Opinion ID: 1219144
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Spanish and Mexican Land Grant Claim

Text: AWDI first asserts that its title to Baca Grant No. 4 is derived from a Spanish or Mexican grant [15] and has all the attributes of such a grant, allegedly including transfer of all underground water, whether tributary or nontributary, underlying the granted lands. AWDI asserts that recognition of the Spanish or Mexican origin of its title is necessary in order to honor the requirement of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that the United States respect the property rights of Mexican citizens. [I]ndividual rights of property, in the territory acquired by the United States from Mexico, were not affected by the change of sovereignty and jurisdiction. Tameling, 93 U.S. at 661. The duty of providing the mode of securing them and fulfilling the obligations which the treaty of cession imposed, was within the appropriate province of the political department of the government. Id. Congress provided the necessary procedures by adopting the Act of July 22, 1854. Congress committed to the surveyor general of the Territory of New Mexico the duty of ascertaining the origin, nature, character and extent and determining the validity of all such claims in the Territory. Tameling, 93 U.S. at 662. The final action on each claim was reserved to Congress and not subject to judicial review. Id. The land comprising Baca Grant No. 4 was never in the private domain before it was granted to the Baca heirs pursuant to the Act of June 21, 1860. It was in territory under the sovereignty of Spain and then the Republic of Mexico prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Under that treaty the United States acquired sovereignty and the land became part of the public domain. [16] In order to resolve amicably the disputed claims to the Vegas Grandes, which was a completely different tract located in what is now the State of New Mexico, the Baca heirs, one of two sets of claimants to that latter tract, offered to waive their older title in favor of the other group of claimants if allowed to enter an equivalent quantity of land elsewhere within the Territory. S.Rep. No. 228 at 4. [17] The Act of June 21, 1860, followed, in which the United States Congress accepted the offer of the heirs of Baca and allowed them to select instead of the land claimed by them, an equal quantity of vacant land, [18] not mineral, in the Territory of New Mexico. The heirs of Baca did select such land, part of which was Baca Grant No. 4, and obtained title from the United States by following the procedures prescribed by the Act of June 21, 1860. The result was a grant of lands in which no private rights had ever been recognized under the laws of Spain or Mexico and a waiver of a claim to other lands under which such rights could have been asserted by the claimants. See Wise v. Watts, 239 F. 207, 225-27 (9th Cir.1917), cert. denied, 244 U.S. 661, 37 S.Ct. 745, 61 L.Ed. 1376 (1917) (discussing title to Baca Grant No. 3, obtained under the same circumstances as Baca Grant No. 4). The grant of lands, including Baca Grant No. 4, not subject to rights under the laws of Spain and Mexico in return for such waiver was not an abrogation of treaty rights as AWDI contends, but rather a resolution of competing claims well within the ambit of congressional authority. See Sandoval, 167 U.S. at 290, 17 S.Ct. at 873 (The mode in which private rights of property may be secured, and the obligations imposed upon the United States, by treaties, fulfilled, belongs to the political department of the government to provide.); Tameling, 93 U.S. at 661. The Act of June 21, 1860, itself contains no suggestion that the grant of Baca Grant No. 4 involved any intent to create rights other than those incident to any conveyance of lands from the public domain of the United States to a private citizen. Cf. United States v. Roselius, 56 U.S. (15 How.) 31, 34, 14 L.Ed. 587 (1853) (confirmation of doubtful claim by Congress on certain terms and acceptance of those terms by claimant adjusts the claim on the footing of compromise and forecloses judicial review). AWDI argues, however, that references by Congress to confirmation of the claim of the Baca heirs to the Vegas Grandes reflect an intent that the rights acquired by the Baca heirs in the substituted lands, including Baca Grant No. 4, were the same rights incident to their claim under Spanish or Mexican law to the Vegas Grandes. This argument is not well taken. The surveyor general of the United States did indeed recommend that the title of the Baca heirs to the Vegas Grandes be confirmed and the disputes between the two sets of claimants be resolved in court. Instead, however, pursuant to agreement, the Baca heirs waived that title in return for the right to obtain other lands from the United States. The surveyor general's recommended confirmation of the original title and Congress's ensuing confirmation of claim 20 both related to rights in the Vegas Grandes but suggested nothing about the nature of the title to be acquired from the United States by a compromise grant of other lands in that sovereign's public domain. [19] AWDI also relies on case authority to support its argument that title to the alternative selected lands does not lose its original character as derived under the laws of Spain or Mexico. AWDI refers us to Henshaw v. Bissell, 85 U.S. (18 Wall.) 255, 21 L.Ed. 835 Board of County Comm'rs of County of Pueblo v. Central Colo. Improvement Co., 2 Colo. 628 (1874) ( Nolan I ); rev'd by Central Colo. Improvement Co. v. Board of Comm'rs, 95 U.S. 259, 24 L.Ed. 495 (1877) ( Nolan II ). Henshaw referred to Mexican law in part to determine the better title under conflicting United States patents issued upon a confirmation of grants made by the Mexican government as floating grants within a general tract large enough to satisfy both. Nolan I and Nolan II establish that when a Mexican land grant is confirmed to less than all of the lands located within the boundaries of the original grant, title relates back to and is grounded upon the laws of Mexico. In the present case, the claim confirmed to the Baca heirs was their claim to the Vegas Grandes. The Baca heirs waived that claim and accepted a grant from the United States to public domain lands not within the boundaries of any Mexican land grant. Neither Henshaw nor the opinions in Nolan I and Nolan II speak to this issue. For the reasons previously expressed, we hold that title to the Baca Grant No. 4 did not derive from the Mexican government or its Spanish predecessor. [20]