From the end of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, Spain and México issued grants of land to individuals, groups, towns, pueblos, and other settlements in order to populate present-day New Mexico. Academic treatises and popular literature typically divide these grants into two types: “individual grants” and “community land grants.” Grants awarded to towns and other settlements were modeled on similar communities created in Spain, where the king granted lands adjacent to small towns for common use by all town residents. Under Spanish and Mexican law in the territory of New Mexico, officials made grants to towns and other communities. These grants usually contained sufficient land and water resources to facilitate settlement and the establishment of communities. Both land and water were essential ingredients for sustaining agricultural communities in New Mexico. Such grants were in keeping with Spanish laws, including the 1680 Recopilación de las Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, which was a compendium of laws governing settlements in the New World. However, local laws, practices, and customs often dictated how grants were made and confirmed. After achieving independence from Spain in 1821, México continued to adhere to Spanish law by extending additional land grants to individuals to encourage settlements in unoccupied areas and to stave off U.S. encroachment on Mexican territory. The Mexican-American War began in 1846 and formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Under the treaty, México ceded most of what is presently the American Southwest, including the present day states of New Mexico and California, to the United States for $15 million. Figure. 1 shows the territory ceded by México under the treaty. While the treaty generally provided protection for property in the ceded area, Article X expressly addressed land grant protection. However, U.S. President James Polk objected to the provision, fearing that a revival of land grant claims had the potential to jeopardize the grants already settled in Texas. The Senate Resolution of advice and consent to ratification contained several amendments to the treaty, including one that struck out Article X. Subsequently, in 1848, the United States and México signed the Protocol of Querétaro, which explained certain aspects of the treaty. In Article 2 of the Protocol, the United States indicated in its interpretation that the exclusion of Article X in no way meant that it planned to annul the land grants. The Protocol specified the United States’ position that land grant titles would be protected under the treaty and that grantees could have their ownership of land acknowledged before American tribunals. In the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, the United States purchased additional land from México for $15 million, including the southwest corner of the present State of New Mexico. The Gadsden Purchase incorporated by reference the property protection provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. To implement the treaties, the Congress enacted legislation in 1854 to establish the Office of Surveyor General of New Mexico. The Surveyor General was charged with examining documents and verifying the ownership of land grants. The U.S. government required individuals or towns and other communities to prove ownership or property interests in grant lands. After reviewing the land grant documentation, the Surveyor General was to recommend to the Secretary of the Interior whether a grant should be rejected or confirmed. If the Secretary of the Interior agreed with a recommendation to confirm, he, in turn, would recommend that Congress approve the grant. Upon congressional approval of the grant, the U.S. government usually issued a patent, which conveyed the property’s title to the owner. The Congress reviewed and confirmed 64 of the surveyor generals’ recommendations, but in the late 1870s, the congressional review of recommendations ceased. In 1891, the Congress established the Court of Private Land Claims to adjudicate the outstanding claims that the surveyors general had reviewed but the Congress had not yet approved , and other claims presented to the court. In United States v. Sandoval et al., 167 U.S. 278 (1897), a case on appeal from the Court of Private Land Claims, the Supreme Court held that México, not the local community, held title to all common lands in community land grants issued before 1848. Consequently, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, México had transferred ownership of these communal lands to the United States. Although the Sandoval decision did not overturn previous court confirmations of land grants, it did affect all subsequent claims adjudicated by the Court of Private Land Claims. In 1904, the court finished its work, approving claims and land surveys that represented approximately 6 percent of the acreage claimed. The Congress and the Court of Private Land Claims confirmed 155 grants of the total of 295 grants we identified, and patents were issued for 142 of these grants.Appendix I lists all the land grants that we identified, the years of grant confirmation and patent issuance, and the acreage patented. The completion of the Court of Private Land Claims’ work did not quell the controversy surrounding the loss of the common lands. Many persons, including grantee heirs, scholars, and legal experts, still claim that the United States failed to uphold the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to protect the property of Mexican-Americans and their descendants. They remain critical of the federal courts’ treatment of the common lands and the failure to approve more of the acreage claimed. They also assert that common lands were lost by other means, and that this loss deprived many small Mexican-American farmers of their livelihoods. Land grant documents contain no direct reference to “community land grants” nor do Spanish and Mexican laws define or use this term. Scholars, land grant literature, and popular terminology use the phrase “community land grants” to denote land grants that set aside common lands for the use of the entire community. We adopted this broad definition for the purposes of this report. To determine the meaning of the term “community land grants,” we first reviewed land grant documents, and found that grant documents do not describe grants as community land grants. We also did not find applicable Spanish and Mexican laws that defined or used the term. However, as a result of our review of land grant literature, court decisions, and interviews with scholars, legal experts, and grantee heirs, we found that the term is frequently used to refer to grants that set aside some land for general communal use (ejidos) or for specific purposes, including hunting (caza), pasture (pastos), wood gathering (leña), or watering (abrevederos). Our definition coincides with the way in which scholars, the land grant literature, and grant heirs use the term. Under Spanish and Mexican law, common lands set aside as part of an original grant could not be sold. Typically, in addition to use of common lands, settlers on a community land grant would receive individual parcels of land designated for dwelling (solar de casa) and growing food (suerte). Unlike the common lands, these individual parcels could be sold or otherwise disposed of by a settler who fulfilled the requirements of the grant, such as occupying the individual parcel for a continuous period. For example, the documentation for the Antón Chico grant, issued by México in 1822, contains evidence that common lands were part of the original grant. The granting document provided for individual private allotments and common lands. Congress confirmed the Antón Chico grant in 1860 and the grant was patented in 1883. Using our definition, we identified three types of community land grants, totaling 154 grants, or approximately 52 percent of the 295 land grants in New Mexico. In 78 of the community land grants, the common lands formed part of the grant according to the grant documentation. Scholars, grant heirs, and others have found an additional 53 grants that they believe contain communal lands; and we located 23 grants of communal lands to the indigenous pueblo cultures in New Mexico. The first type of community land grant we identified is a grant in which common lands formed part of the original grant. From our review of grant documents, Spanish