Mexican Land Grants: Race vs. Class in California and New Mexico

The hostilities of the Mexican-American War concluded in 1848 with the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  This event marked the beginning of the long process of integrating both the new territories of the Mexican Cession and their former Mexican citizens into the U.S. political and legal framework.  As part of the peace treaty, the U.S. agreed to honor property rights of Mexican citizens established prior to the war.  But, titles granted to individuals, families and communities were formed under a distinctly different legal system, were much larger than traditional U.S. land grants and had boundaries that were often not clearly identifiable.  These issues quickly placed Mexican land owners into direct confrontation with land hungry American settlers moving to the new territories.  The inevitable conflict between these two groups was disputed in both state and federal courts over the next several decades and continues into the 21^st Century[1].

Despite many similarities, the successful retention of property by land grant claimants in California was markedly better when compared to land owners in New Mexico.  76% of claims in California were successful and adjudicated quickly.  California confirmed 618 claims out of 813 brought into adjudication by 1856.[2] In stark contrast, only 22% of claims in New Mexico were successful.  New Mexico confirmed only 46 claims out of 205 brought into adjudication by 1886. They slowly, inefficiently and inconsistently continued to adjudicate hundreds more claims into the 20^th Century. [3]   This disparity is briefly observed and dismissed by both Malcolm Ebright and Phillip B. Gonzales who independently conclude that “the population increase due to the Gold Rush made land more valuable, and statehood gave California more leverage in Washington than was enjoyed by New Mexico.”[4]  While this certainly explains why claims issues were resolved quickly in California, it does not explain why the results were so favorable to many former Mexican citizens of California when compared to former Mexican citizens of New Mexico.  Howard Lamar argues that New Mexico was unique because instead of a “flood tide of American settlers overwhelming the system… the attempt to impose American land customs was made by a minority of Americans in a predominantly Spanish-Mexican population.”[5]  But, this fact would indicate that Mexican citizens had a larger advantage than their counterparts in California.  So the question remains, why were land grant claims more successful in California than they were in New Mexico?

When taking into account the actions and goals of a majority of California citizens regarding Mexican land grants, the positive outcome of grant holders is even more perplexing.  John Currey, a lawyer who represented many Mexican land grant claimants explained the political situation in 1850s California in his memoirs where he stated:

The squatters of the State constituted a formidable portion of the citizens of the State,whose powers as electors won over to their side of the controversy with the owners of Mexican land grants many ambitious politicians of low civic morality.  They elected candidates to the legislature and thus secured passage of laws supposed to be for their benefit and advantage, but which in the end proved to be of no advantage or benefit to them.  Our Supreme Court during the period of Squatter domination, by their decisions, maintained the law, and thus secured to owners of Spanish Land titles, their lands.[6]

The different interpretations of individual land grant claims that led to the large disparity in outcomes between California and New Mexico can only be explained by the highly influential cohesion of class in the territories of the Mexican Cession despite a highly racialized atmosphere.  In both New Mexico and California, claimants were made up of affluent and non-affluent Mexicans, affluent and non-affluent Native Americans, affluent Anglo-Americans who purchased grants from grantees before and after the war, and non-affluent Anglo-Americans moving to the territories after the war.  Both general statistical totals and individual cases show that class had an overwhelmingly significant role in the outcome of land grant cases.  California claims were more successful purely due to the fact that most of the claims were originated by affluent people who happened to be either Mexican or American.  New Mexico claims were less successful due to the fact that most of the claims were made by less affluent people who happened to be Mexican.

[1] Malcolm Ebright. Land Grants and Lawsuits in Northern New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), pp. 4-5.

[2] R.H. Allen. “The Influence of Spanish and Mexican Land Grants on California Agriculture.” Journal of Farm Economics (Oct 1932), p. 679.

[3] Phillip Gonzales. “Struggle for Survival: The Hispanic Land Grants of New Mexico, 1848-2001.” Agricultural History (Spring 2003), p. 303

[4] Ebright, p. 33

[5] Howard Lamar. “Land Poicy in the Spanish Southwest, 1846-1891: A Study in Contrasts.” The Journal of Economic History (Dec 1962), p. 498

[6] Judge John Currey Memoir. Transcribed by Wyman Riley (Nov 1958), p. 4.

Post 11: Modern Colonialism?

