Santa Clara Lands

Indies law was clear: natives had a right to enough land to feed themselves. In 1568, Gastón de Peralta set the allotment at 500 varas in all directions from a settlement. As the new viceroy of New Spain, he ruled the measurement was made from the location of the local church and that no grant could be within 1000 "varas of cloth and silk measure distant." That is, 500 varas within the pueblo and 500 outside.

In 1687, the Consejo de Indias realized many settlers were encroaching native land. It had Charles II increase the minimum to 600 varas measured from "the last boundaries and houses" for "sowing lands." Further, estancias for cattle were to be a minimum 1100 varas away. Viceroys were given the right to increase those clearances if necessary.

Charles Cutter said, pueblos became proficient in enforcing a league from the church as the legal minimum. In 1700, Pedro Cubero granted Mateo Trujillo land west of the Río Grande between Santa Clara and San Ildefonso. There was a dispute over the outer boundary because the pueblo hadn’t planted during the drought, and Trujillo had claimed it was available. As a result, the governor, Felipe Cherpe, and the war captain, Juan, said:

"They had only 2,200 varas of land on which they were planting, the land being theirs and they always planted it, as was shown by an irrigation ditch which was on the tract, and they not having in any other direction any place they could plant, there remaining for Trujillo, from the Indians’ boundaries of the table-land, about three hundred varas."

The differences between varas and the league that Juan Páez Hurtado measured were relatively small, given the accuracy of measuring instruments. A vara was just under 33", so 500 varas was a little less than 16,500'. 600 varas was less than 19,800'. A league was roughly 18,228'.

Cattle were the primary problem. Fences didn’t exist. Only human supervision could keep them from abandoning dry range for more succulent crops. In 1718, settlers near San Juan were chided for "for allowing their cattle to trespass upon the lands of the Indians" by Páez. In 1732, Gervasio Cruzat y Góngora admonished settlers in Santa Cruz "to take better care of their stock and guard the same."

Santa Clara had a different problem in 1715 when Francisco Xavier Romero, José Vasquez, and Santiago Romero stole a steer belonging to a pueblo member, Lucas de Azenbua. They confessed, but said they only did it because their families were hungry, and, "since the natives never took good care of the stock, there was little harm in killing a few cows." They were found guilty by Juan Flores Mogollón, but Felix Martínez granted Romero land in the Cañada de Santa Clara the following year.

Santa Clara protested vehemently in 1724 when Juan Tafoya and his brother Antonio requested all the land west of the pueblo to the "high mountain range," and everything from "a high, wooded black hill" on the north to a line west of "the little table-land of San Ildefonso." That included the canyon that carried what is now called Santa Clara creek.

The pueblo pointed out that cultivating lands in that area would "result in grave injury" because there wasn’t enough water in the stream to water their fields. Tafoya received the grant from Juan de Bustamante after "Cristóbal Tafoya, who was present as the representative of the two grantees, his sons, stated that they did not want the tract for agricultural purposes, but only to build corrals and keep their cattle and horses there."

Settlers in 1727 complained the Tafoyas were keeping them "out of the common pasture lands in the Cañada de Santa Clara." When Bustamante ordered the father and two sons to present their title to the alcalde, Antonio said he would go to Santa Fé to see the governor. When he failed to appear, he was arrested.

Antonio next asked for a copy of the petition to prepare his answer. Ralph Twitchell noted, "here, the proceedings abruptly ended." It’s less likely they had influence with Bustamante, than they did with whoever was managing the archives when this grant was disputed again.

Notes:
Athearn, Frederic J. A Forgotten Kingdom, 1989; quotation from Romero case.

Charles II. Royal cédula, 6 June 1687, translated by Frederic Hall in The Laws of Mexico, 1885, as "Upon the Fundo Legal of the So-called Indians - The Ancient Mode of Measuring It, and the Increase of a Hundred Varas above the Five Hundred of the Primitive Ordinance, issued by Antonio Ortiz de Otalora, secretary of the Council of the Indies;" quotations from regulation.

Cutter, Charles R. The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700-1810, 1995.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, 1914; volume 1 has San Ildefonso, Twitchell, and Santa Clara-Tafoya quotations; volume 2 has quotations from 1718 San Juan case.

Graphics: United States Department of the Interior, Geological Survey map. Española Quadrangle, New Mexico, 15 minute series (topographic) 1953; location of Santa Clara pueblo settlement has moved slightly since 1724.