and Mexican law, New Mexican law, and grant literature, as well as interviews with grant heirs, scholars, legal experts, and others, common lands were part of the original grant in the following three instances: The grant document itself declares that part of the land be made available for communal use, using such terms as “common lands” or “pasturage and water in common.” We identified 29 grants that contain this or similar language. For example, the 1815 Spanish Los Trigos grant, which was issued to three individuals, made pasture available to the settlers of the grant. Also, an 1846 Mexican land grant provided land to John Scolly and several associates to set aside wood and common pasture for the use of all the settlers. Current New Mexico law treats grants that make specific reference to common lands as community land grants. The grant was made for the purpose of establishing a town or other new settlement. Spanish laws and customs concerning territories in the New World provided that new settlements, cities, and towns would include common lands. Although México obtained its independence in 1821, Mexican land grants continued to follow Spanish laws and customs. We identified 13 grants as Spanish and Mexican grants to towns. For example, in 1768, Spain issued the Ojo de San José grant to six individuals for the purpose of establishing a town. Similarly, México issued the Doña Ana Bend Colony grant in 1840 to 116 petitioners to establish a town, which would then set aside an area for the town commons. New Mexico law currently considers grants to towns, communities, colonies, pueblos, or individuals for the purpose of establishing a town to be community land grants. The grant was issued to 10 or more settlers. Spanish law governing settlement in the New World stated that 10 or more married persons could obtain a land grant, if they agreed to form a settlement indicating that a grant would contain common lands. For example, the 1807 Spanish Juan Bautista Valdez grant was made to 10 settlers and the 1842 Mexican Angostura del Pecos grant to 54 settlers. We identified 36 grants of this type. Table 1 lists 78 grants in which common lands were part of the original grant. The second type of community land grant we identified is a grant that a person or persons stated included common lands. Our review of the papers filed with each grant claim to the surveyors general and the Court of Private Land Claims, and those of a legal scholar, disclosed that, in some instances, the only mention of common lands was found in a claimant’s petition or other documents. In these cases, the files did not contain any grant documents showing that the common lands were part of the original grant. We also identified grants in this category as community land grants after interviewing grantee heirs, scholars, and others knowledgeable about a grant’s history, and reviewing other information provided to us. Again, no existing grant document supported the claim, although some claimants stated that such documentation had been lost or destroyed. Furthermore, some scholars raised the issue that, in some individual grants, common lands had been set aside by the grantees, their heirs, or other grant settlers to encourage additional settlement after the original grant was made. In these instances, there would not be any supporting official documentation because the grant predated the setting aside of common lands. For example, one scholar believed that the Sangre de Cristo grant, which México originally issued as an individual grant in 1843, later evolved into a community land grant when an heir of the original grantee provided land to new settlers and set aside additional land for communal use. Table 2 lists 53 grants identified by grantee heirs, scholars, or others as having common lands but lacking grant documentation. The third type of community land grants we identified encompasses grants extended by Spain to the indigenous pueblo cultures in New Mexico to protect communal lands that they had used and held for centuries before the Spanish settlers arrived. For the most part, the pueblo settlements these colonists encountered in the sixteenth century were permanent, communally owned villages, where inhabitants engaged in agricultural pursuits. Spain declared itself guardian of these communities, respected their rights to land adjacent to the pueblos, and protected pueblo lands from encroachment by Spanish colonists. Spain made grants to these communities in recognition of their communal ownership of village lands. México continued to recognize pueblo ownership of land and considered pueblo residents to be Mexican citizens. With the establishment of the Office of Surveyor General in 1854, the Congress required the Surveyor General to investigate and report on pueblo claims. The Congress subsequently confirmed 22 Spanish grants to pueblos on the recommendation of the Surveyor General. The Court of Private Land Claims confirmed one pueblo grant. Table 3 lists the pueblo grants. We issued an Exposure Draft in January 2001 to seek public comments on our definition and identification of community land grants and to gather information about community land grants not readily available to us in public documents. In New Mexico, we distributed the English and Spanish versions of the Exposure Draft widely to community groups, scholars, land grant heirs, and Indian pueblos and made copies available through local governmental offices and libraries in 18 counties, as well as U.S. Forest Service ranger stations located throughout the state. We sent announcements to English and Spanish newspapers and radio and television stations in the state. Copies of the Exposure Draft were also available through the offices of the Senators Bingaman and Domenici and Congressman Udall of New Mexico. In addition, the public could access and comment on the report on the GAO web page. We also received comments and documentation by fax, regular mail and e-mail. In March 2001, we held open forums at five New Mexico locations, including Santa Fé and Albuquerque, to gather comments. We received over 200 oral and written comments to the Exposure Draft during the comment period, some of which included information not readily available from the research sources we used. The comment period, which was originally scheduled to end on April 2, was extended until May 2. Most of the comments did not address our definition of community land grants and the three types of community land grants that we identified. A significant number of the comments concerned the history of particular community land grants. This information will be reviewed in preparation of our next report. Most of the comments concerning our definition and lists of community land grants were in agreement with our analysis. A few commentators disagreed with the classification of particular land grants. Based on information received, the Elena Gallegos grant, which was identified as a community land grant in table 1, was redesignated as an individual grant under the name Diego Montoya. During our New Mexico visit in March, heirs identified two other grants, the Francisco Montes Vigil and the Cristóbal de la Serna grants, as being community land grants. We added these two grants to table 2, which contains a list of grants that heirs and others have identified as containing common lands. We also added the Cañada de Santa Clara to the list of Indian Pueblo grants in table 3, based upon documentation provided during the comment period. See Appendix IV for a more extensive discussion on the comments received. We placed maps after each table that graphically depict the number of grants principally in each county and added the classification as to type of grant to Appendix I to help identify grants. Some grants have more than one name. To facilitate the identification of grants with multiple identifiers, we added Appendix II, which alphabetizes these alternative identifiers and links each to the appropriate grant in Appendix I. As agreed with your offices, this report will be issued in English and Spanish versions. We plan to send copies to the New Mexico congressional delegation. We will distribute copies in both languages in New Mexico and provide copies upon request. GAO contacts and key contributors to this report are listed in Appendix VI. If you have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512- 7648. Key contributors to this report are listed in Appendix VI. Date confirmed