In his book, Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Century American West, Hal Rothman argues that “Tourism is the most colonial of colonial economies, not because of the sheer physical difficulty or the pain or humiliation intrinsic in its labor but because of its psychic and social impact on people and their places” (pp. 11-12).  He explains that Tourism is very similar to other colonial economies and the developmental steps of the tourist “colony” are the same.  In showing the colonialism inherent in “post-modern capitalism,” Rothman analyzes the development of tourism in diverse regions of the West such as the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, Sun Valley, Aspen and Las Vegas.  He also analyzes tourism from the perspective of activity such as visiting National Parks, Dude Ranches and skiing.

To start his book, Rothman begins with his personal experience while vacationing in Maui.  At first, I was confused as to why he started his book in Hawaii when it was about the West.  But, I soon grasped his reasoning.  I think that even the least perceptive individuals have had some thought or understanding of how tourism affects local culture and community when they vacation in an area where the local culture is clearly definable and distinct from the more familiar culture of the tourist.  I have personally experienced these thoughts and sympathized with the unique issues tourism had on locals while vacationing in various Caribbean destinations and Hawaii.  But, I have also been a tourist in many of the locations described in Rothman’s book, and these sympathies never arose in me like they did in other more “exotic” locations.

The realization that tourist destinations in the U.S. grapple with the same problems as tourist destinations in Hawaii is a significant one for me.  To be considered “the other” inside the boundaries of the U.S. is a difficult concept to grasp.  While reading about Aspen, Vail, Las Vegas and other locations, I began to think of the trans-national implications of this realization. If the people in these tourist destinations are colonists, who are the colonizers?  What imagined communities do the colonists and colonizers belong to?  How do they handle conflicting ideals within these multiple imagined communities?  Many questions come to mind regarding allegiances, and the interlocking web of so many imagined communities at the local, regional, national and international levels.  Rothman shows that the assumption of a single homogenous culture in the 20^th Century U.S. with similar goals and visions is a fallacy.  Local, regional, national and international perspective always needs to be taken into account to find accurate answers to historical questions.

I commented on Beth’s Blog:

Post #13: The “Traveling Public” and the Transformation of the West

Post #10: A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek

This week’s assigned reading was, A misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek.  This is a very different book from the others we have read this semester because it is not an analysis of any particular historic event or period.  Instead, this book detailed the controversy, debate and process of turning the area of the Sand Creek Massacre into a National Park Service Historic Site.  For this blog, I initially intended to compare the controversy of Sand Creek to the controversy over the interpretation of the Enola Gay by the Smithsonian in the 1990s.  Although some good could come out of comparing how disparate groups did/did not cooperate with one another in each event, I decided that I did not want to discuss these two events in the same forum.  Personally, I see radically different causes and justifications for each act and I want no part in linking these two topics in any way.

Instead, there are several questions I want to bring up about the book.  But, first I need to start with a personal anecdote.  While reading about the Museum of the American Indian founded by George Heye in New York City, I suddenly realized that I was one of the 50,000 people per year who visited this particular museum in the early 1980s when my Cub Scout troop from rural New York visited New York City.  While there, we toured the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum followed by a visit to the Museum of the American Indian.  Because I was so young, I didn’t quite grasp the irony of combining these two museums in a single visit.  My clearest memory of the museum is looking at life-size dioramas of Native American village life in the Museum of the American Indian.  If my memory is correct, Kelman accurately described the museum containing “dusty exhibits… [that] struck even unseasoned onlookers as anachronistic” (p. 244).  The difference between this museum of the 1980s and the NMAI in D.C., which I recently visited, is tremendous.

Returning to A Misplaced Massacre, I had several questions after completing the book. The first is the assertion by Laird Cometsevah that the Northern Arapaho were not true descendants of Sand Creek victims.  Kelman’s explanation of this topic left me confused.  He states at one point that Cometsevah only considered full-blooded Indians to be descendants and because of this he discounted the claim of the Northern Arapaho.  He also talked about the exhaustive genealogical research completed to identify descendants, but fails to say whether this supported the Northern Arapaho claim.  This along with a more detailed explanation of why Cometsevah considered Homer Flute “a fraud… [with] bad judgment concerning who qualified as a descendant” would have helped the reader understand the intra-tribal issues much more clearly (p. 160).  With the information provided in the book, Flute’s banishment from Sand Creek events seems arbitrary and the only logical reason seems to be to keep Cometsevah happy.   Of course, I assume Kelman was ambiguous purposefully, due to the sensitivity of these different groups trying to work together.

