 1817 involved Cabesa de

Baca in litigation that went all the way up to the Juzgado General de Indios in Mexico

City, before it was decided by the Audiencia de Guadalajara.78 Luis María Cabesa de

Baca was no stranger to litigation. In 1792 he was tried for abusing his position as

74 See Stoneroad v. Beck, 16 N.M. 754, and Stoneroad v. Stoneroad, 158 U.S. 240 (1895). Jones v. St. Louis Land Co., 232 U.S. 355 (1913) deals with the conflict between the Beck and Perea grants and gives priority to the Beck grant. See also, Westphall, Mercedes Reales: Hispanic Land Grants of the Upper Rio Grande Region (Albquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 222–24. 75 Tecolote grant, NMLG–SG, Roll 13, report 7, frame 6 et seq. 76 SANM, no. 1116. The village of San Gerónimo was actually on the Las Vegas community grant as it was later surveyed in 1899 and 1900. Map of the Las Vegas Grant in San Miguel and Mora Counties, New Mexico as resurveyed by Frank M. Johnson, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Santa Fe. The earlier 1860 survey of the Las Vegas grant showed even the town of Tecolote to be on the Las Vegas grant, but this overlap between the two grants was later decided in favor of Tecolote. Plat of Las Vegas Grant as finally confirmed, surveyed under contract with the Surveyor General of New Mexico by Pelham and Clements, BLM, Santa Fe. 77 Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 2 vol., (Arthur Clark: Glendale, California, 1914), 1: 376. 78 Charles R. Cutter, The Protector de Indios in Colonial New Mexico, 1659–1821, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), pp. 88–93.

27

teniente alcalde of Santo Domingo and mistreating the Indians there.79 In his later

lawsuit with Cochiti Pueblo it was claimed that Cabesa de Baca had used intimidation

and fraud to induce certain members of the pueblo to sell the Peña Blanca land to him.

Santo Domingo was also involved in that litigation, asserting that because their

boundaries had not been measured accurately they were also entitled to some of Baca's

Peña Blanca property. The suit was finally decided in Cochiti's favor in 1819, but

Cabesa de Baca did not vacate the Peña Blanca property when ordered to do so.80

Cabesa de Baca's experience in these cases may have been the impetus for his

seeking a land grant at Las Vegas. His Cochiti lawsuit was consolidated with another

land dispute between Santo Domingo Pueblo and Antonio Ortiz, who received the large

grant south of Las Vegas mentioned earlier. Antonio Ortiz also appears in the records of

Cabesa de Baca's 1792 suit, as alcalde of Santa Fe.81 Cabesa de Baca's acquaintance

with Antonio Ortiz may well have alerted the Peña Blanca ranchero to the availability of

lands north of the Ortiz grant. Moreover, since Cabesa de Baca served for a time as

alcalde of San Miguel del Bado, the Las Vegas area was within his jurisdiction, so he

certainly would have known about the availability of lands there.82

Cabesa de Baca may have pastured his sheep and cattle in the Las Vegas area

for some time before petitioning for a formal land grant. In January 1821 when he

requested a grant of Las Vegas Grandes, he directed the request, not to the governor of

New Mexico as was customary, but to the provincial deputation of Durángo.83 It is not

clear why Cabesa de Baca followed this unusual procedure, but it may have been that

in his travels to Guadalajara to defend the Cochiti litigation he made some connections

in Durángo that assured him favorable action on his petition. Another more telling

reason could be that his position as alcalde of San Miguel del Bado in 1820 posed a

79 In this lawsuit, Luis María Cabesa de Baca was accused of exacting personal service without pay, administering excessive punishment, and interfering with the religious observances of the Santo Domingo Indians. SANM II, No. 1188, Twitchell, Spanish Archives, 2: 342. 80 Cutter, Protector de Indios, pp. 88–92. Cabesa de Baca was assessed with court costs of 192 pesos and 7 reales. Not having the cash to pay these expenses, he was allowed by Governor Facundo Melgares to give the government nine mules valued at 25 pesos each in payment. Melgares to Alejo García Conde, Santa Fe, 18 June 1820, SANM I, no. 1284; Decree of the Real Audiencia de Guadalajara, 18 January 1817, SANM I, no. 1361. 81 SANM I, no. 1362, SANM II, No. 1188. 82 Allotment of land by Alcalde Luis María Cabesa de Baca to Santiago de Jesús Aragón, San Miguel del Bado, 4 October 1820. Stein Collection, document 5, SRCA, Santa Fe. 83 Petition of Luis María Cabesa de Baca, New Mexico, 16 January 1821, NMLG–SG, Roll 14, report 20, frames 1105–o6. It is not clear from this document that it was in fact directed to the Durángo provincial deputation, but the next document in the surveyor general’s file is a purported copy of a grant to Cabesa de Baca by the Provincial Deputation of Durángo.

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severe conflict of interest, and he sought to avoid the kind of criticism directed at other

large landowners by going to Durángo.84

In any case, Cabesa de Baca chose Durángo as the venue for his solicitations,

submitting at least two petitions to the Durángo provincial deputation, presenting

himself as one of nine petitioners for the grant, all from San Miguel del Bado. The first

grant made by the Durángo authorities was to all nine, but in his second petition

Cabesa de Baca told the diputación that none of his eight former companions had any

interest in the grant, because each had since acquired other lands. Cabesa de Baca

then asked that the grant be reissued to him and his seventeen sons (hijos varones;

actually several were sons-in-law).85 After receiving a favorable report on the petition by

New Mexico governor Facundo Melgares, the provincial deputation acceded to Cabesa

de Baca's second request and revalidated the grant in 1821, with the proviso that if any

of his eight erstwhile co-grantees had incurred any expenses in reliance on the first

grant (such as building houses), he was to reimburse them.86 However, it was not until

1823 when another Baca, New Mexico governor Bartolomé Baca, signed a decree

directing that Cabesa de Baca be placed in possession of the grant by a third Baca, the

alcalde at San Miguel del Bado, Manuel Antonio Baca. The governor's decree quoted the

order of the Durángo provincial deputation verbatim and determined that the provision

about reimbursing the eight companions was not operative because they had not placed

any improvements on the land.87

It does not appear that alcalde Baca actually placed grantee Cabesa de Baca in

possession of the land in 1823, for in February 1825 one of his sons, Juan Antonio,

petitioned the New Mexico territorial deputation asking that a proper document be

issued to his father.88 The same day the diputación agreed to issue the document and

again the alcalde at San Miguel del Bado was directed to place Cabesa de Baca in

84 For an example of criticism of large landowners, see protest against landholdings of Juan Estevan Pino by alcalde Diego Padilla, 17 February 1824, and by Manuel Antonio Baca, 13 March 1824, both from Santa Fe. SANM I, No. 899; for Cabesa de Baca as alcalde see Luis María Cabesa de Baca alcalde, re land of Domingo Benavides, San José del Bado, 24 May 1820. Book 34, pp. 384–85, San Miguel County Deed Records, allotment of land by Alcalde Luis María Cabesa de Baca to Santiago de Jesús Aragón, San Miguel del Bado, 4 October 1820. Stein Collection, document 5, SRCA, Santa Fe. 85 NMLG-SG, Roll 20, report 71, frames 622-24. Proudfit estimated that the grant contained 184,320 acres based on the sketch map submitted by the petitioners. 86 Copy of grant by the provincial deputation of Durángo, 29 May 1821, NMLG–SG, Roll 15, report 20, frames 33–34. 87 Governor Bartolomé Baca to Alcalde Manuel Antonio Baca, Santa Fe, 17 October 1823, NMLG–SG, Roll 15, report 20, frames 33–34. 30. 88 Petition of Juan Antonio Cabesa de Baca to New Mexico territorial deputation, Santa Fe, 15 February 1825. NMLG–SG, Roll 14, report 20, frames 1103–04.

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possession of the grant.89 But Luis María Cabesa de Baca's quest to possess the land

was to be frustrated for at least two more years. Baca, through his son, stated that on

several occasions he had applied to the alcalde at San Miguel del Bado asking to be put

in possession of his grant at Las Vegas but had been refused.90 In an earlier statement,

alcalde Tomás Sena gave what appears to be a lame excuse for not complying with a

request by two more of Cabesa de Baca's sons, Miguel and Manuel Baca, that the family

be placed in possession. Alcalde Sena said that he had been in the middle of an

election to determine his successor, and to compound things he had become so sick

that he had to send for the priest to hear his confession. He did not explain why he had

not performed his duties either before or after his illness and the election.91 Governor

Narbona's response in 1826 to the Cabesa de Baca appeal forms a terse end to the

documentation of the first grant at Las Vegas: the governor finally ordered Alcalde Sena

to deliver possession of the grant to Cabesa de Baca.92

The reluctance of a series of alcaldes at San Miguel del Bado to place Cabesa de

Baca in possession of his grant seems to arise from the same motive that caused San

Miguel del Bado alcalde Vicente Villanueva to object to the Antonio Ortiz grant. Las

Vegas Grandes, like the Ortiz grant, was probably being used for grazing by the settlers

at San Miguel del Bado who wanted to continue the practice without interference from

the Cabesa de Baca family.