or other actionRejected The Court of Private Land Claims recognized the grant as valid and ordered it surveyed and partitioned. However, problems arose when attempts were made to identify the common boundary with the Santo Tomás Yturbide Grant. A patent was not issued because claimants argued the Confirmation Act of 1860 conveyed the title; a final survey yielded 14,808.075 acres. The grant was located within the confirmed Domingo Fernández grant, so no action was taken on the claim. Although a petition was filed in 1872, no further action was taken by the claimants to pursue recognition of the claim. Therefore, there is no formal decision on the matter. Based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found, among other things, that the grant had not been given in accordance with Mexican law. The grant apparently lies within the Pueblo of Nambé grant and has not been patented. No actual claim was presented to the Court, and therefore no actual confirmation was made by either the Congress or the Court. When the La Majada grant was confirmed, this was apparently sufficient for the Town of Peña Blanca residents. In 1931, the New Mexico Federal District Court confirmed acreage not previously part of the Pueblo of Cochití lands. The Town of Las Vegas grant was apparently in conflict with the Baca grant. The Congress recognized the conflict and allowed the Baca heirs to obtain equivalent acreage elsewhere in the Territory. Of five tracts selected two were in New Mexico, known as Float # 1 (Sandoval County) and Float # 2 (San Miguel County), each containing 99,289.39 acres. The claimants probably obtained title through the Act of March 3, 1891. This act allowed each of those settlers, who had lived on the land for more than 20 years before an official survey of a township was conducted, to a patent of up to 160 acres of land. There was no documentation of the grant, and no claim was submitted to the Court of Private Land Claims. No specific information available. The purported grant document was filed with the Office of the Surveyor General, but was later proven to be fraudulent. As the result of the establishment of a reservation in 1877, as revised in 1883, 1885 and 1917, the pueblo’s claim was not presented to the Court of Private Land Claims. The only grant actually given to Santa Fé residents was in 1715 for some common pastureland and water. The Congress ultimately granted to the City of Santa Fé all lands not already used by the United States or confirmed private land grants. The confirmed amount is based on the Surveyor General’s preliminary survey of 4 square leagues. The U.S. Supreme Court found the Court of Private Land Claims to be in error and directed a reversal. The grant was rejected in 1900. Grant Alexander Valle Juan Bautista Valdez Juan G. Pinard Piedra Lumbre Piedra Lumbre Sevilleta Cañón de Chama Francisco de Anaya Almazán Francisco de Anaya Almazán Sitio de Juana López Albuquerque (Town of) Socorro (Town of) Juan José Lovato San Antoñito San Cristóbal Cubero (Town of ) Pueblo of Santo Domingo & San Felipe Estancia Lo De Padilla Diego de Belasco Ojo De Borrego Diego Montoya Badito Bracito Rancho de Coyote Diego Montoya Ranchito Rancho El Rito Rancho El Rito Lo De Padilla Ortiz Mine Embudo Juan Bautista Valdez Santiago Bone Domingo Fernández San Cristóbal Francisco de Anaya Almazán Caja del Río Bernalillo (Town of) Bernalillo (Town of) Arroyo Hondo Don Fernando De Taos Galisteo (Town of) Grant Bartolomé Trujillo Baltazar Baca Ojo de San Jose San Marcos Pueblo Cañón De Carnue San Miguel del Vado San Joaquín del Nacimiento Juan José Sánchez Francisco X. Romero Santa Cruz Santa Rita del Cobre Joaquín (de) Mestas Juan Manuel Córdova San Mateo Spring(s) Bosque Grande Maragua Las Trampas (Town of) Concerned about whether the United States fulfilled its obligations under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with regard to community land grants made by Spain and México in what is now the State of New Mexico, Senators Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici asked us to study numerous issues regarding the treaty and its implementation. Subsequently, New Mexico Congressman Tom Udall joined in the request. We plan to answer their questions in two reports. This first report defines the concept of community land grants, identifies three types of grants that meet this definition, and lists the grants that we identified in each category. The second report will review the United States legal obligations under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to protect community land grants and the procedures established to implement these obligations. In accordance with the request, we limited our review to community land grants made by Spain or México between the end of the 17th century and 1846 that were wholly or partially situated within the present State of New Mexico and subject to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. We also included grants in what is now New Mexico that were made until the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, since they too were made subject to the treaty. We analyzed land grants in New Mexico for which we could find evidence to identify community land grants. To respond to this request, we collected and reviewed documents from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C.; the National Archives and Records Administration in Denver; the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives; archives at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service; various libraries, including the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico Zimmerman Library and the Special Collections at the University of New Mexico Law School Library; the U.S. National Park Service’s Spanish Colonial Research Center at the University of New Mexico; scholars, land grant heirs, lawyers representing land grant interests; and other individuals or entities associated with land grants in New Mexico. We researched, collected, and reviewed published and unpublished material on land grants, including books, articles, monographs, and unpublished theses. Our search for relevant materials included a search for articles published in México that address the issues in this report. A list of materials that we consulted can be found in Appendix V. During the course of our review, we interviewed dozens of land grant heirs in New Mexico and contacted the Governors of Indian pueblos; historians, researchers, and other academicians studying land grant issues, including scholars in México; lawyers representing the interests of land grant heirs and an Indian pueblo; officials at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service; local government officials with the State of New Mexico, including the Office of the Attorney General, and with several counties in which land grants exist; and various representatives of other entities or interests associated with land grant issues in New Mexico to gain a better understanding of community land grant issues. To determine how community land grants are defined, we reviewed numerous documents that addressed land grants in New Mexico, including English translations of original grant documents; English translations of Spanish and Mexican laws; federal, state, and territorial court decisions on land grants; scholarly articles describing customs associated with land grants; and various academic materials analyzing land grants. In interviews with academicians and other experts on land grants, lawyers dealing with land grant issues or cases, land grant heirs, and other observers of land grants (e.g., federal employees, librarians, graduate students at the University of New Mexico Law School Library and University of New Mexico Library), we asked for their views on defining community land grants. We also asked several experts to comment on our preliminary definition of community land grants. We received over 200 oral and written comments and documentary evidence related to Spanish and Mexican land grants during the comment period from January 24 to May 2, 2001. The scope and nature of these comments and our responses can be found in Appendix IV, “Public Comments.” To identify the universe of Spanish and Mexican land grants in New Mexico, we used a variety of historical data. We started with an unpublished Master of Laws (LLM.) thesis by J. J. Bowden at Southern Methodist University Law School, entitled Private Land Claims in the Southwest, to develop