In addition to intra-tribal confusion and perceived preference to the views of the Cheyenne, I also felt that Kelman’s treatment of the Bowen family was unfair.  Kelman continuously implies that the Bowen’s had ulterior motives and were acting in an extreme manner.  But, it seems all they wanted was a little recognition for their efforts and discoveries.  Admittedly, they were not professional historians and they inappropriately removed artifacts from the ground. But, they figured out the truth of the village site years prior to the professionals and were a little resentful that they received no credit for this discovery.  I’m sure a professional historian whose discovery was credited to others would behave in a similar fashion.  They also wanted to defend the truth as they saw it.  The Bowen’s were most upset by the NPS inclusion of the Dawson area as part of the village because they saw this as absolutely incorrect and felt that the NPS was providing a false narrative to keep Cometsevah happy.  Again, this does not seem like an unreasonable position for them to take.

Other than these criticisms, I found the book fascinating and informative.  I was especially fascinated by the relationship that developed between the descendants of Silas Soule and the Native American descendants of the victims of Sand Creek.  I think this would be a great topic for further investigation regarding how it fits in with Arapaho and Cheyenne traditional culture.  I think that the book is also a great contribution to the discussion and debate regarding remembrance, memory and U.S. History.

I commented on Carol’s blog:

http://westwardoh.blogspot.com/2014/11/interpreting-and-using-history.html?showComment=1416818256337#c1821515581033182782

Post #9: Group Discussion Questions for The Comanche Empire

As the discussion leader for The Comanche Empire, I want to post some of the questions for this week’s discussion.  Please read these questions and come to class prepared to answer and debate the following:

– The Comanche Empire is a controversial book. Does the author’s non-American citizenship and Non-Native American affiliation help or hinder his perspective/research/argument?  Does it delegitimize him or give him a level of unique legitimacy?

– What would David Gutierrez think about Hamalainen’s nationality if he had decided to write about Mexican-American history?  Which generation of Mexican historians is Hamalainen most like?

– What constitutes an empire and do you consider 18^th and 19^th Century Comancheria an empire despite its lack of centralized government, disinterest in directly ruling outside entities and inability to spread outside a very specific ecological area?

– Is the power of Comancheria different than the power of other Native American Groups (ie: Iroquois Confederation prior to Revolutionary War)?

– Compare the Comanche motivations to raid Texas and Mexico with the mercantilist policies of England contracting privateers to raid Spanish ships in the Atlantic?  Was the perceived economic legitimacy of raiding to gain horses and slaves unique to the Comanche Empire or is this a long standing western technique?

– How are the concepts of empires and middle grounds related?  Are they appropriately used in this book?

– What is the difference between a middle ground and acculturation? Which is appropriate to use regarding the Comanche?

– How is violence related to a middle ground? Are the two mutually exclusive?  Is middle ground an appropriate term to use regarding the Comanche?

– Are the concepts of borderlands and middle grounds overused? Does the concept of borderlands and middle grounds lose meaning when it is applied to most influences and contacts between cultures? Are there times when acculturation is a more appropriate term?

– Richard White outlines the elements necessary for the construction of a middle ground as having a “rough balance of power, mutual need or a desire for what the other possesses, and an inability by either side to commandeer enough force to compel the other to change.”  Is the middle ground an appropriate term to describe the space between Comancheria and the colonies of New Mexico and Texas prior to the Mexican-American War when considering the immense power differential Hamalainen outlines between Comancheria and the two languishing Spanish colonies?

– How does The Comanche Empire refute more traditional national and hemispheric histories? Is this perspective overshadowing or misrepresenting any meaningful events, people, influences or motivations? (ie: demographics, industrial economy)

– How are race, class and gender used/not used in Hamalainen’s arguments?

– Does Hamalainen support or refute the assertions made in War of a Thousand Deserts?

– Does Hamalainen support or refute the assertions made in The Way of the West? Can you find the environmental argument in The Comanche Empire? (p. 329)

– In his September 2011 article in The Journal of American History, Pekka Hamalainen describes the future of borderlands history as lying in the areas of “spatial mobility, situational identity, local contingency and the ambiguities of power.” Give an example of each of these five areas in his book, Comanche Empire.

I commented on David’s Blog:

AmWest Post #10: Comanche… World-System, Federation, Empire?

Post #8: The Weak State vs. Strong State Theory

In his book, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, Richard White argues that 19^th Century Railroads were not “forged by the triumph of capital and the corporation” (White, p. 508).  Instead, railroads made Congressmen, bureaucrats and judges integral in the growth and competition between private railroad corporations. White explains how government often determined the success or failure of competing private corporations through decisions regarding land grants, tax policies, contracts for mail, movement of troops, etc.. (White, p. 512).  While Richard White certainly is pushing back against the traditional Gilded age narrative, he is not alone in questioning the historiography of individualism and a weak American government.