The boundaries of the 1821 grant received by Cabesa de Baca were the Sapello

River on the north, the San Miguel del Bado grant on the south, the Aguaje de la Yegua

and the Antonio Ortiz grant on the east, and the summit of the Pecos mountains (la

cumbre de la sierra de Pecos) on the west.93 These are similar to the boundaries given

for the 1835 Las Vegas community grant. In 1835 the northern and eastern Las Vegas

grant boundaries remained the Sapello River and the Aguaje de la Yegua respectively,

but the southern and western boundaries were different. The Antonio Ortiz grant

became the southern boundary in 1835 instead of one of the eastern boundaries as in

89 Response of New Mexico territorial deputation to petition of Juan Antonio Cabesa de Baca, Santa Fe, 16 February 1825. NMLG–SG, Roll 14, report 20, frame 1109. 90 Juan Antonio Cabesa de Baca to Governor Narbona, Santa Fe, 16 February 1825, NMLG–SG, Roll 15, report 20, frames 30–31, 33. 91 Statement of Tomás Sena, Santa Fe, 13 January 1826, NMLG–SG, Roll 14, report 20, frame 1118. 92 Order of Governor Narbona, Santa Fe, 13 January 1826, NMLG–SG, Roll 14, report 20, frame 1118. 93 Petition of Luis María Cabesa de Baca, 16 January 1821. NMLG–SG, Roll 14, report 20, frames 1105–o6. Cabesa de Baca referred to the Sapello River as the Chapellote River, an earlier variation of the current place name. Chapellote apparently derived from the French–Kiowa proper name Chapalote. T. M. Pearce, ed., New Mexico Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary (Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1965), p. 151.

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1821, and the San Miguel del Bado Grant became the western boundary in 1835

instead of the southern boundary, as it had been in 1821. These changes in the

southern and western boundaries probably meant that the grant to Cabesa de Baca

was larger than the subsequent Las Vegas community grant.94 Thus Luis Maria Cabesa

de Baca had been granted a tract of land probably well in excess of half a million acres

on which to graze his herds of cattle and flocks of sheep.95

Although Cabesa de Baca had indicated his desire to use the grant for farming

as well as cattle-raising, no evidence has been found that he or his sons ever irrigated

any farmland. The only indication of the settlement of the Baca family on the grant is

the testimony of witnesses before the surveyor general and at least one contemporary

account. José Francisco Salas, a shepherd for Luis María Cabesa de Baca, testified that

he had cared for as many as three thousand sheep on the grant. He said that Cabesa de

Baca had built a hut at the Loma Montosa and remained on the grant off and on for ten

years before Pawnee Indians finally drove him off. The Cabesa de Baca family is said to

have retreated several times to settled areas when the Indians took all their horses, but

they returned to the grant when things quieted down. They were forced to abandon the

grant in the end, however, and later claimed to have suffered losses totalling $36,000

when six hundred of their mules and horses were driven off by hostile Indians.96

Historian Charles Cutter says that Cabesa de Baca never left Peña Blanca, because

several letters sent during the Mexican Period were posted by Baca from Peña Blanca.

Cabesa de Baca is said to have died there in 1833. It is likely that the activity on the

grant testified to by Salas was by other members of the Cabesa de Baca family, like the

son, Antonio Baca, not Luis Maria.97

The Cabesa de Baca family apparently still occupied the grant by 1831, for in

that year Santa Fe Trail chronicler Josiah Gregg reported finding a large flock of sheep

grazing near the Gallinas River and "a little hovel at the foot of a cliff [which] showed it

to be a rancho. A swarthy ranchero soon made his appearance, from whom we procured

a treat of goat's milk."98 This was probably Cabesa de Baca's shepherd and his sheep.

94 The Baca heirs stated in their petition to the surveyor general of New Mexico that the two grants covered the same lands. NMLG–SG, Roll 14, report 20, frames 1125–28. House Exec. Doc. No. 14, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1. 95 The 1860 survey of the Las Vegas grant showed it to contain 496,446.96 acres. Plat of Las Vegas Grant by Deputy Surveyors Pelham and Clements, 8 December 1860, BLM, Santa Fe. Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 787–88. 96 Affidavit of José Francisco Salas, NMLG–SG, Roll 14, frames 1155–62; House Exec. Doc. No. 14, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2. 97 Cutter, Protector de Indios, p. 92, note 29. 98 Josiah Gregg, Commerce on the Prairies, pp. 76–77.

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While the Cabesa de Baca family was being harried by Indian attacks, similar

depredations were occurring south of Las Vegas. In October 1826, three shepherds were

scalped by Indians near Tecolote, though they lived to tell their tale. The authorities in

San Miguel del Bado sent out an eight man scouting party to search for the offenders,

without success.99 By 1829 a detachment of troops from San Miguel del Bado was

patrolling the Las Vegas area, then called "Vegas de las Gallinas." Their commander,

José Caballero, reported that his soldiers were complaining about their lack of wages

and he made a plea to the comandante principal that they be paid forthwith.100 Instead

of being paid, however, this same detachment was called back to San Miguel del Bado

by alcalde Santiago Ulibarrí in June 1829, because there were insufficient troops and

equipment to adequately patrol the area. Although the withdrawal was under orders,

the soldiers were charged with cowardice! They answered by stating that their

thankless task of protecting settlers without adequate pay or even food made them

worse off than the residents themselves, who were herding livestock under military

protection at Las Vegas.101 Thus it appears that some military protection was being

afforded and that settlers (probably the Cabesa de Baca family) were still herding sheep

in the Las Vegas area in 1829.

Undoubtedly the establishment of a more or less permanent detachment of

troops at San Miguel del Bado encouraged the settlement of outlying areas in the years

to follow. The detachment of Santa Fe presidio soldiers at San Miguel was carried out as

a separate company on military records and it assumed major importance beginning in

1827.102 In that year the Bado company (along with Taos) was allotted almost two

thousand pesos and was regularly provided with lances, parts for pistols and carbines,

and trinkets as gifts to placate hostile Plains Indians.103

The mission of the detachment at San Miguel del Bado was not only to protect

settlers against Indian incursions but also to prevent smuggling and import tax evasion

along the Santa Fe Trail. Until 1835, when the customs house was moved from Santa

Fe to San Miguel, it was common practice for Santa Fe residents to meet the incoming

99 Mexican Archives of New Mexico (MANM), Roll 5, frame 560. Cited in Anselmo E. Arellano, “Through Thick and Thin: Evolutionary Transitions of Las Vegas Grandes and its Pobladores (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1990), pp. 26–27, note 38. 100 MANM, Roll 9, frame 641, Arellano, “Las Vegas Grandes,” p. 44, note 79. 101 MANM, Roll 9, frames 851–53, Arellano, “Las Vegas Grandes,” p. 44–45, notes 80–81. 102 Although Mexican law provided that New Mexico should have three presidial companies, each with six officers and one hundred men, throughout the Mexican period Santa Fe was the only formal presidio in New Mexico. Law of 21 March 1826, cited in Daniel Tyler, “New Mexico in the 1820’s: The First Administration of Manuel Armijo,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1970), pp. 162–64. 103 Tyler, “New Mexico in the 1820s,” pp. 169, 179 and 181.

32

caravan from the states and purchase goods at lower prices than were charged after the

merchants had paid their custom duties. The traders had many ingenious ways of

reducing these import taxes, which were based on the number of wagons in the

caravan. These devices included repacking their goods on fewer wagons or sending

some of them by a different route before they reached Santa Fe.104 To prevent these

practices, a detachment of troops often escorted the incoming caravans from some

predetermined point to the customs house. In 1837 that point of contact was near Las

Vegas at the Paraje del Puertecito. In June of that year, Vicente Rivera reported that he

had encountered twenty carts and three wagons with three or four more coming from

Las Vegas behind them. Rivera reported that he would escort the wagons until he

handed them over to the governor.105 All this military activity in the area provided more

protection for groups of new settlers, thus encouraging permanent settlement of the Las

Vegas grant.106

The first wave of settlement in the Las Vegas area occurred in the mid 1830s,

brought about not only by increased military presence but also by population pressure

from San Miguel. The need for new settlements was explained to the governor in a

lengthy petition sent by parish priest José Francisco Leyba of San Miguel,

recommending that the Mexican government take specific steps to establish such

communities. Father Leyba was one of a handful of New Mexican priests who were

becoming involved in political issues in the wake of Mexican Independence.107 Father

Leyba's 1831 petition complained about the population increase at San Miguel del Bado

and recommended that lands in the northeastern part of New Mexico be settled by

those in need of farm land. The priest specifically mentioned Las Vegas, Sapello, and

Ocate as places where land was available. He suggested that the government assist

prospective settlers by providing them with oxen and farming tools such as axes and

hoes. Father Leyba argued that settlement of these lands would protect the interior

settlements from Indian attacks by providing a buffer zone, would relieve the population

pressure at San Miguel del Bado, and would provide an outlet for vagrants whose

numbers were increasing there. The San Miguel priest pointed out that a major

inducement for settlement of these northern areas (particularly Las Vegas), was the

104 Tyler, “New Mexico in the 1820s,” pp. 99, 150–51. 105 Vicente Rivera to Governor Albino Perez, Paraje del Puertecito de las Vegas, 27 June 1837, MANM, Roll 23, frames 392–93. 106 MANM, Roll 9, frame 377. 107 Other priests involved in governmental affairs in New Mexico at this time were Antonio José Martínez, José Manuel Gallegos, Francisco Ignacio de Madariaga, and the vicar Juan Felipe Ortiz. Fray Angelico Chávez, Tres Macho–He Said: Padre Gallegos of Albuquerque (Santa Fe: William Gannon, 1985), p. 12.