our initial list of Spanish and Mexican grants. This six-volume thesis describes 280 grants, made in what is today the State of New Mexico, in great detail and includes English translations of parts of the granting documents. The work also identifies many of the different names for the grants. We next examined documents on file at various archives from the Office of the Surveyor General and Court of Private Land Claims -the two entities responsible for carrying out the legal processes set in place in the nineteenth century to implement the treaty. Where possible, we reviewed English translations of the original granting documents. We also used other sources of information, including those provided by land grant heirs. If discrepancies were found among various documents, we deferred to the archived files of the Office of the Surveyor General or Court of Private Land Claims. Our research identified 295 Spanish and Mexican land grants made by Spain and Mexico in the area, which now comprises the State of New Mexico. To distill community land grants from this universe of land grants, we applied our definition, searching for clues in the granting documents and other sources. For example, some grants contained the following language and would be considered community land grants: “pasturage and watering places shall be in common” (Caja del Río), the “pastures and woodlands in common” (Barranca), “the public square is also common among all” (Cañón de Carnue), and “set aside for the commons of the town” (Doña Ana Bend Colony). Criteria for inclusion as a community land grant included not just language denoting common lands but language indicating that a grant had been made to a town or settlement, since under Spanish and Mexican law and custom, grants to towns included common lands. We also included grants made to 10 or more people, since Spanish law states in the Recopilación de las Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias that a grant could be made to 10 or more married persons to form a settlement, indicating that the grant was a community grant. Historical treatises and interviews with scholars and grant heirs alerted us to the possibility of additional community grants. Although grants may have originally been issued to individuals, sometimes land was subsequently set aside for common use and thus these grants should be considered community land grants. Such evolutions are not captured in grant documents. Other grant heirs and advocates assert that certain grants are community land grants, but we do not know the basis for the assertion. We included grants identified by heirs and others as being community land grants in a second list. We make no judgment as to the efficacy of these assertions but list them for the Congress’ consideration. We also found that Spain issued land grants to indigenous pueblo cultures already resident in the colonial territories. According to scholars, these cultures held the lands communally and did not have a concept of private ownership of real property. We list these grants separately because the lands in common existed before Spanish settlement and because of the unique relationship between Native Americans and the Spanish, Mexican and United States governments. We used surveyor general documents and public laws to ascertain the number of grants made to Native Americans. To list each land grant by county, we compared county data in several federal, state and independent databases listing New Mexican land grants to determine the level of reliability of the databases. We also recognized that the county boundaries have changed markedly since 1850. We found significant discrepancies among the various databases because of, in part, conflicting interpretations of which county contained the largest area when a grant straddled county lines. This is particularly problematic in unsurveyed grants. In an effort to maintain consistency in listing counties and to minimize errors, we used official federal, state and county government maps and J. J. Bowden’s thesis. The maps relied on actual survey data of certain land grants. We visually reviewed the maps to determine the primary county for each of the land grants illustrated. However, we recognized that the maps contained limited information. We therefore used Bowden’s thesis—one of the more thorough reports on land grants in New Mexico—to complete the county listings. We did not verify the accuracy of either the official maps or of Bowden’s thesis. In creating the map to represent the location of each land grant, we learned that no map illustrating all grants existed. Officials from federal and state agencies, as well as independent researchers, told us that current maps only listed certain land grants, such as those grants that had been confirmed and surveyed. It should be noted that we relied on published and unpublished documents and archives, primarily in New Mexico, Colorado and Washington, D.C. The quantity, quality, availability and reliability of the evidence for the many grants varied considerably. For example, the Doña Ana Bend Colony files contain extensive documents pertaining to the establishment of the colony and the location of tracts, while the Hacienda del Álamo file contains only the claimant’s petition with no original grant documents to verify the claim. We relied on official translations of the original granting documents wherever possible. Documents from the Office of the Surveyor General included the name of the individual who was responsible for translating the submitted documents. However, we did not independently assess any translation. We also note that the names of some grants in Bowden’s thesis, the documents of the Office of Surveyor General, and the Court of Private Land Claims’ files are not always consistent. We have identified the other names of grants in Appendix II. We conducted our review from April 2000 through August 2001, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. We received over 200 oral and written comments concerning the Exposure Draft during the comment period. The period was originally scheduled to end on April 2, but was extended until May 2. This allowed more time for presenting information and documentation. We received comments electronically via the GAO Web page, e-mail, fax, regular mail, and meetings in New Mexico held from March 23 through March 28, 2001. Some of the comments received asked for information about our study and particular land grants and how to find out whether the persons commenting were heirs to particular grants. We received documentation submitted in support of suggested changes to the Exposure Draft by fax and regular mail and in our meetings. Most of the comments did not address the definition and list of community land grants. We obtained information about many grants, including the detailed histories of some, which will be reviewed in our future work. The comments on the definition and lists generally agreed with both. We made some changes in the background and categorization of four land grants in response to specific comments, and the changes are discussed below. Many suggested changes did not include supporting documentation. Generally, we made only those changes for which there was documentary support. Our analysis of the public comments to a large extent follows the order of the report: 1. Background. We received comments concerning the legal background for community land grants. Some individuals stated that the report did not contain enough detail about Spanish and Mexican laws applicable to community settlements. One letter cited the influence of Roman law on the development of Spanish towns and settlements both in Spain and New Mexico. It also discussed the different kind of lands that belonged to a community that the author of the letter believed the Supreme Court did not recognize in United States v. Sandoval, 167 U.S. 278 (1897). The Sandoval case concluded that the common lands of community land grants belonged to the sovereign and in this case to the American government as the successor sovereign to Mexico under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Because this initial report deals with the definition of community land grant and the kinds of community land grants, we decided not to include a detailed description of Spanish and Mexican law affecting community land grants and the types of lands that were part of a community settlement in this report. We defer consideration of this information in connection with our next report. We made several technical changes at the suggestion of the Department of State. 