An interesting theory to compare with Railroaded is “The Myth of the Weak American State” which also questions the assumptions regarding government in the 19^th Century.  The main proponent of this theory is William J. Novak.  In the June 2008 issue of The American Historical Review (AHR), Novak wrote an essay by the same name.  In this essay he argues that, “The obvious present reality of American state power in the early twenty-first century is forcing a much-needed reconsideration of the history of the rise of a global leviathan” (Novak, p. 756).  He explains that this myth extended through the history of the economy with a focus on laissez-faire capitalism and that in actuality, the weak American state ended with the overturning of the Articles of Confederation because “the true objective of the American Constitution was not to limit but to create more power…” (Novak, p.756).  

The main argument of revisionists such as Novak is that the state power created in the U.S. does not fit into established categories and that liberalism doesn’t necessarily equate weakness. Novak believes that “the major problem plaguing historical investigations of the American state is the tendency to force American experience into a theoretical frame designed around the emergence of modern European nation-states more than a century ago” (Novak, p. 758). This framework defines state power in terms of unification, centralization, rationalization, organization, administration and bureaucratization.

Novak believes this traditional framework is incomplete and power needs to be defined in one of two ways. Either despotic power defined by the “organizational capacity of state elites to rule unchecked by other centers of power or by civil society” or infrastructural power (horizontal organization) defined by “the positive capacity of the state to penetrate civil society and implement policies throughout a given territory” (Novak, p. 759).  Novak explains that the American state was specifically organized to prevent despotic power through the separation of powers between the branches of the federal government and the division of power between federal and state governments.  But, “the scale and scope of its infrastructural power is and always has been extensive” (Novak, p. 760).  He feels that American state power is hidden because it is “widely distributed among an exceedingly complex welter of institutions, jurisdictions, branches, offices, programs, rules, customs, laws and regulations… and power is routinely delegated downward to relatively autonomous sub-units of government” (Novak, p. 762).  Novak concludes that through a pragmatic view of these areas of emphasis, historians will find a unique organization for achieving government objectives with greater legitimacy than the despotic governments of Europe and will dispel the myth of the invisible hand of the free market and replace it with the visible hand of the American state.

Both White and Novak would agree that the federal government had more power and influence in the development of the trans-continentals than the traditional narrative reveals. But, it seems that White and Novak would disagree somewhat over what type of power was wielded. While Novak generalizes the power of the federal government as infrastructural and diffused through many levels and organizations, White seems to describe a somewhat despotic government where elites dominated the infrastructural system in order to prevent antimonopolists, populists and other adversaries from successfully opposing them.

 

Bibliography

 

Novak, William J. “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” The American Historical Review (Vol 113, No. 3, 2008): pp. 752-772.

White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011.

 

I commented on Carol’s blog at: http://westwardoh.blogspot.com/2014/11/hiding-in-plain-sight-federal-support.html

 

Post #7: The Importance of Digital History

Reviewing the Montana Memory (http://www.montanamemory.org) website reminded me of just how important digital history is to the current and future historian.  The ability to easily conduct research, provide evidence for analysis of assertions as well as conduct digital preservation is exponentially aided by sites like this.  The ease of access between available information on the Montana Memory website and my current research of events in Northern California with only a fraction of digitized primary sources is striking.

On the Montana Memory site, a historian can easily find primary source documents for their topic of choice.  The primary sources are also diverse which helps the historian provide a clear picture of the many facets that go into the narrative produced.  For example, a historian looking for information on a particular topic could find multiple primary sources such as images, maps, private letters, government documents, oral histories, Indian law documents and newspaper articles about or relating to the same event or individual without ever leaving the website.  The search function on the website is also immensely helpful due to the ability to search broadly and narrowly within the database.

In direct contrast to Montana Memory, my current research regarding Mexican Land Grants in Northern California is much more difficult.  I was able to find ample secondary sources through several libraries and the Solano County History website, but primary sources were difficult to obtain.  Through a bit of work using different methods, I obtained maps, a single private document and a government publication.  Obtaining these three sources was much more difficult than going to a single website with a well-organized and thorough database.  I found the maps and government document summarizing land grant cases through searches on two separate databases which were limited but helpful.  But, most of my research was done over the phone and through the mail in correspondence with the Solano County Archives.  Through phone conversations with the archivist, I discovered that there are many more useful government documents that would help with my research, but to get copies of them, I would need to travel to California. I was only able to obtain an essential private document due to the generosity of the archivist who mailed me a copy of a short memoir.  I am sure that if Solano County had the funds and workforce to build a website such as Montana Memory, my research would be much more thorough and well-rounded than it is currently.