33

ready availability of water from the Pecos River. Father Leyba contrasted the never-

failing water supply of the Pecos with the inadequate flow of the Rio del Norte (Rio

Grande) and the Rio Puerco. He said that the abundant water would allow agriculture

to flourish and the plentiful pastures would sustain vast flocks of sheep and herds of

cattle.108

In response to Father Leyba's petition a committee was established that

endorsed the priest's proposal, recommending that the governor submit a copy to

Mexico City requesting the necessary funds to carry out the project.109 When no action

was taken by the governor, the ayuntamiento of San Miguel del Bado directed an appeal

to the ayuntamiento of Santa Fe. In language similar to that of Father Leyba's petition,

the San Miguel ayuntamiento extolled the virtues of establishing new settlements at

Vegas, Sapello, Ocate, and other places, emphasizing the abundance of pasture and

water at these spots, and stating somewhat cynically, that it did not expect an answer

from the governor or the diputación. Nevertheless, said the San Miguel ayuntamiento,

the proposed settlements could be established without their help. The Santa Fe

ayuntamiento agreed suggesting that the ayuntamientos themselves make loans to the

settlers and that they cooperate with each other, as well as with the governor and the

territorial deputation, in enforcing the vagrancy law.110

Under the 1828 Ley de Vagos, tribunals were to be established to determine who

was a vagrant and then to give such a person three choices: to be drafted into the

military, to go to prison, or to participate in settling new lands on the frontier.111 The

proposal of the San Miguel ayuntamiento was a means of facilitating the third

alternative. But there appears to have been no response to its appeal, and eventually

the Las Vegas community grant was settled without any government subsidies.112

The San Miguel del Bado ayuntamiento not only promoted the idea of settling

Las Vegas, but some of its members actually joined the settlement there. When the

grant was made in 1835, and additional allotments were distributed in 1841, three

108 José Francisco Leyba to the diputación, San Miguel del Bado, 17 June 1831. MANM, Roll 13, frame 613–19. Arellano, Las Vegas Grandes, pp. 55–61. 109 Report of committee of Abreu, Martínez, and Sandoval to the diputación, Santa Fe, 4 August 1831. MANM, Roll 13, frame 589–90. 110 Ayuntamiento of San Miguel del Bado to the Ayuntamiento of Santa Fe, San Miguel del Bado, 8 February 1832, SANM I, No. 1123. 111 Arellano, Las Vegas Grandes, p. 59–60. 112 An example of a settlement actually subsidized by the Spanish government is San Antonio de Bejar (San Antonio, Texas), settled by a group of families from the Canary Islands. These settlers were furnished with transportation and one year’s subsistence, including food, household goods, horses, mules, oxen, and farming tools. Lota M. Spell, “The Grant and First Survey of the City of San Antonio,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 66 (July 1962): 73–89.

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members of the San Miguel ayuntamiento received allotments.113 This activity by

members of the ayuntamiento is in marked contrast to the alcalde who opposed the

making of the Antonio Ortiz grant in 1819 because it would interfere with the grazing

rights of the sheep and cattle growers of San Miguel del Bado. Several factors could

explain this shift. Once the grant had been made to Cabesa de Baca, the ayuntamiento

knew that someone would use this land if and when the Cabesa de Baca family

abandoned it, and it might as well be the San Miguel del Bado vecinos. Also, the severe

losses suffered by cattle and sheep growers due to Indian depredations would be curbed

if Las Vegas became a permanent settlement with occasional military protection. And

finally, as Father Leyba and the 1832 ayuntamientos had pointed out, population

pressure was an important motive for expansion. Instead of opposing a grant to an

outsider, the ayuntamiento members were becoming part owners of the grant

themselves.114 The Las Vegas grant was made in 1835 and settled in 1838.

7. Adjudication of the San Miguel del Bado Grant

The issue before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1897 Sandoval case was who

owned the common lands of a community land grant: the community or the

government. The possibility that the government might own the common lands was

raised in the Court of Private Land Claims by Mathew Reynolds in his response to the

petition by Julian Sandoval et al. Reynolds interpreted the grant documents as

conveying title to the allotted lands only and cited come works on Spanish law to that

effect. Because the Sandoval case was so important in changing the way the courts

dealt with common lands of community grants (prior to Sandoval common lands were

confirmed to land grants like Anton Chico, Truchas, and Las Vegas), a discussion on a

different view of common land ownership under Spanish law is provided.

Adjudication of the San Miguel del Bado Grant was complicated by the fact that

several theories of ownership of the grant were put forth during the course of

adjudication. In addition multiple claimants were involved during the period from 1857

when the first petition was filed, until 1897 when U.S. v. Sandoval was decided rejecting

ownership of the 315,300 acres of common lands by the San Miguel del Bado Grant.

Speculators that included Surveyor General Henry Atkinson, held the view that the

entire grant was owned by Lorenzo Marquez and his heirs; thus if someone like Henry

113 Francisco Sena received 200 varas, José Flores, one allotment of 75 varas and another of 100 varas; and José Ulibarrí 125 varas. NMLG–SG, Roll 15, report 20, frames 17–21. 114 Even before Father Leyba’s proposal, Juan Estevan Pino had proposed that a military fort be established on the Canadian River, which would have the effect of protecting his land holdings and the Las Vegas area. MANM, Roll 9, frames 1119–22. Arellano, Las Vegas Grandes, pp. 53–55.

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Atkinson could get a deed from the heirs of Lorenzo Marquez he would own the entire

grant.115

The second theory was ownership of the entire grant (both private and common

lands), by the inhabitants of the grant. The third theory was ownership of the private

lands by the occupants of the grant and ownership of the common lands by the U.S.

government as successor to the governments of Spain and Mexico.

The first petition in the adjudication asserted the second theory of ownership;

unfortunately the theory was asserted in a claim made to Surveyor General Henry M.

Atkinson who believed in the first theory of ownership because it was in his interest as

a land speculator.116 Faustín Baca y Ortiz, the Justice of the Peace of San Miguel del

Vado, filed the first petition on March 18, 1857, in the name of the inhabitants of the

settlements of La Cuesta, San Miguel, Las Mulas, El Pueblo, Puerticito, San José,

Guzano, and Bernal, seeking the confirmation of the San Miguel del Vado Grant before

the Surveyor General.117 On November 13, 1879, Surveyor General Atkinson made his

report to Congress. He noted that while the grant had been requested by and issued to

Lorenzo Marquez for himself and his fifty-one associates, the names of these associates

were not listed in any of the grant papers. Atkinson contended that the law was clear

that title could vest only in persons who either had been named or so clearly described

as to leave no question as to who they were. Therefore, he recommended that the grant

be confirmed to the heirs, legal representatives and assigns of Lorenzo Marquez.118 A

preliminary survey of this claim was made in November and December, 1879, by

Deputy Surveyor John Shaw, showing the grant to contain 315,300.80 acres. Surveyor

General George W. Julian reinvestigated the claim and in a supplemental report dated

December 6, 1886, recommended the confirmation of the grant to the heirs, legal

representatives and assigns of Lorenzo Marquez for themselves and in trust for the

heirs and legal representatives of the other grantees referred to in the grant papers.119

The Commissioner of the General Land Office advised Secretary of Interior L. Q. C.

115 This is what Atkinson did in 1883 in the case of the Anton Chico grant when he ruled that the grant, made to Manuel Rivera and thirty-six unnamed others was owned solely by Manuel Rivera even as he has purchased the interests of Manuel Rivera. Ownership by one person was the first theory of ownership of the San Miguel del Bado grant. Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits, 41-2. 116 The three theories of ownership asserted in the San Miguel del Bado adjudication are similar to the theories set forth in the Las Vegas grant adjudication. Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits, 209. 117 Petition of Justice of the Peace Faustín Baca y Ortiz for confirmation of the San Miguel del Bado Grant, March 18, 1857, San Miguel del Bado Grant. SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 618-19. 118 Opinion by Surveyor General Atkinson, San Miguel del Bado grant, November 13, 1879, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 652-57. For Atkinson’s ownership of the grant see letter from Breedin to George W. Julian, Las Vegas, December 10, 1886. San Miguel del Bado Grant, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 737. 119 Opinion of Surveyor General Julian, San Miguel del Bado grant, SG 119, Roll 24, fr. 674-79.