2. Concept of Community Land Grants Defines Community Land Grants. Some commentators said that it was important that we include additional terminology to help define community land grants . They also emphasized the importance of water as a community resource and the importance of custom and tradition in community grants. Our definition of “community land grant” is very broad and identifies all grants that have land for communal use. The Exposure Draft already makes reference to the significant role of local laws, custom, and practices in the making and confirmation of grants. We have added a statement on the important linkage between land and water in communities. 3. Common Lands Formed Part of the Original Grant According to Grant Documentation (Table 1). We made one change to Table 1, which is a list of community land grants identified through original grant documentation. As a result of a review of documentation obtained subsequent to the January 24 issuance of the Exposure Draft, it appears that the Elena Gallegos grant does not fit any of the three criteria that we developed to identify the first category of community land grants. The three criteria are: (1) the original grant document declares part of the lands be made available for communal use; (2) the grant was made for the purpose of establishing a new town or settlement; and (3) the grant was made to 10 or more settlers. Consequently, we removed the Elena Gallegos grant from the community grants listed in Table I and identified it as an individual grant in Appendix I under the name “Diego Montoya.” The Court of Private Land Claims decision confirming the petition of several hundred individuals to parts of the Elena Gallegos grant set out the history of the grant. The grant had been originally made in the latter part of the 17th century and then reissued in 1716 to Diego Montoya as a private grant. Subsequently, the grant was conveyed to Elena Gallegos. Later, a large number of individuals settled on the grant and small communities (ranchos) developed. Because the grant was originally made to Diego Montoya, an alternate identifier for this grant in the Exposure Draft, “Diego Montoya,” will now become the name of the grant in Appendix I and “Elena Gallegos” will become an alternate identifier in Appendix II. We also received a comment that the Tierra Amarilla grant did not belong in Table 1 as a community land grant since it is a private grant. The commentator cited several federal and New Mexico cases that have held that the Congress confirmed the Tierra Amarilla grant as a private grant rather than as a community one. We recognize that Congress confirmed the Tierra Amarilla grant in 1860 by statute as a private grant and that its determination is legally conclusive of this question under present American law. However, the purpose of our report is to define the types of “community land grants” associated with both Spain and Mexico and also to identify the grants that are included in each type. This identification is not a legal determination as to whether a particular land grant is a private or community one. Rather, it provides a framework for our ongoing work. We are presently examining the United States implementation of its obligations under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo concerning community land grants. We have identified grants in which common lands formed part of the original grant. Such grants must meet one of three criteria to be so included. One of these criteria is that the original grant document “declares part of the land be made available for communal use.” The document creating the Tierra Amarilla grant contains such language. The grant document provided that “pastures, watering places and roads remain free according to the customs generally prevailing in all settlements.”4. Grants Identified by Grant Heirs and Others (Table 2). This category includes grants that heirs, scholars, and other persons knowledgeable about a grant’s history have stated contained common lands. Also, it includes some individual grants where, according to such persons, grantees, their heirs, or other grant settlers, certain lands were set aside for common use as an inducement to attract new settlers to the grant. In other cases, we were told that settlements arose on individual land grants that contained some of the features of community land grants, e.g., a common area for grazing livestock. These grants are also reflected in Table 2. We received a comment that we remove both Pedro Armendaris grants, Numbers 33 and 34, from table 2 because they were private land grants. We received materials supporting this request, which included copies of Surveyor General documents and two United States patents for private grants issued by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878. These materials recite the history of the grants as presented to the Surveyor General and that formed the basis of congressional confirmation of these grants as private grants in 1860. These documents establish that the Spanish officials made grants to Pedro Armendaris in 1819 (No. 33) and 1820 (No.34). However, our purpose in this report is to be as comprehensive as possible in identifying the universe of community land grants. We wanted to identify grants that fit certain evidentiary criteria, as well as grants that heirs and others identified as containing common lands. This self- identification is important because adequate grant documentation is often lacking. In the case of these two grants, the documentary evidence shows that the grants were made to Pedro Armendaris. However, some persons have identified the grants as having common lands set aside for the use of settlers. This characterization does not affect their legal status as individual grants. As stated above, this report makes no legal determinations. The grants are included in Table 2 because someone has identified the grants as containing common lands. We make no determination of whether the assertion is true. We also added two grants to Table 2: Francisco Montes Vigil and Cristóbal de la Serna. During our March interviews in New Mexico, heirs to these grants stated that they were community land grants, but provided no evidence that common lands formed part of the original grant. However, since identification by grant heirs was sufficient for a grant to be included in the second category of community land grants, these grants are listed in Table 2. We are aware that in several instances courts in the New Mexico Eighth Judicial District have concluded that the Cristóbal de la Serna grant was an individual land grant, based on a detailed examination of its history. As stated previously, our inclusion of this grant in Table 2 does not affect this conclusion. We received two different comments that the Tecolote land grant did not belong in Table 2. One comment would place the grant in Table 1 as a community land grant for which allegedly there is documentary support. The other comment suggested that the grant be listed in Appendix I as an individual grant. Originally, we had included it in Table 2 because an individual had identified it as a community land grant. These different views reflect the positions taken in current litigation in New Mexico State court. The issue in the litigation is whether the heirs of the original grantee have a superior right to part of the grant than the Town of Tecolote. According to the parties to the litigation, a Mexican court in 1838 divided the grant between the heirs of the original grantee, Salvador Montoya, and the settlement of Tecolote. The Town of Tecolote received a patent (title) from the United States in 1902 covering the acreage of the original grant. The patent provides that it should only be construed as the relinquishment by the United States of any claim to the land in question. The patent further provides that it does not adversely affect the rights of any other person to the land. In the litigation, heirs of the original grantee are claiming that they have a superior right than the Town of Tecolote to about one-half of the grant. To be included in the first category of community land grants, original grant documentation is necessary and in this instance none was provided to us. However, to be included in the second category, someone only has to identify a grant as having common lands. We take no position on the litigation. We also received comments that the Alameda, Embudo, La Majada, San Marcos Pueblo, Sebastían Martín, and Gijosa grants did not belong in Table 2. However, we had previously received information that others had identified these as community land grants. This information was sufficient to include these grants in Table 2. 