The development and stewardship of open source sites like Montana Memory are the future of academic history.  As sites like this proliferate, academic research will become more accessible to a larger and more diverse array of professional and non-professional historians.  This diversity will provide a much more abundant and well-rounded corpus of historical analysis in local, state, national and trans-national histories.

I commented on the following Blog:

<a href=”http://austin616.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/montana-memory-and-historians/#comments&#8221; comment </a>

Post #6: Mexican Land Grants in California and the Wild, Wild West of Northern California

Prior to the Mexican-American War, Spanish missions in the Mexican province of California were dissolved and the land was redistributed to Mexican citizens in the form of large land grants whose boundaries were often times “loosely defined.”[1]  As part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, the U.S. agreed to honor these land grants made by the Mexican government to private Mexican citizens.  The ownership of land was complicated by several factors.  First, the subdivision and sale of “ranchos” within land grants to speculators created further controversy over boundaries since neither the original boundaries nor subdivisions were formally surveyed.  Second, the transition of California from a Mexican territory to an American territory created the need for one system of law to interpret another system of law.  Third, American squatters began settling on land grants illegally and began making both legal and illegal efforts to secure the land they occupied by any means possible.  The complicated legal disputes and their escalation to sometimes violent conflict tested the loyalties of those involved in terms of the law, nationality and class.

As seen in the maps of the ranchos of Cotate, Petaluma and Los Guilicos below, many of the land grants were not properly surveyed. These official maps had little of the detail found on maps of areas properly surveyed.  The only details on these maps are basic directional information and very generalized geographic features to include hills and rivers.  None of these examples include details found on official surveys such as altitude, specific terrain features, location based on reference points, lat/long coordinates or conversion tables for determining distance.  One of the only trained surveyors in California was Jasper O’Farrell who surveyed 21 separate land grants.  His expertise was often sought to settle disputes brought about due to non-standard surveys.[2]

Official map of Rancho Los Guilicos                          

Official map of Rancho Cotate

Official map of Petaluma

According to the Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. June Term, 1853 to June Term 1858, Inclusive, these three ranchos and maps were used as part of the court case Mariano G. Vallejo, Claiming the Rancho Yulupa, vs. The United States. These four ranchos were used as references to define the boundaries of the contested property known as “Rancho Yulupa” and prove that it was a distinct property.  The summary of this case reveals that the initial claim of ownership by Vallejo was rejected by the 1851 Land Commission Board set up to adjudicate land grant disputes. Despite the fact that Vallejo proved that he legitimately acquired the land from Miguel Alvarado who received the original land grant from Governor Micheltorena in 1844, the 1851 board found that there was no evidence to show the land had been “improved” through construction of buildings or use for agriculture.  Because of this lack of use, Yulupa had never been “segregated from the public domain” and Vallejo had forfeited ownership of the property. Without some evidence to show the land had been used by someone in some way, Vallejo would not be granted ownership according to U.S. law.[3]

In his appeal to the U.S. District Court in 1856, Vallejo provided the needed evidence. First, he had Jasper O’Farrell testify on his behalf to assure the court that he had surveyed other ranchos in the area and Yulupa could “easily be segregated from the adjoining ranchos.” This was extremely important to the court in order to prevent future legal issues.  He also provided a witness who testified that the original grantee of the land grant built a house on the land and grazed cattle and horses in 1843 and 1844.  Although Vallejo had never used the land, its brief use by the previous owner 12 years earlier met the standard of “separation from the public domain” and Vallejo was granted ownership of the land.[4]

This relatively simple case that did not involve squatters or multiple subdivisions reveals the complexities of California property laws in the 1850s. Despite legitimate Mexican government documents, Vallejo could not take ownership of the land according to U.S. law unless he proved that the land had been “used” at some point prior to the end of the Mexican-American War.  This case also shows the vulnerability these court cases had to corruption.  There was no physical evidence in 1856 showing that Yulupa had ever been used and the word of one witness convinced the court that someone built a house and grazed cattle on the land over a decade earlier.  A powerful and rich individual such as Vallejo could certainly pay witnesses to help him navigate the idiosyncrasies of U.S. property law.  One could also imagine how grant holders and squatters could both produce witnesses who contradicted one another in other disputed cases.