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Lamar on May 13, 1887 that he believed the survey was grossly in excess of the

quantity which originally had been granted. He, therefore, recommended that in the

event Congress confirmed the claim that it be limited to the land actually occupied by

the inhabitants of the grant. Notwithstanding all of these proceedings, no action was

taken by Congress in reference to the grant, either looking towards its confirmation or

rejection.”120

After the Court of Private Land claims was established in 1891, three suits were

filed seeking the recognition of three conflicting claims to the [San Miguel del Bado]

grant. The first was filed on August 2, 1892, by Julian Sandoval, Gregorio Roybal,

Angel Dimas, Catarino Sena, Thomas Gonzales, Juan Gallegos and Ramon Gallegos, on

their own behalf and as agents of the residents and settlers upon the grant for

confirmation of their claim to the lands covered by the grant.121 The second suit was

filed on January 16, 1893, by Levi P. Morton, who claimed to be the owner of the grant

by virtue of conveyances from the heirs of Lorenzo Marquez.122 Morton was

“an enormously successful businessman and an equally successful politician. Morton had been elected to Congress from New York in 1877 and subsequently served as United States ambassador to France from 1881-1885, Vice President of the United States during the Harrison administration (1889-1893), and governor of New York from 1895-1896). . . Morton’s interest in the grant stemmed primarily from the fact that the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company . . . was building their main line directly through the grant and Morton’s investment company, Morton, Bliss and Company, had a history of investing in western railroads that dated back to 1870.”123

The third suit was filed on March 2, 1893, by Juan Marquez and Sylvester Marquez for

themselves and the other heirs and legal representatives of Lorenzo Marquez for the

recognition of their claim to the grant. Both Morton and Juan and Sylvester Marquez

claimed that Lorenzo Marquez took title to the entire grant because the other fifty-one

grantees were not named in the testimonio. The three cases were consolidated for

purposes of the trial since all three claims covered the same lands and were based on

120 J. J. Bowden, “Private Land Claims in the Southwest,” 3: 740. 121 Petition of Julian Sandoval, et al, August 2 1893, San Miguel del Bado grant, PLC 2, Roll 35, fr. 656-62; Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 741-42. 122 Petition by Levi Morton, January 16, 1893, San Miguel del Bado Grant, PLC 60, Roll 40, frames 7-9; Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 741-42. 123 Mark Schiller, “The Adjudication of the San Miguel del Vado Grant and the Overturning of the Presumption that Title to the Commons Vested in the Settlers,” a chapter in “Adjudicating Empire” unpublished manuscript in possession of the author. For a study of Morton’s investment company see Dolores Breitman Greenberg, Financiers and the Railroads 1869-1889: A Case Study of Morton, Bliss and Co., Masters Thesis, Department of History, Cornell University, 1972 cited by Schiller.

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the same grant.”124 “The consolidated case came up for trial on April 18, 1894, the

validity of the grant papers was recognized by the government, but it denied that the

grant covered any lands which had not been allocated prior to 1846. A majority of the

court rejected this contention. Next, the court proceeded to resolve the conflicting

claims presented by the plaintiffs by holding that the distribution of the individual

tracts in 1803 rendered certain the identity of the grantees. The court dismissed the

suits filed by Levi Morton and Juan and Sylvester Marquez and confirmed title to the

entire grant in the name of Lorenzo Marquez and his co-petitioners and all other

persons who had settled upon the grant prior to December 30, 1848.125 The

government appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court which reversed

the Court of Private Land Claims and held that title to the unallocated lands within the

exterior boundaries of the grant passed to the United States under the Treaty of

Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Supreme Court then ordered the Court of Private Land Claims

to determine the extent of the allocated lands and confirm title in the grant only to the

extent of those occupied allocated lands.126

The theory of Matthew Reynolds and of the U.S. Supreme Court upon which the

Sandoval decision was based was that the Spanish — and then the Mexican —

government owned the common lands, so the United States (and not the heirs of the

San Miguel del Bado grant) inherited that ownership as successor sovereign. The

question of the ownership of the common lands has both legal and historical

implications. Because the Supreme Court decided this question without the necessary

historical facts and Spanish legal authority before it, a legal and historical distortion

resulted. Unfortunately, historians like Ralph Emerson Twitchell have perpetuated this

error by quoting these and other similar cases in their writings about Hispanic land

tenure, instead of engaging in independent research on the ownership of the common

lands of a community land grant.127

124 Petition of Juan and Sylvester Marquez, March 2, 1893, San Miguel del Bado Grant, PLC 198, Roll 51, fr. 519-21; Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 741-42. 125 Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 741-42; Mark Schiller, “The Adjudication of the San Miguel del Vado Grant and the Overturning of the Presumption that Title to the Commons Vested in the Settlers,” unpublished manuscript, 20-27. 126 U.S. v. Sandoval, 167 US 278 (1897); Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 741-42. 127 Twitchell’s discussion of the ownership of property in a villa or other settlement in the nature of a community grant paraphrases or quotes at length (without quotation marks) from United States v. Santa Fe, 165 U.S. 675, 683 ff. (1897), which in turn is quoted in United States v. Sandoval, pp. 295-97; Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Old Santa Fe (1925; reprint ed., Chicago: The Rio Grande Press, 1963), pp. 37-38.

38

Such research would have revealed the legal history of the Castilian land-owning

pueblo that took root in New Mexico,128 of which the Supreme Court was not made

aware. The lands owned by the Castilian pueblo were generally distinguished from the

lands owned by the king. Crown lands that had not been granted to individuals or

communities were called tierras realengas or tierras baldías. In sixteenth-century

Castile, the monarchs followed a policy of protecting the lands of the pueblos — the

tierras concegiles. Numerous laws were enacted to safeguard the tierras concegiles from

usurpation by the nobility, by municipal officials, or by ordinary citizens.129

The common lands of a New Mexican community land grant were like the tierras

concegiles in Spain. While both the tierras baldías and the tierras concegiles fell into the

broad classification of public domain, civil law countries like Spain had two classes of

public domain: the public domain proper, which was owned by the sovereign, and the

private domain, which was owned by communities and municipalities. The former was

the tierras baldías and the latter was the tierras concegiles. The importance of this

distinction is that under international law, which the Land Claims Court was supposed

to follow, the public domain passes to a successor state when there is a change of

sovereignty (as when New Mexico was occupied by the United States), but the private

domain is retained by the communities and municipalities just as private property of

individuals is retained by its owners.130 This well-established rule could have disposed

of the question of ownership of the common lands of the San Joaquín and other

community land grants. But it was overlooked, by both the lawyers and the judges

charged with deciding the important question of common land ownership.

Also overlooked were three types of Spanish law germane to this issue: codified

law, commentaries on codified law, and Spanish custom. The foremost Spanish law

code, which was still in effect at the time of the United States invasion of New Mexico,

was Las Siete Partidas. Partida 3, título 28, ley 9, spells out the ownership of pueblo

128 Vassberg, “The Tierras Baldías,” p. 400. The distinction between the tierras baldías and the tierras concegiles was not always clear in practice. Because of this, sixteenth-century Castilian monarchs were sometimes able to exact pay-ment from municipalities for land used by them. Presumably, however, the tierras concegiles that had been granted to a municipality were exempt from such payments. Vassberg, “The Sale of Tierras Baldías in Sixteenth-century Castile,” Journal of Modern History 47 (December 1975); 631-33, 637-38. 129 David E. Vassberg, “The Spanish Background: Problems Concerning Ownership, Usurpations, and Defense of Common Lands in 16th Century Castile,” in Malcolm Ebright, ed., Spanish and Mexican Land Grants and the Law (Manhattan, Kansas: Sunflower University Press, 1989), and Vassberg, “Tierras Baldías,” p. 400. 130 John L. Walker, “The Treatment of Private Property in International Law After State Succession,” pp. 65-68, 74, in “Land, Law and La Raza” (A collection of papers presented for Professor Theodore Parnall’s seminar in comparative law, UNM School of Law, Fall Semester, 1972), and Daniel Patrick O’Connell, State Succession in Municipal Law and International Law, 2 vols. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 1: 200.

39

lands by the community: “[the things which] belong separately to the commons of cities

or towns are . . . the exidos, . . . forests, and pastures, and all other similar places

which have been established and granted for the common use of each city or town.”131

This would appear to negate ownership of the commons by the King.

The Recopilación de Leyes de Reynos de las Indias dealt with the procedural

problems of forming settlements in the Americas but had little to say about the

substantive law concerning ownership of property; these matters were covered in earlier

codes like Las Siete Partidas, which the Recopilación specifically made applicable to the

Americas.132 The Mexican Colonization Law of 1824 and the regulations issued under

that law in 1828 were the first comprehensive legislation regarding New Mexico land

grants. Article 2 of the 1824 law recognized the traditional ownership of the common

lands by the pueblo when it stated: "the object of this law is those lands of the nation,

not being private property nor belonging to any corporation or pueblo, and can [therefore]

be colonized" [emphasis added].133

There were numerous Spanish law codes, but none was truly comprehensive.

