fact, the legislature ratified the mining
camp codes and added a foreign miners’
license tax, which imposed a fee of $20 a
month on miners who were not citizens
of the United States. In theory,
Californios were exempt from this fee; in
practice, they were bullied into paying it
or leaving, just like all the other
“Mexicans.” By about 1854, when the
gold rush had begun winding down, the
new U.S. state of California had been
utterly transformed, and the Californios
who remained were, more than ever,
strangers in a land that had once been
home.Land Ownership
and the LawThe Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo prom-
ised that the United States would honor
Spanish and Mexican land grants in the
former Mexican lands. In reality, that
promise was often broken. Through
means both legal and violent, most
Mexican Americans were effectively
stripped of their lands.
Part of the problem was that some
Mexican land claims were poorly docu-
mented, and often what constituted a
legal claim in Mexican law often was not
viewed the same way in U.S. courts. Even
though one federal report in California in
1850 said that the Mexican grants were
mostly “perfect titles” —or complete and
indisputably legal under Mexican law—
Spanish and Mexican land grants were
frequently vast, and even when there were
titles, the boundaries were often sketchy.
The Pomona Valley of California, for
example, was described as “the place
being vacant which is known by the name
of [Rancho] San José, distant some six
leagues, more or less, from the Ex-
Mission of San Gabriel, a map of which
place we will lay before your Excellency
as soon as possible.” “More or less” and
“as soon as possible” were good enough
for officials in Mexico City when deter-
mining land rules for a frontier where
land was abundant and settlement sparse.
The same could not be said for American
law courts trying to serve a growing
horde of land-hungry citizens. Most of
the claims in California did not even have
the benefit of antiquity, since a majority
were dated within the five years before
the American takeover.Anglo-American settlers did not wait
for the courts to resolve the matter. They
simply squatted on the disputed land and
waited for it to be decreed public, as they
assumed it would. In many cases the
courts did rule this way, throwing out
titles as imperfect or fraudulent, in accor-
dance with the California Land
Settlement Act of 1851. This act required
all Spanish or Mexican land claims to be
submitted to a special land commission
within two years; claimants’ failure to do
so would result in forfeiture. The
California Supreme Court, in Minturn v.
Brower(1864), later ruled that a perfect
land grant was not subject to forfeiture
under this provision, but the United
States Supreme Court reversed that deci-
sion and upheld the validity of the 1851
law in Botiller v. Dominguez(1889).
Out of 813 Spanish and Mexican
claims made to the land commission, 604
were upheld and 209 rejected. But
because of the costs of litigation, many
Mexican Americans were compelled to
sell their land to pay debts. A lengthy
appeals process, open to both the
claimant and the United States, allowed
the cases to drag on for an average of 17
years; consequently, payments to lawyers
often bankrupted the claimant. If a
claimant was short on cash, he might
have to promise the disputed land to the
lawyer, who ended up being the benefici-
ary when the title was upheld. Even if a
Mexican American prevailed in court and
was able to keep his land, he might find
himself in a battle with squatters, who
sometimes resorted to rioting to keep
what they considered their homes.
In New Mexico, many Mexican
Americans lost their land through the
slowness of the Office of Surveyor
General. Established in 1854 to settle
land disputes over Mexican and Spanish
grants, it did not make its last decisions
until five decades later, by which time
most Nuevomexicanos had lost their land
in one way or another, often in payments
to lawyers. About 80 percent of Spanish
and Mexican land grants in New Mexico
ultimately passed to Anglo-American
lawyers and settlers. Most vulnerable was
community land, territory held in com-
mon for grazing by a whole community’s
livestock. This was easily confiscated,
because the U.S. legal system did not
recognize the Spanish and Mexican con-
cept of community ownership.100 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
SPANISH
COWBOYS
While raising cattle in New Mexico
and Texas, the Spanish introduced
many of the techniques and customs
that English-speaking cowboys would
later adopt. Among the elements
introduced by Hispanic vaqueros, or
cowherds, in what is now the
American Southwest were the wide-
brimmed hat to shield the face from
the sun; the western saddle; chaps
(from the Spanish chaparerras), or
leather trousers, to protect the legs
from high brush; the lasso (from the
Spanish lazo,or knot); and the practice
of using a lasso to round up and rope
cattle. So deep is the American cow-
boy’s debt to the Spanish that the
quintessential English slang term for
the cowboy, “buckaroo,” is a corrup-
tion of vaquero.