In his 1907 memoir, John Moore Currey recalled “his good fortune to be employed by holders of Mexican land grants.” He described his fight against squatters on behalf of his Mexican clients as “stormy and in some degree dangerous.”  He described how squatters would pool monetary resources in order to support legal attacks against legitimate owners of land grants, threatened legitimate owners with violence, forcibly expelled grantees from their land and in some cases committed murder.  Currey also lamented the influence squatters had on politics when he recounted how “The Squatters of the State constituted a formidable portion of the citizens of the State whose power as electors won over to their side of the controversy … many ambitious politicians of low civic morality.  They elected their candidates to the Legislature, and thus secured passage of laws supposed to be for their benefit and advantage.”  Although the squatter voting block was powerful, Currey concluded that “Our Supreme Court during this period of Squatter domination, by their decisions, maintained the law, and thus secured to owners of Spanish land titles, their lands.”[5]

John Currey

These recollections show the complicated nature of society and culture in California. It seems that clear lines in the struggle over land did not conform to ethnic or national loyalties.  The mass of new immigrants from the United States were hungry for land and were willing to do almost anything to acquire it.  Many in this group were not rich, disregarded established law and manipulated the political system due to their relative size in order to take land from legitimate Mexican owners and American owners who purchased land from the original grantees.  They were opposed by a group of Mexicans and Americans who were more likely to be economically well off and formed alliances despite different ethnic and national loyalties.  Individuals such as Jasper O’Farrell and John Moore Currey seem to have, at least on the surface, devoted themselves to an honest interpretation of the law.  This moral righteousness often led them to fighting for the interests of a small but very rich and powerful group of Mexican, Native American and Anglo-American Californians which also coincidentally financially benefited both men significantly.

Notes:

[1] Solano County Historical Society Article Series on John Currey, Downloaded from http://solanohistory.org/289 on 7 Oct 2014.

[2] Maps provided by the Online Archive of California, Downloaded from on http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/hb8489p15p.     18 Oct 2014

[3] Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. June Term, 1853 to June Term 1858, Inclusive, pp. 174-175.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Recollections of Judge John Moore Currey

(** I commented on the armadillo Blog)

Post #5: Topic and Sources for Final Project

Whenever I have the opportunity, I try and combine academic assignments with my own personal genealogical research. Doing this provides extra motivation for research and more importantly, a feeling of personal connection to the more general history.  So, in the case of a final project for this class, I have decided to research pre-1848 Mexican and Spanish land grants and resulting legal disputes between Anglo-Americans and Mexicans in Northern California in the 1850s.  My personal familial connection to this topic is through Judge John Currey, who provided legal support for several Mexican citizens whose land grants were guaranteed in California as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  He is the nephew of my fourth Great Grandfather (Stephen Currey) and the cousin of my third Great Grandfather (James Vail Currey).

John Currey was born in Peekskill, NY in 1814 and began practicing law in New York State in 1842. When the California Gold Rush began in 1849, he traveled to San Francisco and “spent a short time in the gold mines, but found the work too hard for him to bear.”  After recovering from an illness, he opened a successful law office in San Francisco.  Currey’s personal success led to his nomination as a U.S. District Court Judge in California, but he was not confirmed due to his strong anti-slavery views.  Following this disappointment, John Currey moved to the town of Benicia and began offering legal services in disputes over the Spanish and Mexican land grants in the area.  His clients included General Mariano Vallejo, Indian Chief Solano and Jose Francisco Armijo.  His further success defending land grant claims led to his unsuccessful campaign for governor of California as an abolitionist Democrat in 1859.  John Currey eventually became a California Supreme Court Justice in 1863 and became Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court in 1866.  He spent the rest of his life in Northern California where he died in 1912 at the age of 98 (Solano County Historical Society Article Series on John Currey, Downloaded from http://solanohistory.org/289 on 7 Oct 2014).

I have not yet formulated an argument or been able to deeply analyze sources regarding the land grants in Northern California. I am currently still obtaining both primary and secondary sources.  The main primary source I have found is titled, Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. June Term, 1853 to June Term 1858, Inclusive. This source includes court decisions related to John Currey’s clients as well as many others.  I have also found an on-line archive of maps provided by the Online Archive of California (OAC).  This database has a collection of maps relating to private land grant cases in California from 1840-1892.  Using these two sources, I hope to link maps with specific court cases and show how the locations of towns, names of towns, boundaries of counties and area demographic populations were affected by these land grant cases.  I have also been in contact with the Solano County Historic Society and Solano County Archives who I hope will be able to provide me additional primary sources to include John Currey’s personal memoir which includes an account of the violence, politics and drama of the Land Grant issue.  I also hope to obtain more detailed legal documents than those found in the Reports of Land Cases.