Instead of providing that later ones would supersede earlier ones, Spanish officials

allowed them to overlap and duplicate one another. For this reason it was necessary for

legal scholars to synthesize and summarize the authorities on various points of law. The

works of Mariano Galván-Rivera are often cited and he is considered one of the leading

authorities in the field of land and water law. Galván-Rivera's primary work, Tierras y

Aguas, which was attached as an appendix to Escriche's authoritative Diccionario

Razonado de Legislación y Jurisprudencia, aptly summarizes the situation regarding the

ownership of the common lands of a community land grant: “they [the kings] had to

cede to the settlements of America and to their councils . . . a certain portion of lands

which they could use for their subsistence and betterment, making use of the pastures

and farming lands. . . . These lands they immediately named according to their kind,

ownership, and use: concegiles or propios.”134

131 Apartadamente son del comun de cada una Ciudad o Villa. . . ejidos. . . los montes, e las dehesas, e todos los otros lugares semejantes destos, que son establecidos, e otorgados para pro comunal de cada Ciudad, o Villa. Las Siete Partidas del sabio rey don Alfonso el X, glosadas por el lic. Gregorio Lopez, 4 vols. (Madrid: Oficina de d. Leon Amarita, 1829-1831), and Samuel Parsons Scott, trans. Las Siete Partidas (Chicago: Commerce Clearing House, 1931). 132 Recopilación, Libro 2: título 1, ley 2. 133 Son objeto de esta ley aquellos terrenos de la nación, que no siendo de propiedad particular, ni pertenecientes a corporación alguna ó pueblo, pueden ser colonizados. Decreto del 18 de Agosto de 1824, sobre colonization, Manuel Dublán and José María Lozano, Legislación Mexicana, 19 vols. (Mexico: Imprenta del Comercio, 1876-1890) 1: 712, translated in Frederic Hall, The Laws of Mexico (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1885), p. 148. 134 “. . . tuvieron por bien SS. MM. ceder á las poblaciones de América y á los concejos de ellas, . . . cierta porcion de terrenos, para que acudiesen á su subsistancia y mejoramiento, usufructuándolas

40

The third type of Hispanic law, custom and usage, is the most important for New

Mexico. As we have seen, since there were few law books or lawyers in New Mexico prior

to American occupation, disputes about land ownership were settled in traditional

ways, which were considered binding and accepted by all sides.135 Though falling under

the classification of customary law, this litigation was usually written down and was

characterized by a formality somewhat amazing considering the frontier setting in which

it took place. The parties were often adept at the use of persuasive techniques and legal

procedures generally reserved to trained lawyers.136

After studying all of New Mexico's community land grants, Daniel Tyler came to

the conclusion that: "the ejido (common lands) belonged to the community to which it

was appurtenant." In two of the grants he studied the alcalde promised the settlers a

title to their ejidos, leaving no doubt that these common lands were owned by the

community.137 Moreover, other community land grant documents show that when the

private tracts were transferred to the individual grantees, this land carried with it the

right to use the common lands. Hispanic settlers received title to their house lots and

farm lands as individuals and title to the common lands as a group (de mancomún).138

This connection between the private tracts and the common lands is seen in the

granting decree for the Las Trampas grant where title to the grant was transferred "to

all in common and to each one in particular, in their private lands and the rest which is

attached [to the private tracts]."139 Then when the individual tracts were distributed, the

settlers received their private land together "with corresponding water, pastures, and

watering places."140

en pastos y labores, . . . Estos terrenos se denominaron inmediatamente conforme á sus clases, pertenencia y usos, concejiles ó de propios.” Mariano Galván-Rivera, Ordenanzas de Tierras y Aguas . . . Dictadas Sobre la Materia y Vigentes Hasta el Dia en la Republica Mejicana, published as a supplement to Joaquín Escriche’s Diccionario Razonado de Legislación y Jurisprudencia (Paris: Librería Rosa y Bouret, [1863]), p. 187. 135 Simmons, Spanish Government in New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968; 1990), pp. 176-77; see also, chapter 2, Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits, “Lawsuits, Litigants, and Custom in Spanish and Mexican Period New Mexico.” 136 For an example of such litigation see chapter 3, Ebright, Land Grants and Lawsuits, “Manuel Martínez’s Ditch Dispute.” 137 Las Huertas Grant, NMLG-SG, Roll 26, report 144, frame 8; Refugio Colony Grant, NMLG-SG, Roll 22, report 90; Daniel Tyler, “Ejido Lands in New Mexico,” in Malcolm Ebright, ed. Spanish and Mexican Land Grants and the Law (Manhattan, Kansas: Sunflower University Press, 1989), pp. 24-35. 138 Tyler, “Ejido Lands in New Mexico,” p. 26. 139 “a todos juntos y en particular en su pertenencia y para lo demas anexo.” NMLG-SG, Roll 16, report 27, frames 259-62. 140 “con sus aguas pastos y abrevaderos.” NMLG-SG, Roll 16, report 27, frames 259-62.

41

It is important to bear in mind these alternate views of Spanish law on common

land ownership as we examine the surveys in the aftermath of Sandoval, which

determined what was left of the San Miguel del Bado grant. Instead of containing

315,300 acres the grant was held to contain 5,207 acres. It was partly out of this

greatly reduced acreage of the San Miguel del Bado grant that the Villanueva State Park

was created. “On December 12, 1900, Clayton G. Coleman was approved as a Special

Commissioner to go upon the grant and ascertain the boundaries of the allotted lands.

Coleman reported that there were approximately 5,000 residents living on the grant,

and that the allocated lands, which were owned by 747 claimants, were located in ten

tracts and covered a total area of approximately 3,539.71 acres. The court approved

Coleman’s report and ordered the grant surveyed in accordance with Coleman’s

findings. The grant was surveyed by Deputy Surveyor Wendell V. Hall in 1903. Hall’s

survey showed that the ten tracts contained the following acreage:

Tract No. Acreage

1 177.65

2 3,570.02

3 141.43

4 205.24

5 185.61

6 225.65

7 555.26

8 6.94

9 14.26

10 125.67

Total 5,207.73

Figure 8 shows the location of these ten tracts.

42

Figure 8. San Miguel del Bado grant allotted lands per 1903 Wendell Hall survey.

On January 6, 1910, the United States issued a patent to Roman Gallegos and

Francisco R. Martinez, the president and secretary of the Board of Grant

Commissioners of the San Miguel del Bado Grant, for the ten tracts described in the

Hall Survey.141

141 Bowden, “Private Land Claims,” 3: 744.

43

8. Villanueva State Park Abstract: Narrative

The land comprising the 1725.95 acres contained in Villanueva State Park is

made up of seven parcels acquired between February 14, 1967 and October 4, 1996 as

shown on Appendix A at page 51 and the map at Appendix F.

As mentioned in the introduction the Abstract provided by the New Mexico State

Parks Division (p. 46) is more complete than the one provided by Territorial Title (pp.

47-49) so I will refer primarily to the summary of that abstract and to the map at

Appendix F. A review of the initial deeds establishing the Villanueva State Park, all

dated February 14, 1967, shows that the core of the park was established by two deeds

from the Board of Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado Grant (shown as tracts 1&2 and

tract 4 on the map and on p. 46). These deeds cover land within the private land

surveyed as tract 2 of the San Miguel del Bado Grant by Wendell V. Hall in 1903. This

land was part of the allotted, occupied lands totaling 5,207 acres that were confirmed to

the San Miguel del Bado Grant. The genesis of the park is revealed in correspondence

from the State Park and Recreation Commission to Governor David Cargo in January

1967. On January 29, 1967, the New Mexico state Parks and Recreation Commission

director James Dillard notified Governor Cargo of plans for the Villanueva State Park,

based on a feasibility study that zeroed in on the area around the community of

Villanueva. The area was chosen because of its proximity to Santa Fe and because it

was an area:

“of major recreation attraction and contain[s] the scenic areas that hold great potential for future recreation use. Primary concern was devoted to the areas within a radius of approximately 1.5 miles of the community of Villanueva (see map page 3). The Pecos River was used as a focal point since river oriented recreation is extremely desirable. Location – The community of Villanueva with a population of approximately 200 people is located on the Pecos River 54 miles southeast of Santa Fe via Interstate 25 and State Highway 3 (see map page 2). The village is located at the end of a valley floodplain which begins approximately 16 miles upstream. To the north and south mesas rise 40 feet above the valley floor providing vantage points from which the visitor may view the outstanding scenery.”142

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was involved at this early stage, for within a

year a BLM patent was issued that added 1572.74 acres to the park.

In addition to the BLM and the Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado grant,

private landowners in the area were included in the plans for development of the

142 James Dillard, New Mexico State Parks and Recreation Commission Director to Governor David Cargo, Santa Fe, January 29, 1967. Governor Cargo Papers, Parks and Recreation Commission Correspondence, 1967. New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (NMSRCA).