5. Common Lands of Indigenous Pueblo Cultures (Table 3). An official from the Santa Clara Pueblo wrote that we had omitted from Table 3 the Cañada de Santa Clara grant, which is contained only in Appendix I. He provided an English translation and a copy of the original 1763 Spanish grant. The grant provides that the whole of the Valley of Santa Clara “shall be for cultivable and common lands of the said Pueblo for their flocks and horses with all its pastures and waters.” We have added this grant to table 3 because of this documentary evidence. Table 3 consists of grants made directly to the Indian pueblos. It does not include the subsequent purchase or acquisition by an Indian pueblo of a grant from the grantee or any other person who has the right to dispose of it. We also received a request from representatives of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, which is located in Texas, to be included in our review of community land grants. According to the request, following the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, the Spaniards moved the ancestors of the present tribe from Isleta Pueblo, near modern day Albuquerque, to the El Paso, Texas area, where they remain today. The Ysleta del Sur Pueblo received a grant from the Spanish Governor of New Mexico in 1751. At the time of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the area the Pueblo occupied was located in New Mexico. However, it became part of Texas two years later, as a part of the Compromise of 1850. Neither the Surveyor General of New Mexico nor the Court of Private Land Claims approved the Spanish grant because the Pueblo was located in Texas. The Pueblo believes it should be included in the GAO study because it has a common basis for complaint with the individuals and tribes that comprise it. Our requestors have asked that we examine the United States obligations under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and its implementation with reference to community land grants in New Mexico. In the Exposure Draft, which defines “community land grant” and identifies such grants in New Mexico, we included the Indian Pueblos that fit our definition and criteria for community land grants. Because the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo is located in Texas, however, it does not fall within the ambit of our study. We received a letter from Taos Pueblo expressing concern about the lack of attention given to Pueblo grants in our study. The letter noted that dozens of land grant heirs and governmental officials were interviewed, but only a few individuals involved with the problems of one Pueblo were interviewed. We provided copies of the Exposure Draft to the Governors of each of the New Mexico Pueblos and held open forums in 5 locations in the state. The Taos Pueblo also stated that without a comprehensive study concerning Indian Pueblo lands, the Pueblo would be unable to accept the findings of the GAO study. We are aware that problems over land ownership have frequently arisen between settlers and the Pueblos. As Taos Pueblo recognizes, our congressional requestors specifically asked GAO to assess the United States legal obligations under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and their implementation with respect to community land grants. In the event that we identify potential options for resolving any U.S. failure, the congressional requestors want GAO to discuss the potential effects of these options on tribal land claims. The treatment of the pueblo grants in the second report will depend on the factors mentioned in the response to comment (b) in Table 4 below. The Taos Pueblo letter did not contain any comments about Table 3 of the Exposure Draft, which lists all the Pueblo grants and the dates they were made. The Exposure Draft showed that the Taos Pueblo had received its grant in 1815, which was much later than the dates for the other Pueblos. We reviewed our work papers and concluded that the date was not accurate. We spoke with an employee of Taos Pueblo familiar with its history. The employee indicated that little information could be found that established a date certain for the original Spanish grant. Accordingly, we have left the space for the grant’s date blank and added a footnote indicating that the date of the grant is uncertain. 6. Detailed Data on the 295 Spanish and Mexican Land Grants (Appendix I). On the basis of comments received, we realized that some grants listed in Appendix I overlap or are included in other grants. For example, we received information that the Juan Montes Vigil grant listed in Appendix I was part of the La Majada grant. Neither Congress nor the Court of Private Land Claims confirmed the Vigil grant, although it was presented to the Surveyor General for his approval. However, the Court of Private Land Claims confirmed the La Majada grant in 1894 with a patent issued in 1908. Also, we received information that the José Domínguez grant and the Sebastían Martín grant covered the same area. In fact, Sebastían Martín purchased the grant from José Domínguez’s daughter and son-in-law. Congress confirmed the Sebastían Martín grant in 1860 and a patent issued in 1893. The Surveyor General rejected the Domínguez grant. We also made changes to Appendix I to make it easier to use. First, it proved difficult to identify grants that had other names, which we had included as alternate identifiers in Appendix I. We removed the column in Appendix I designated as “Alternative grant identifiers” and replaced it with a new Appendix II that alphabetizes all the alternate identifiers and links each identifier to a particular grant in Appendix I. Second, we added a column to Appendix I, which identifies what kind of a grant it is for the purposes of this report: (1) “C” for community grants with original documentation listed in Table 1; (2) “OI” for community land grants identified by grant heirs and others listed in Table 2; (3) “P” for Indian Pueblo grants listed in Table 3; and (4) “I” for “individual grants.” Third, instead of one New Mexico map showing the grants identified in Tables 1 through 3 by county, we created three separate New Mexico county maps in the report showing the location of grants in each table. Lastly, in Table 1, as well as in Table 2 and Appendixes I and II we have removed the words “Town of” from the name of certain grants and placed these words in parentheses after the name of the grant. We then realphabetized each list. We made these changes to make it easier to locate the name usually associated with these grants. 7. New Mexico Attorney General’s Task Force. We received oral and written comments from New Mexico Attorney General’s Task Force set up to assist GAO in its study of community land grants. Table 4 summarizes their major comments, some of which we have grouped together, and our responses. 8. Taos County Community Centers. We received several comments and materials from Taos County Community Centers Association, Inc. One of these comments claimed that the 295 grants listed in Appendix I of the Exposure Draft covered only one third of the grants made in New Mexico and that there were 719 grants that had not been accounted for. The comment was based on a statement in a book by a New Mexico historian that the Surveyor General in his 1856 report to Congress indicated that he had received “a collection of 1,014 grants and documents relating to land titles of which (197) were private grants” (emphasis added). The Association sponsored a New Mexico House Joint Memorial, stating that there were 719 grants unaccounted for in the GAO Exposure Draft. The 1856 Surveyor General’s report showed, as the quoted passage from the history book stated, that indeed there were 1,014 grants and documents given to the Surveyor General. This number refers to other documents too, not just grants, including conveyances and wills. The 1856 Surveyor General’s report lists fewer grants than the 295 that we found. 