I have been somewhat successful in my search for secondary sources on the topic but I need to continue gathering sources. Two historians who have worked extensively on this topic are Malcolm Ebright and William Morrow who published most of their work in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  Unfortunately, I found the majority of research regarding Mexican land grants deal with Texas and New Mexico.  But, these sources will provide pertinent information regarding the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as well as differences between American and Mexcian property law.  These secondary sources include Spanish and Mexican Land Grants and the Law by Malcolm Ebright ed. and Spanish and Mexican Land Grants (The Mexican American) by William Morrow and Herbert Brayer.

The most helpful secondary source I found so far was an article written by Geoffrey Mawn in The Southern California Quarterly. The 1974 article titled, “’Agrimensor y Arquitecto’: Jasper O’Farrell’s Surveying in Mexican California”  discusses how there was a false assumption by Americans in the 1850’s that none of the Mexican land grants had been properly surveyed prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  Mawn details the work of an Irish Immigrant named Jasper O’Farrell who accurately surveyed 21 Mexican land grants in Southern California.  The article is helpful to my research  because it details some inherent problems regarding identification of boundaries between grants that led to several disputes in the 1850’s.

Although I have not made it to the analysis stage of this project yet, I think this is a rich topic for several reasons. First, it seems that Northern California does not make up a large percentage of the historiography of Spanish and Mexican Land Grants.  Second, there is an abundance of primary sources (and a very helpful local historical society) to assist in developing a narrative and argument regarding the events surrounding land grants in Northern California.  Third, I have found a personal connection to this topic, which makes me feel a deeper connection to 19^th Century events in California and how they affected the Hispanic and Native American population of the area.

I commented on Beth’s Blog at:

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Post #5: The Way to the West

In his book, The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains, Elliott West combines four essays titled, “Land,” “Animals,” “Families,” and “Stories.” All four essays argue that to accurately understand Western History, individuals need to look beyond the oversimplified narrative of the expansion of Anglo-Americans.  Instead, they need to take three things into account.  First, western history is long and continuous and does not begin in the 1800s.  Second, the events of the 1800s “were made by a large cast of human groups that included white pioneers and diverse Indian groups.” Third, the environment played a key role in shaping the events taking place in the 19^th Century West  (p.11).

West’s first essay titled “Land,” gives new perspective to the familiar story of the movement of Anglos through the plains on their way to California and the immigration of Native Americans onto the plains. West states that instead of looking at these two events separately, they need to be seen as “simultaneous, interrelated events with wide-ranging consequences “ (p.19). To understand the role of the land in the West, the author describes how the plains need to be seen as a collection of “sub-regions” and “micro-environments.”  Although the area is vast, there are limited locations that are critical to survival.  He describes how over-grazing damaged grass for horses, cattle and buffalo and how overuse of the river lowlands by Native Americans in the winter and Anglo migrants in the summer made survival in the region very difficult due to a continuously degrading environment due to overuse.

In his second essay, West focuses on the animals and their impact on the land. He first focuses on the buffalo and provides a sound argument that that “The Great Hunt” by Anglos from the 1860s-1880s only exacerbated an already massive decline in buffalo on the plains.  He explains that prior to this period, Native Americans were hunting buffalo in numbers well-beyond what they needed for subsistence.  But, this over-hunting would not have made a large impact on the overall population.  Instead, West explains that the early part of the 19^th Century was abnormally wet for the plains.  This led to an abundance of resources for buffalo (as well as horses and cattle) whose numbers rose far beyond the historical average.  Once the weather pattern normalized mid-century, the population of buffalo began to decline due to a lack of resources and intense competition with other animals such as cattle and sheep moving through the area with Anglos and Native American horses.