44

Villanueva State Park. First to be contacted were the trustees of the San Miguel del

Bado Grant who, it was initially thought, were not interested in selling. However, in the

words of the State Park Commission Director,

“after contacting the trustees of the San Miguel Del Bado Grant and explaining our purpose for investigating the status of the lands nearly surrounding the vicinity of Villanueva; the possibility of establishing a new State Park, and eventually a large recreation complex close to Villanueva, intrigued the trustees to the extent that immediately a meeting of the trustees was called an it was decided that a gift would be made to the State of New Mexico, of those lands contained within the grant, which we consider very necessary for the State Park and Recreation Commission to hold. These lands will give us access to 4800 feet of river frontage.”

After the meeting of the board of trustees, State Parks was notified that:

“we were also informed by the trustees of the Grant that approximately 3.5 miles of the Pecos River flowing through the Grant, and the proposed location for a State Park, will be made available to the public for fishing and other recreational purposes. Also, easements would be granted for the construction of a road from the Village of Villanueva through the Grant to the proposed area for the development of a State Park, at no cost to the State. The proposed development area for a State Park is about a mile-and-a-quarter down stream from where the Pecos River flows through Villanueva.”

Governor Cargo was notified of a ceremony marking the beginning of the Villanueva

State Park that was being planned.

“The deeds to the Grant Lands are now being prepared by the trustees, and will be presented officially to you on Sunday, February 19th at the Village of Villanueva. The deeds will contain a reversionary clause to the extent that the lands will revert to the Grant if not used for recreational purposes. The trustees of the land are sending invitations to you and all concerned, naming the date and the hour for the ceremony to commence.”

Soon after the ceremony on February 19, 1967 planning of the park began in earnest.

A map showing the additional lands to be acquired from the BLM and from private

parties to complete Villanueva State Park was attached to the feasibility study. The

map shows the actual acquisitions over 30 years comprising the current Villanueva

State Park. The map of what was proposed in 1967 and the map of what was acquired

in the next 30 years are almost identical.

These first deeds in phase one are signed by the President, the Secretary, and

four trustees comprising the Board of Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado Grant.

These deeds from the land grant contain a paragraph imposing the condition that the

45

land conveyed by the deeds must be used as a state park or “the land shall revert back

to the San Miguel del Bado Grant, Tract 2.” The land covered by these deeds is colored

blue (tract 1 & 2) and magenta (tract 4). Tract 4 is along the southwest bank of the

Pecos River along the western edge of the Park. Until 1968 and phase two of the

acquisition of the park, these two tracts were not connected.

Phase two of the acquisition occurred on April 1, 1968 with a patent from the

BLM to the New Mexico State Park and Recreation commission for a tract of land

comprising 1572.74 acres (tract 5 colored brown). This acquisition almost tied the two

parts of the Villanueva State Park together. It encompassed a large tract of mesa land

along the south and southwest side of the Pecos River.

The third phase of the acquisition of the Villanueva State Park is comprised of

tract 6 (colored red) and tract 7 (colored green) which finally tie together the two initial

tracts which comprised the core area of the park as it was established in February of

1967. Tract 6 (red) was acquired from Crisostomo and Adelaide Vigil in July of 1975

after several months of negotiations for $75 per acres. Chris Vigil received a large tract

of land of which this was a part by patent from the BLM on August 14, 1961. This land

had been part of the common lands of the San Miguel del Bado Grant managed by the

BLM, then patented to Vigil who in turn conveyed the land to the state of New Mexico.

The superintendent of the Villanueva State Park at the time of the Vigil acquisition,

Fortunato Gallegos, was instrumental in bringing this acquisition to a conclusion. In a

memo about this acquisition to the director of the State Park and Recreation

Commission, Superintendent Gallegos was singled out, “for his enthusiastic cooperation

and help in seeing that the meeting went as smoothly as it did. The park was in

excellent order and was exceptionally neat and well kept. It was a pleasure to see the

extra work that Mr. Gallegos has put into keeping his park so attractive.”143

The final acquisition that closed the gap tying all the tracts together was tract 7

(green) acquired from the BLM by patent on April 21, 1997. This tract is on the east

side of the Pecos River where the footbridge is located. Since the tract contains at least

two archaeological sites (LA 115209 and LA 115210), it is described as the ruins and

overlook tract and is subject to special conditions in the patent. The land is protected

from any excavation without the State Historic Preservation Office’s approval and

provides that if there is any violation of the terms of the patent, the land shall revert to

the United States. The map attached as Exhibit F shows the location of LA 115209,

143 Memo from Jack Marashka to Sam Graft, Director State Park and Recreation Commission, January 17, 1975, New Mexico State Park Division files, Santa Fe. It appears that Fortunato Gallegos may have been one of the early land donors that helped establish the Villaneuva State Park. Territorial Title Abstract, pp. 8-12.

46

described as Indian ruins, a group of four circular rock structures that could possibly

have been field houses; associated ceramic artifacts indicate use of the site between AD

1100 and 1350. A recent photo of LA 115209 follows in figure 9.

Other documents in the Territorial Title abstract have been discussed, except

the Notice of Prior Right at page 35. This document dated April 19, 1970 is signed by

heirs and descendants of the San Miguel del Bado Community land grant and is

authorized by the Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres and is signed by Santiago Anaya as

representative of the Alianza. The document serves notice that all transfers of title

within the grant are void and subject to the prior rights of the heirs and descendants of

the San Miguel del Bado Grant. While this notice was routinely ignored by title

companies and was not listed as an exception in most title policies within the grant, it

suggests the climate of the times, only three years after the June 5, 1967 Courthouse

Raid. It is also important to note that the deeds from the Board of Trustees of the San

Miguel del Bado grant that first established the Villanueva State Park were dated in

February 1967 just three months prior to the courthouse raid.

Figure 9. Ruins located at Villanueva State Park.

47

9. Operation of Villanueva State Park

Villanueva State Park is one of thirty-four state parks managed by the New

Mexico State Parks Division of the Energy Minerals and Natural Resources Department.

The first state parks were established in 1933 as a result of the Civilian Conservation

Corps efforts during the Great Depression. The state park system encompasses

nineteen (19) lakes and 182,978 acres of land.

Figure 10. The Road to Villanueva State Park (State Road 3) runs beside the Pecos

River.

The Villanueva State Park was established in 1967 and is comprised of several

tracts of land acquired by the State Parks Division. Initially the San Miguel del Vado

land grant donated land that eventually comprised over 67 acres and the state added

1652 acres to complete the State Park. The park is located along State Road 3 about 15

miles from 1-25. “The road was improved and paved in 1966-67 from I-25 for a

distance of fifteen miles down to the park, two miles beyond Villanueva, and

subsequently realigned and paved the rest of the way down to I-40, another twenty

miles south. That second leg of the road’s improvement brought the park and the town

within easy reach of Albuquerque.” Driving along State Road 3 after turning off at I-25

one encounters the villages of Ribera, San Miguel, Pueblo, and Sena before reaching

Villanueva, which is two miles from the park.

According to John V. Young’s book, The State Parks of New Mexico, “the people

of the nearby village of Villanueva are very proud of their park, which has brought

about a considerable upturn in the lagging economy of the region of small farms with

48

little cash income. The influx of thousands of park visitors has meant a boom in local

sales of groceries, gasoline, and curios, but access to the park required the paving of

State Road 3, which up to that time had often been impassable after storms.” 144

Young describes the facilities of Villanueva State Park as “fashioned in the softly

rounded brown adobe (over cinder blocks) to simulate traditional Pueblo Indian

architecture – the numerous open-faced camping shelters, the modern central

restrooms (with hot showers), even drinking fountains that blend with the landscape.

At the far end of the campground, on a wide bend in the river, a children’s playground

has a variety of equipment.

Figure 11. Children’s playground at Villanueva State Park.

Several sturdy steel-roofed stone picnic shelters line a zigzag road up one cliff to

offer sweeping views of the river gorge. An arched steel footbridge gives easy access to

the opposite shore where good trails lead both up and downstream to other vantage

points, including a cliff-top lookout and a prehistoric Indian ruin. Large Indian

pictographs in red ochre decorate some of the cliff faces. Here and there are crumbling

rock walls, relics of the days when sheep were grazed along the river banks before the

advent of barbed wire, and the native stone was used for everything from corrals to

cabins to churches.”145

144 Young, The State Parks of New Mexico, 153. 145 Young, The State Parks of New Mexico, 151-53.

49

Figure 12. Bridge over the Pecos River at Villanueva State Park.

10. Conclusion

The story of the creation of the Villanueva State Park from both the common

lands (controlled by the BLM), and the private lands (controlled by the San Miguel del

Bado Grant Board of Trustees), of the San Miguel del Bado Grant is the most

complicated of those so far told in this series of reports. The abstract provided by

Territorial Title was incomplete and it was necessary to fill the gaps from other sources.