9. Identification of Source Materials. We were asked why the Exposure Draft does not, as scholarly articles do, cite the specific support or source for statements or information in the report. GAO reports are not scholarly studies, but are prepared for the use of the Congress and they should be written in a clear and concise manner. Consequently, it is not our usual practice to footnote each statement in our reports. Both Appendixes III and V list the materials used in the preparation of this report. These Appendixes contain more detailed information that we usually provide in reports so that scholars and others could see what information we used to develop the definition and lists of community land grants. To assure report accuracy, GAO staff, which have not been involved in a study, independently review the sources for each statement and the information in the report. Our process of quality control requires that each statement be supported by appropriate and valid documentation and that the person performing the quality control checks must independently assess the adequacy of the support. When a study is completed, the documentary sources for the report, as well as any data bases developed, will usually be available to the public upon request. 10. Spanish Version of Exposure Draft.- A few commentators noted that the translation of the English version of the Exposure Draft into Spanish did not reflect the Spanish used in New Mexico. Specifically, it used technical terms that are not familiar to New Mexican Spanish speakers. For example, the Exposure Draft uses the word “concesión” for a “grant” made by Spain and Mexico while the word for a Spanish grant in New Mexico is “merced.” We added a footnote regarding “merced.” “Algunos Documentos Sobre el Tratado de Guadalupe y la Situación de México Durante la Invasión Americana.” Archivo Historico Diplomatico Méxicano No. 31 (1930). Arellano, Anselmo F. “The Never Ending Land Grant Struggle.” (Austin, Texas, University of Texas, undated) www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/ anthro/activist/ Essay8.htm (downloaded Apr. 6, 2000). _____. Through Thick and Thin: Evolutionary Transitions of Las Vegas Grandes and Its Pobladores (1990) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico). Beck, Warren A. New Mexico: A History of Four Centuries. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Blackmar, Frank W. Spanish Institutions of the Southwest. Glorieta, NM: The Rio Grande Press, 1976. Bloom, John Porter, ed. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848: Papers of the Sesquicentennial Symposium. Las Cruces, NM: Doña Ana County Historical Society and Yucca Tree Press, 1999. Bowden, J.J. Private Land Claims in the Southwest (1969) (unpublished LL.M. thesis , Southern Methodist University). _____. Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in the Chihuahuan Acquisition. El Paso, TX: University of Texas at El Paso, 1971. _____. “Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in the Southwest.” Land and Water Law Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1973), pp. 467-512. Bradfute, Richard Wells. The Court of Private Land Claims: The Adjudication of Spanish and Mexican Land Grant Titles, 1841-1904. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1975. Brayer, Herbert O. Pueblo Indian Land Grants of the “Rio Abajo”. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1939. Briggs, Charles L. and John R. Van Ness, eds. Land, Water, and Culture: New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1987. Calendar to the Microfilm Edition of the Land Records of New Mexico: Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series I, Surveyor General Records, and the Records of the Court of Private Land Claims. Santa Fé, NM: National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives, 1987 (a microfilm project). Cameron, Christopher D.R. “Symposium: Understanding the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on Its 150th Anniversary: ‘Friends’ or ‘Enemies?’ The Status of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the United States on the Sesquicentennial of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.” Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas, Vol. 5 (1998), pp. 5 et seq. Carlson, Alvar W. The Spanish-American Homeland. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1990. Cheever, Federico M. “Comment: A New Approach to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants and the Public Trust Doctrine: Defining The Property Interest Protected by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.” UCLA Law Review, Vol. 33 (1986), pp. 1364-1409. Codgell, Thomas. “A Brief Historical Survey of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.” (Austin, Texas, undated) www.jump.net/-treaty/survey (downloaded Aug. 10, 2000). DeBuys, William. “Fractions of Justice: A Legal and Social History of the Las Trampas Land Grant, New Mexico.” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (1981), pp. 71 et seq.. Ebright, Malcolm. Land Grant Community Associations in New Mexico (1994) (research paper, Center for Land Grant Studies, University of New Mexico). _____. Land Grants and Law Suits in Northern New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1994. _____. ed. Spanish and Mexican Land Grants and the Law. Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1991. The microfilm archives were accessed at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fé, New Mexico; at the National Archives and Records Administration in Denver, Colorado; and at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. _____. “The San Joaquin Grant: Who Owned the Common Lands? A Historical-Legal Puzzle.” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (1982), pp. 5-26. _____. The Tierra Amarilla Grant: A History of Chicanery. Santa Fé, NM: The Center for Land Grant Studies Press, 1993. Espinosa, Gilberto. “New Mexico Land Grants.” The State Bar of New Mexico 1962 Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1962), pp. 3-13. Forrest, Suzanne Sims. “A Trail of Tangled Titles: Mining, Land Speculation, and the Dismemberment of the San Antonio de las Huertas Grant.” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 71 (Oct. 1996), pp. 361-393. Gates, Paul W. and Robert W. Swenson. History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968. Gomez, Placido. “The History and Adjudication of the Common Lands of Spanish and Mexican Land Grants.” Natural Resources Journal, Vol. 25, No.1 (1985), pp. 1039-80. Griswold del Castillo, Richard. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990. Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty of Peace 1848 and The Gadsden Treaty with Mexico 1853. Seattle, WA: Tate Gallery Publisher, 1963. Hall, G. Emlen. Four Leagues of Pecos: A Legal History of the Pecos Grant, 1800-1933. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1984. . “ San Miguel del Bado and the Loss of the Common Lands of New Mexico Community Land Grants.” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 66 (Oct. 1991), pp. 413-432. _____. “Tularosa and the Dismantling of New Mexico Community Ditches.” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 75, No. 1 (2000), pp. 77-106. Index to Special District Governments in New Mexico. Santa Fé, NM: New Mexico Legislative Council Service, 1983. Jenkins, Myra Ellen. “The Baltasar Baca ‘Grant’: History of an Encroachment.” El Palacio (Spring 1961), pp. 47-105. Knowlton, Clark S. Land-Grant Problems Among the State’s Spanish Americans (undated) (unpublished paper, University of Texas). _____. The Las Vegas Community Land Grant: Its Decline and Fall. Salt Lake City, UT: Center for Land Grant Studies, University of Utah, 1980. _____. “The Mora Land Grant: A New Mexican Tragedy.” Journal of the West, Vol. 27, No. 3 (undated), pp. 189-218. _____. “The Study of Land Grants as an Academic Discipline.” The Social Science Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1976), pp. 3-7. Kutsche, Paul and John R. Van Ness. Canones: Values, Crisis, and Survival in a Northern New Mexico Village. Salem, WI: Sheffield Publishing Co., 1981. Lamar, Howard R. The Far Southwest 1846-1912. A Territorial History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966. Land Title Study Prospectus: Prospectus No.2. Santa Fé, NM: State Planning Office, 1969. Leonard, Olen E. The Role of the Land Grant in the Social Organization and Social Processes of a Spanish-American Village in New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: Calvin Horn Publisher, Inc., 1970. Luna, Guadalupe T. “Symposium: En El Nombre de Dios Todo-Poderoso: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Narrativos Legales.” Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas, Vol. 5 (1998) pp. 45 et seq. Luna, Hilario. San Joaquin del Nacimiento. No city, state or publisher indicated, 1975. Lutz, Robert E. “Symposium: The Mexican War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: What’s Best and Worst About Us.” Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the America, Vol. 5 (1998) pp. 27-29. Matthews-Lamb, Sandra K. The “Nineteenth” Century Cruzate Grants: Pueblos, Peddlers, and the Great Confidence Scam? (1998) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico). Meyer, Michael C. The Contemporary Significance of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to Land Use Issues in Northern New Mexico. Tucson, AZ: Northern New Mexico Stockman’s Association and the Institute of Hispanic American Culture, 1998. _____. Water in the Hispanic Southwest: A Social and Legal History 1550-1850. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 1984. Meyer, Michael C. and Michael M. Brescia. “The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as a Living Document: Water and Land Use Issues in Northern New Mexico.” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 73 (Oct. 1998), pp. 321- 345. Morrow, William W. Spanish and Mexican Private Land Grants. San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA: Bancroft-Whitney Company, 1923. Nabokov, Peter. Tijerina and the Courthouse Raid. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1970. “New Mexico Land Grant Claims.” AMIGOS—Quien junto al agua tiene su tierra, primero riega, Vol. 7, Nivel 2, No. 6 (undated). Poldervaart, Arie W. Black-Robed Justice. Santa Fé, NM: Historical Society of New Mexico, 1948. Remote Claims Impact Study: Lot II-A, Study of the Problems that Result from Spanish and Mexican Land Grant Claims. Albuquerque, NM. Submitted to the Farmers Home Administration in Washington, D.C. by the Natural Resources Center, University of New Mexico School of Law, 1980. Reynolds, Matthew G. Spanish and Mexican Land Laws. St. Louis, MO: Buxton & Skinner Stationery Co., 1895. Rivera, Jose A. Acequia Culture: Water, Land, & Community in the Southwest. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1998. Rock, Michael J. “The Change in Tenure New Mexico Supreme Court Decisions Have Effected Upon the Common Lands of Community Land Grants in New Mexico. “The Social Science Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1976), pp. 53-63. Rowley, Ralph A. Precedents and Influences Affecting the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1970) (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of New Mexico). Sanchez, George I. Forgotten People: A Study of New Mexicans. Albuquerque, NM: Calvin Horn, Publisher, 1967. Sanchez, Jane C. “Law of the Land Grant: The Land Laws of Spain.” (Albuquerque, NM: Los Sanchez, Jan. 2000) http://home.sprintmail.com/~sanchezj/1-title.htm (downloaded Aug. 23, 2000). Sando, Joe S. Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History. Santa Fé, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 1992. Simmons, Marc. Spanish Government in New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1968. Smith, Andrew T. “The Founding of the San Antonio de las Huertas Grant.” The Social Science Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1976), pp. 35-43. Status Database of New Mexico Land Grants. Santa Fé, NM: Bureau of Land Management, 2000. The Lands of New Mexico Supplement. No city indicated, NM: Museum of New Mexico, date unreadable. The New Mexico Legal Rights Demonstration Land Grant Project-An Analysis of the Land Title Problems in the Santo Domingo De Cundiyo Land Grant. Albuquerque, NM: New Mexico Legal Rights Demonstration Land Grant Project, Legal Aid Society of Albuquerque, Inc., 1976. Torrez, Robert J. “‘El Bornes’: La Tierra Amarilla and T.D. Burns.” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 2 (1981), pp. 161-75. . “From Empire to Statehood: A History of New Mexico’s Spanish and Mexican Archives.” Colonial Latin American Historical Review (Spring 1996), pp. 333-53. _____. “New Mexico’s Spanish and Mexican Land Grants.” New Mexico Genealogist (Dec. 1997), pp. 143 et seq. _____. “Sale Burro y Entre Burro.” A Historical Perspective on the Tierra Amarilla Grant (1989) (unpublished paper). . The Enduring Legacy of Spanish Land and Water Policy in New Mexico (undated) (unpublished paper, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives). . “The San Juan Gold Rush of 1860 and Its Effect on the Development of Northern New Mexico.” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 63 (July 1988), pp. 257-72. . “The Tierra Amarilla Land Grant.” Southwest Heritage, Vol. 13, Nos. 3 and 4 (Fall 1983 and Winter 1984), pp. 2-4, 16. Van Ness, John R. “Spanish American vs. Anglo American Land Tenure and the Study of Economic Change in New Mexico.” The Social Science Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3 (1976), pp. 45-52. _____. and Christine M. Van Ness, eds. Spanish & Mexican Land Grants in New Mexico and Colorado. Santa Fe, NM: The Center for Land Grant Studies, 1980. Westphall, Victor. “Fraud and Implications of Fraud in the Land Grants of New Mexico." New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 49, No. 3 (1974), pp. 189-218. _____. Mercedes Reales: Hispanic Land Grants of the Upper Rio Grande Region. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1983. _____. The Public Domain in New Mexico 1854-1891. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1965. _____. Thomas Benton Catron and His Era. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 1973. White, Koch, Kelley and McCarthy, Attorneys at Law and The New Mexico State Planning Office. Land Title Study. Santa Fé, NM: State Planing Office, 1971 (reprinted 1981). In addition to those named above, Robert C. Arsenoff, John C. Furutani, Robert E. Sánchez, José Alfredo Gómez, Barry T. Hill, Jeffrey D. Malcolm, David A. Rogers, James R. Yeager, Jonathan S. McMurray, Carol Herrnstadt Shulman, Alice A. Feldesman, William D. Updegraff, Stephen F. Palincsar, Etana Finkler, Veronica C. Sandidge, Randy Byle, Heather Taylor, Bridget Beverly, Tonya Ford, Wanda Okoro, Susan Conlon, Oliver H. Easterwood, Robert G. Crystal, Margie Armen, James M. Rebbe, Jessica A. Botsford, Amy Webbink, Moza Al-Suylaiti, and Heather Tierney made key contributions to this report. We also wish to acknowledge the following staff of the GAO Library, whose research assistance and help in locating materials and court cases greatly facilitated our work on this report: librarians, Rennese D. Bumbray, Maureen K. Cummings, Eunhwa Kim, Bonita L. Mueller, Audrey L. Ruge, Kimberly R. Walton; and technicians, Patricia A. Givens, William R. Haynos, Geraldine B. Howard, Edna Legrant, Alice E. Paris, and Ester L. Saunders.

Summary: Until the mid-nineteenth century, Spain made land grants to towns and individuals to promote development in the frontier lands that now constitute the American Southwest. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, the United States agreed to recognize ownership of property of every kind in the ceded areas. Many people, including grantee heirs, scholars, and legal experts, still claim that the United States did not protect the property of Mexican-Americans and their descendants, particularly the common lands of community grants. Land grant documents contain no direct reference to "community land grants," nor do Spanish and Mexican laws define or use this term. GAO did find, however, that some grants refer to lands set aside for general communal use or for specific purposes, including hunting, pasture, wood gathering, or watering. Scholars, the land grant literature, and popular terminology commonly use the phrase "community land grants" to denote land grants that set aside common lands for the use of the entire community. GAO adopted this broad definition in determining which Spanish and Mexican land grants can be identified as community land grants. GAO identified 154 community land grants out of the total of 295 land grants in New Mexico. Seventy-eight were grants in which the shared lands formed part of the grant according to the original grant documentation; 53 were grants that scholars, grantee heirs, or others believed to contain common lands; and 23 were grants extended to the indigenous Pueblo cultures in New Mexico.