West’s third essay focuses on family organization and the interaction of people in the multitude of groups sharing the plains in the 19^th Century.  In his previous essays, West showed how the land, animals and people were connected and influenced one another.  In his essay titled “Families,” he shows the interconnected nature of the many peoples within the plains region.  First, West focuses on the Anglo and Native American family structure.  He describes how the status of women in Native American tribes decreased when tribes such as the Cheyennes moved onto the plains and took up a pastoral as opposed to horticultural life style.  He then changes focus to a study of demographics.  He describes how the mathematics of fertility and disease made the Native American position of power in the region unsustainable due to a plummeting population in concert with unprecedented Anglo population growth.  But, West again shows that this is only a small part of the picture when he shifts focus to the topic of inter-racial families and how they “increasingly influenced the contours of central plains society” (p.119).  West describes the early decades of European infiltration of the plains as a “frontier of inclusion” which goes against the more common notion of stereotypes about  isolated mountain men.  The inclusive nature of this earlier period comes into direct conflict with the “frontier of exclusion” that gains prevalence with the “rapid invasion of Euro-American families at mid-century” (p. 121). West does an especially good job of revealing the complexity of familial ties in his summary of the Sand Creek Massacre.  His analysis shows that the assumption of clear and distinct ethnic lines is far from the truth.

In his final essay, West focuses on why the West is important to Americans. He describes how many of the stories of the West come from outsiders trying to project what they need the West to be.  He breaks the perception of the West into two categories.  The first sees the West as a “Space” where there is no history and is an “empty room to escape old limits, to do anything, to lose the past, to dance with wolves” (p. 161).  This spatial perception was embraced by individuals who either wanted to change the emptiness into the place they left (except to do it right this time) or by individuals who wanted to be “somehow strengthened and cleansed and liberated from both past and future” (p. 137).  West argues that many individuals want both simultaneously. The second group sees the West as a “Place… [which is] old and tangled in lessons” (p. 161).  This view can only come from those living inside the West.  He describes how this perception was common for Native Americans of the 19^th Century and is also increasingly common for Anglos living in the west in the 20^th Century with familial ties “deeper than that of the Cheyennes when they were ordered onto reservations” (p. 163).

In all of his essays, West tries to show the complicated, important and interconnected history of the West. Multiple perspectives and groups need to be taken into account when considering the West’s history and modern day issues.  His essays warn people not to become overly influenced  by the mythic narrative of the West.  Instead, it is crucial to understand that the West is full of many groups “bound to the place by experience, memory, and familial identity” (p. 163).  We can only truly understand the West by understanding these connections and the complicated and interconnected web of the environment, animals and people.

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Post #4: Combating the Myth of the West

Furthering the historiography of the “New Western History,” both Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp, by Steven Lubet and Roaring Camp: The Social World of The California Gold Rush, by Susan Lee Johnson are excellent examples of how the myth of Western History and the reality of Western History are very different.  Because both books discuss well known events, they are excellent examples of how famous events exist “in that tension between memory and history” (Johnson, p. 26).  Both the shootout at the O.K. Corral and the California Gold Rush have specific interpretations and influence in popular culture.  Both authors bring out a clear account of what really happened as well as what both events have come to mean in contemporary America.

Steven Lubet looks to set the record straight regarding the mythology of the western gunfighter. He describes the myth of the gunfighter as “synonymous with the frontier itself” through its emphasis on individuality where “the larger community will remain more or less uninvolved” (Lubet, p. 1).  Lubet brings attention to the little known legal proceedings and community turmoil that came after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  Relying on his experience as a lawyer, Lubet concludes that the mythology of the “Wild West” is not correct.  Instead, he shows that territories such as Arizona had an established and competent legal structure as well as a population committed to stability and rule of law.  Unlike some contemporary Americans, the people living in western territories were not worshippers of any outlaw or marshal who threatened community stability for the sake of individualism.

Much like Lubet and the O.K. Corral, Johnson provides a sound analysis of the differences between the myth and reality of the California Gold Rush. Johnson criticizes the mythic narrative of the Gold Rush which she believes has narrowed to a story almost exclusively about Anglo-Americans making “fast fortunes” (Johnson, p. 26).  Instead of “stories of progress and opportunity that are linked to financial gain and identified with people racialized as white and gendered as male,” she reveals the Gold Rush as a perfect example of the conflict surrounding ethnicity, culture, class and gender in the American West (Johnson, p. 316).  She adds a complexity to the story often omitted by other historians by overlaying conflicts between these groups with a close examination of the boom and bust cycle of the Gold Rush and multiple avenues for profit related to the Gold Rush.

Both works are great examples of how a well-studied historical event can bring about new conclusions and interpretations if looked at from multiple perspectives by historians who are aware that there can be a vast difference between memory and history. Because of this, both Lubet and Johnson contribute to the growing corpus of New Western Historians who give agency and voice to forgotten groups and also challenge the established historical narratives of the West that came to prominence in the 20^th Century.

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