The history of the San Miguel del Bado Grant begins with Pecos Pueblo. In the

brief history provided in sections 2 and 3 the decline in population of the pueblo from

over 2000 at the time of Oñate’s arrival to only about five in 1838 is discussed. As the

population at Pecos decreased the Spanish population increased, especially after the

1786 Comanche peace treaty. The balance at Pecos shifted around the turn of the

eighteenth century. “In 1794, there were 165 Pecos Indians and no settlers at El Vado;

in 1820 only 58 Pecos, but by then 735 settlers.”146 The making of the San Miguel del

Bado Grant was the beginning of the end for Pecos Pueblo. By 1838 the remaining

Pecos Indians (as few as five), had moved to Jemez Pueblo.

The San Miguel del Bado grant was made to a group of Genízaros, mixed-blood

Spaniards and some Indians. It was clearly a community grant with private lands

allotted to the settlers at San Miguel del Bado (listed in Appendix B), and to the settlers

at San José del Bado (listed in Appendix C), and the remaining lands to be held as

common lands. When the grant was adjudicated the first petition filed was on behalf of

the villages of La Cuesta (Villanueva), San Miguel, Las Mulas, El Pueblo, Puertecito, San

146 Kessell, Kiva, Cross and Crown, 419.

50

José, Guzano, and Bernal for confirmation as a community grant. The Court of Private

Land Claims did confirm the entire San Miguel del Bado grant as a community grant,

but this decision was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the famous Sandoval case.

When the occupied allotted lands were surveyed in 1903 the San Miguel del

Bado grant was reduced to 5,207 acres made up of ten tracts. Tract no. 2 was the

largest and it is from this tract and the BLM lands adjacent to the tract that the

Villanueva State Park was created. This is the only state park I know of initially created

by a land grant board of trustees, and is the only one I know of where the land grant

board, the BLM and adjacent private owners cooperated to create what we know today

as Villanueva State Park. Ironically, after the loss of its common lands, the Board of

Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado grant has helped establish a state park with over

50,000 visitors per year that provides economic benefits to the community of Villanueva

and surrounding communities.

51

Bibliography

Ebright, Malcolm. Land Grants and Lawsuits in Northern New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994; Santa Fe: Center for Land Grant Studies Press, 2008.

Flint, Richard, Shirley Flint, and Pedro V. Gallegos. “Una Atarque Duradera”, New Mexico Historical Review, 63 (October 1988), 357-72.

Glasscock, James T. “The Genízaro Outpost of San Miguel del Vado.” Marianne Stoller Project, unpublished manuscripts #14, serial #19168, NMSRCA, Santa Fe.

Hall, G. Emlen. Four Leagues of Pecos: A Legal History of the Pecos Grant, 1800-1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

______________. “Giant Before the Surveyor-General: The Land Career of Donaciano Vigil,” in John R. and Christine M. Van Ness, eds., Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in Mexico and Colorado.

______________. “San Miguel del Bado and the Loss of the Common Lands of New Mexico Community Land Grants,” New Mexico Historical Review 66 (October 1991): 413-32.

Jones, H. L. Film 11158, “Villanueva, Tecolote, Las Vegas,” 3 1/2 minutes. NMSRCA, Santa Fe.

Levine, Frances. Our Prayers Are in This Place: Pecos Pueblo Identity over the Centuries (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.

Marquez, Angelina. “San Miguel del Vado: The Marquez Family Tree. Marianne Stoller Project, unpublished manuscripts #30, serial #19185, NMSRCA, Santa Fe.

Nobel, David Grant. Pueblos, Villages &Trails: A Guide to New Mexico’s Past Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.

Nostrand, Richard L. El Cerrito, New Mexico: Eight Generations in a Spanish Village Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

Selcraig, Bruce. “Digging Ditches,” Smithsonian, February 1, 2002, 55-62.

Schiller, Mark. “The Adjudication of the San Miguel del Vado Grant and the Overturning of the Presumption that Title to the Commons Vested in the Settlers,” a chapter in “Adjudicating Empire” unpublished manuscript in possession of the author.

52

Appendices

Appendix A – Chain of Title of Villanueva State Park

The following information has been provided by the New Mexico State Parks

Division of the Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department with the

assistance of Christy Tafoya. Since not all these deeds were provided in the Villanueva

State Park Abstract, the chain of title of the abstract is listed separately below.

Parcel Date of Deed

Grantor Grantee Recorded date/ Book and page

Acreage/ Legal Description

1. Top of IDA east of River

Feb. 14 1967

Board of Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado Grant

State of New Mexico

20 Feb. 1967 Book 225 Page 1602

2.4 acres/

2. Top of IDA west of River

Feb. 14 1967

Board of Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado Grant

State of New Mexico

20 Feb. 1967 Book 225 Page 1602

7.0 acres/

3. Tract 1 Aug. 3 1967 and

Pete Gallegos and Josephine Gallegos

State of New Mexico

? 15,647 sf of which 687 sf is not included 14,960 sf net

Tract 2 Aug. 8 1967

Board of Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado Grant

? 8.648 acres of which 2.582 acres is not included 6.066 acres net Total 2 tracts/ per Belsman survey 2.28.67

4. Riverside by dam

Feb.14, 1967

Board of Trustees of the San Miguel del Bado Grant

State of New Mexico

225/1602 1.9 acres/

5. South crescent

Apr. 1, 1968

BLM – Patent # 30-68-0088

State of New Mexico

Misc. 238/761

1572.74 acres/

6. North Park

Jul. 21, 1975

Crisostomo and Adelaide Vigil

State of New Mexico

227/2752 67.19 acres/

7. Ruins and overlook

Oct. 4, 1996

BLM – Patent # 30-97-0001

State of New Mexico

Apr. 21, 1997 237/596

60.82 acres/

53

Tract One

Date/ Page of Abstract

Document (Tract 1)

Grantor Grantee/ Official

Book/ Page

Legal Description

1 Patent USA Crisostomo T. Vigil

8/ 32 Township 12N, Range 15E, Sec. 15, lots 1, 4, E1/2SE1/4, NW1/4NE1/4

2 Notice of Claim of Prior Right of Entry under Act of May 14

Matilde Villanueva

The Public 72/ 355 E1/2 Sec. 15, S1/2 Sec. 14 Containing 640 acres

3-4 Mortgage I. V. Lucero, Jr., and Posave Lucero his wife

Production Credit Association

76/ 1192 Al of Sec. 15 and portions of Sectinos 22, 21, 28, 20, 17, 29, 19, 30 within township 12, Range 15 E containing 3040 acres.

5 Release of above mortgage

Production Credit Association

I. V. Lucero, Jr., et ux

54/ 1931 Same as above

6 1975 5.2

Warranty Deed

Crisostomo T. Vigil

State of New Mexico

227/ 2372

Sec. 15, T12N, R15E, NW1/4 NE1/4, SW 1/4NE1/4, and NW1/4SE1/4 and survey

7 1975 7.21

Warranty Deed

Crisostomo T. Vigil and Adelaide Ortiz Vigil

State of New Mexico

227/2752

Same as above

Tract Two

Date/ Page of Abstract

Document (Tract 2)

Grantor Grantee/ Official

Book/ Page

Legal Description

8-10 1958 7.16

Quitclaim Deed

Respicia G. Gallegos

Fortunato Gallegos and Juan G. Gallegos

190/ 173 T 12(N), R15(E) Sec. 22, SE 1/4 SE1/4 Sec. 23, S1/2, Sec. 26, N1/2, Sec 27 E1/2E1/2, Sec 35, NW 1/4

54

11-12 1967 3.16

Quitclaim Deed

Fortunato Gallegos and John G. Gallegos

State of New Mexico, to be used as a state park -otherwise reverts to grantor

226/ 518 N., the mesa, S. Pecos River, E., Pecos River, W. Juan Lucero y Aragon

Tract Three

Date/ Page of Abstract

Document (Tract 3)

Grantor Grantee/ Official

Book/ Page

Legal Description

13-14 1968 4.1

Patent USA New Mexico State Park and Recreation Commission

238/761 T 12N R15E Sec. 7, lots 7 & 10, Sec. 15 lots 2 & 3, Sec. 17, lots 3, 5 & 6, NW 1/4 SW1/4, Sec. 18 lots 1-5, W1/2, NE 1/4, E1/2 NW 1/4, NE 1/4 SW 1/4 N1/2 SE 1/4, Sec. 20, lot 1, NW 1/4 NE 1/4, Sec. 21 lots 1-4, n1/2 S1/2, Sec. 22 lot 1, NE 1/4, E1/2 NW 1/4SW1/4NW 1/4, N 1/2 S 1/2

15 Tax Deed San Miguel County Treasurer

State of New Mexico

228/ 2135

T 12, R 15 Sec. 17, 80 acres T 12, R 15 Sec. 18 609.62 acres

16 1976 4-1

Tax Deed San Miguel County Treasurer

State of New Mexico

228/ 2180

T 12 R 15 609.62 acres

17 Abstracter’s Note: 82-444 CV

18-25 1982 11.1

Cancellation of Certain Tax Deeds/ erroneous because of vague description

Property Tax Division

San Miguel County

Cancels tax deeds listed above at pp. 15 and 16 of abstract

55

26-30 2004 11.9

Limited Permissive Easement to obtain access to adjacent property

State of New Mexico

George I. Vigil, et ux, Katherine Brittin

240/ 7043

Survey description

Tract Four

Date/ Page of Abstract

Document (Tract 4)

Grantor Grantee/ Official

Book/ Page

Legal Description

31-33 1967 2.14

Warranty Deed

San Miguel del Bado Grant Trustees

State of New Mexico/ to be used as State Park, otherwise reverts to grantor

225/ 1602

Tract no. 2, Plat 119 May 14, 1904 Surveyor General’s Office/ Parcel 1, 1.9 acres, Parcel 2 – 2.4 acres, Parcel 3 – 7 acres

34 Taxes/ exempt

N/A N/A N/A T12N, R15E sec. 15 1651.23 acres

35 1970

Notice of Prior Right of Title/ Heirs claim ownership/ claim all deeds void

San Miguel del Vado Community Land Grant

N/A Misc. 225/ 3071

San Miguel del Bado Grant

36 Abstracter’s Note: UCC

37-38 Plats

Astracter’s Note: RE: Documents

Documents

Certificate

56

Appendix B – 1803 Settlers at San Miguel del BadoNo. Name No. of

varas

1. Anaya, Matias 130 2. Archibeque, José 65 3. Archuleta, Ramón 65 4. Arias, José de la Cruz 65 5. Armijo, Juan Armijo 65 6. Armijo, Juan Domingo 65 7. Armijo, Pablo 65 8. Baca, Diego Baca 65 9. Baca, Diego Manuel 49 10. Baca, Ramón Baca 65 11. Benavides, Juan 65 12. Brito, José Miguel 118 13. Bustamante, Ventura 65 14. Carache, José Miguel 150 15. Cheferi, Juan Antonio ? 16. Durán, Antonio 65 17. Esquibel, José 65 18. Fragoso, Xavier 65 19. Fuentes, Manuel 65 20. Garduño, Francisco 65 21. Garduño, José María 130 22. Guerrero, Cayetano 65 23. Guerrero, Cristóbal 65 24. Jaramillo, Felipe 65 25. Lopez, Geronimo 100 26. Lopez, Geronimo 65 27. Lovato, José Maria 65 28. Lucero, Antonio José 65 29. Lujan, Juan de Dios 65 30. Maese, Manuel 65

No. Name No. of varas

31. Maese, Pablo 65

32. Maestas, Manuel 65 33. Marquez, José Antonio 100 34. Marquez, José Pedro 65 35. Marquez, Lorenzo 50 36. Martín, Antonio 50 37. Martín, Eusebio 65 38. Martín, Francisco 65 39. Martín, José Cornelio 50 40. Martín, Juan Domingo 50 41. Martinez, Francisco 65 42. Morán, Balbareda 65 43. Ortega, Antonio 65 44. Ortega, Damiana 100 45. Padilla, Diego 50 46. Rael, José Antonio 65 47. Rivera, Antonio Maria 65 48. Rodríguez, Polonia 50 49. Sandoval, Andres 50 50. Sandoval, Felipe 65 51. Sandoval, Juan José 230 52. Sandoval, Matias 65 53. Sandoval, Pedro 50 54. Sandoval, Santiago 65 55. Troncoso, José Manuel 101 56. Trujillo, Domingo 65 57. Trujillo, Josefa 50 58. Urioste, Miguel 6

There are contained in this list

fifty-eight families. San Miguel del

Bado, March twelfth, one thousand

eight hundred and three.

Pedro Bautista Pino

By virtue of what has been done

by Pedro Pino, senior justice of second

vote of this capital town of Santa Fe,

concerning the distribution of lands

made in the name of his Majesty to the

residents of the new town of El Bado,

known as San Miguel, I declare the

aforesaid residents of El Bado, known

as San Miguel, I declare the aforesaid

residents of El Bado the lawful owners

thereof, approving and confirming the

57

possession given by said Senior Justice

Pedro Pino; and in order that it may so

appear in all time, I signed this at Santa

Fe, New Mexico, on the 30th day of

March, 1803.

(signed)

Fernando Chacón

58

Appendix C – 1803

Settlers at San José del Bado

No. Name No. of varas

1. Apodaca, Nicolas 100 2. Apodaca, Santiago 140 3. Aragon, Antonio Esteban 60 4. Aragon, Benito 100

5. Armijo, Maria Francisca 60 6. Candelaria, Toribio 75 7. Chaves, José Francisco 100 8. Duran, Juan José 100 9. Duran, Manuel 150 10. Duran, Miguel 100 11. Duran, Ygnacio 100 12. Duran, Ysidro 50 13. Estrada, Antonio 60 14. Flores, Antonio 75 15. Gallegos, José Antonio 60 16. Gallegos, Toribio 125 17. Gonzales, Diego 50 18. Gonzales, Diego Antonio 300 19. Gonzales, Juan 50 20. Gonzales, Miguel 178 21. Lopez, Esteban 50 22. Lucero, José Francisco 150 23. Lucero, José Manuel 300 24. Lucero, Juan Francisco 200

25. Maese, Miguel 117 26. Martín, Alexandro 100 27. Martin, Bernardo 100 28. Martín, Marcos 100 29. Martín, Pedro 200 30. Montaño, Juan 100 31. Montoya, José 150 32. Moya, Ysavel (Isabel) 50 33. Parte del Justicia 50 34. Roybal, Julian 150 35. Tapia, Juan Christos 126 36. Tapia, Salvador 200 37. Tenorio, José 150

No. Name No. of varas

38. Trujillo, José de Jesus 50 39. Trujillo, Manuel 300 40. Trujillo, Manuel 70 41. Ulibarri, Francisco 66 42. Ulibarri, Jose Antonio 200 43. Ulibarri, José Antonio 60 44. Ulibarri, José de Jesus 50 45. Ulibarri, Santiago 50 46. Valencia, Andres 200 47. Vigil, José 170

59

Appendix D – 1841 Census of San Miguel del Bado

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Appendix E – Genízaros and Non-Pecos Indians in San Miguel Baptismal Records*

Name Designation Date

Maria Dolores de Jesús Genízara del Vado 1799 May 3

Juana Gertrudis Genízara del Vado 1799 July 26

Maria Antonia Genízaro del Vado 1800 August 13

Juan Nepomuceno Genízaro del Vado 1800 August 15

Maria de la Luz Genízara 1804 July 24

Maria Marcelina Genízara 1804 October 15

Isabel Genízara 1804 December 24

Juana Paula Genízara 1805 March 3

Maria Bibiana Genízara 1808 March 18

Juan Eusebio Genízaro 1808 March 20

Maria Isabel Genízara 1808 August 6

Maria Josefa Genízara 1808 December 28

José Ignacio Genízaro 1809 September 30

José Miguel Comanche, 2 years old 1811 March 14

José Miguel Hijo legítima de indios 1813 May 17

Maria Dolores Comanche, 2 years old 1813 June 2

Aria, Maria de Jesus Indio Hijo legitimo de indio y mestiza

1814 August 27

Brito, Rosa India 1814 September 4

Maria Teodora Genízara 1816 May 30

Maria Rosa Genízara 1816 August 29

Maria de alta Gracia Genízara 1817 September 7

Roman, Bruno Genízaro 1817 October 8

José Vitoriano Genízaro 1817 October 21

Maria Pascuala Genízara 1817 October 25

Ortiz, Joséf de la Acension Genízaro 1819 May 20

José Gregorio Comanche 1820 May 8

Maria Dolores Zuni 1825 March 31

Maria Antonia Grandparents of the Comanche nation

1825 March 31

José Francisco Naturales de Cochiti 1826 September 17

72

Dolores India comprada and padre no conocido

1827 April 23

José Maria de la Asencion Hijo naturale de Maria Guadalupe, India, criada comprada de la nación Navajo and padre no conocido

1828 January 10

José de Jesus Salas Hijo naturale de Miga del Carmen, india compracda de Don Juan Pino and padre no conocido

1829 January 2

María Eusebia Parents from Cochiti 1829 March 15

Unnamed child, male, 11 years old Indian 1830 May 20

Flores, Maria Ignacia, about 6 years old

Ute, resident of La Cuesta, parents unknown

1834 January 19

Name not mentioned Maternal grandmother from an Indian tribe, resident of Puertecito

1835 May 10

Olguin, Maria del los Santos Father or paternal grandfather was from the Pima tribe

1835 November 11

Unnamed Father of child a Comanche, San Miguel

1836 April 3

Unnamed Both maternal and paternal grandparents are “tristes gentiles”

1836 April 13

Unamed Both paternal and maternal grandparents of tribe “A”

1838 May 3

Unnamed Paternal grandparents of “nación extrana or estranjera,” San José

1839 August 13

* Adapted from Appendix 3 – Genízaros and Non-Pecos Indians in Pecos Pueblo and San Miguel del Vado Baptismal Records, 1799-1840, in Frances Levine, Our Prayers Are in This Place: Pecos Pueblo Identity over the Centuries, 139-141.

73

Appendix F – Map

Oversized document - not included with electronic version of report

74