Land Grants

Settlement patterns in northern Nueva México were closely tied to the presence of governors willing to make land grants and to the perceived safety of lands on the perimeter of settlement. Men given grants were considered accessory conquistadores. They were expected to use their own funds to recruit settlers and provide for their defense. They weren’t promised titles like Oñate or de Vargas. Instead, they were rewarded with whatever wealth they produced.

In 1703, Pedro Cubero granted lands at Chimayó to Francisco Martín, grandson of the first Luis Martín Serrano. The area had been used before the Revolt, and was rarely attacked. It’s major impact on natives living in the valley was an encroachment on traditional lands of San Juan.

Sebastían Martín Serrano, another grandson of Luis and second cousin of Francisco, requested confirmation of his lands south of the Embudo in 1712 from José Chacón. While this reestablished the Español presence in an area settled before the Pueblo Revolt, it also propelled families into an area where tribal territories were being renegotiated by force. This was discussed in the post for 9 July 2015.

While the first round of grants were given to families who had large landholdings before the Pueblo Revolt, many concessions to the north and west of Santa Cruz were given to retired soldiers. The governors were following the tradition of the Romans who settled veterans in the Estremadura to exploit and protect mines.

Juan Flores Magollón granted a number of allotments in 1714 along the Río Chama. Some of the land had been used before the Revolt. The Navajo had exploited the rest when they raided Santa Clara and San Juan in 1705, 1708, and 1709. As mentioned in the post for 21 May 2015, the last battle with them had been in March of 1714.

Chacón had refused a request from men in Santa Cruz in 1712 to resettle the area west of San Juan between the Río Grande and the Chama that had been the site of the first settlement "known as San Gabriel and by other name the Town of Yunque." His aide, Juan Páez Hurtado, had warned it would leave Santa Cruz "practically abandoned."

The group who had requested the grant included children of Roque Madrid. José and Matías Madrid were his sons. Ysabel de la Serna had married his son Pedro. Tomás de Bejarano had married Teresa Madrid, whose parentage was unknown.

It also included Bartolomé Lobato, who had risen to the rank of capitán, and his son or nephew Blas. Lobato was from Sombrerete, as was Andres González. Simón de Córdoba and Cristóbal de Castran were from Zacatecas. Córdoba was in the presidio. Angélico Chávez believed the second surname was actually Castro.

The other two in the group who requested rights to Yunque were Sebastían Durán, who was married to Ana María Martín, and Diego Márquez, who was married to Juana Martín. The parentage of the two Martín girls was unknown to Chávez. Capitán Márquez was the son of Esther Luján.

Flores had no qualms about ceding the same land to Bartolomé Sánchez, who had come from Queretaro and was living in Santa Fé under the name Bartolomé Garduño. He apparently was given priority over the protests of local military families because he carried papers for the viceroy.

Flores also granted land on the west side of the Chama in 1714 to Cristóbal Crespín, Diego Trujillo, and Salvador de Santisteban. The last was described as "las sobras de tierras" of land granted Lobato for wheat and corn. The literal translation is "leftover lands." Santisteban said he would plant wheat and corn.

The land ceded to Crespín was next to that requested by Santisteban. He planned to divide it evenly with Nicolás Griego to grow corn and wheat. It was described as "whatever is left after granting four fanegas to Salvador de Santisteban and Nicolás de Valverde, and the two fanegas with a house, lot and garden which in their outskirts I granted to Capt. Bartolome Lobato."

Next south on the west side of the Río Grande, Flores validated the claims made by Antonio de Salazar that were mentioned in the post for 6 July 2014. He also may have given José López Naranjo the land mentioned in the post for 14 July 2014, or Naranjo may have acquired it directly from Salazar. There are no records in the archive and no one filed a claim in the nineteenth century for the Naranjo land. Angélico Chávez found the reference in William Ritch’s collection of manuscripts.

These grants were dependent on goodwill between neighbors. They didn’t use the English system of metes and bounds, which identified permanent topological features. William Penn’s use of a grid, mentioned in the post for 13 September 2015, foreshadowed the use of surveys with brass posts at specified coordinates that replaced the metes.

Notes: Salvador de Santisteban was an officer of the presidio who went on the Páez expedition of 1715. Diego Trujillo survived the Villasur expedition of 1720. Sebastían Martín’s grant is often located in Taos; the term apparently was used to refer to any land between the San Juan and Taos pueblos.

Chávez, Angélico. Origins of New Mexico Families, 1992 revised edition.

Christmas, Henrietta Martinez. "Cristobal Crespín - Lands near the Chama River 1714," 17 April 2013 posting for her blog, 1598 New Mexico; quotation on Crespín grant.

Ritch, W. G. According to Chávez, 1992, the territorial secretary salavage papers from the archives before they were destroyed; they’re now in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914; quotations on Yunque and Santisteban grants.

Santa Cruz Militia Rosters

The identities of many who served in these years from Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and San Juan are lost. No roster survives from Roque de Madrid’s 1705 campaign against the Navajo. The man who chronicled the campaign, Antonio Álvarez Castrillón, mentioned few in the company. He did, however, remark the skills of Juan Roque Gutíerrez, the campaign captain who guided the horses through "the middle of a forest so thick and close that the animals got stuck."

There’s no published roster for Juan de Ulibarrí’s expedition the next year to El Cuartelejo. He says he received an "enlistment list" that included 28 from the presidio, 12 from the militia, and 100 auxiliaries. He added men went he stopped at Picurís.

Ulibarrí is the only one who signed his report. In it he mentions Sargento Bartolomé Sánchez, who found a ford across a swollen stream. Later he sends Ensign Ambrosia Fresqui and Capitán José López Naranjo to find water. Ulibarrí also names Francisco de Valdés and Jean l’Archevêque.

Castrillón’s report was signed by nine men, besides himself and Madrid. Six had ties to Santa Cruz: José Domínguez de Mendoza, Cristóbal de la Serna, Juan Roque Gutíerrez, Miguel de Herrera, José López Naranjo, and Mateo Trujillo. The first two were capitánes whose families had lived in the Río Abajo before the Revolt.

The second two were soldiers from the presidio. Gutíerrez had married the daughter of a capitán, Luis Martín, in 1690. Herrera was raised in La Cañada. Both were the sons of soldiers. Trujillo had come north as a soldier, then claimed land. On this expedition he was a squadron leader.

The other signatories included two who were part of the presidio and later assigned to Santa Cruz as alcaldes: Cristóbal de Arellano and Tomás López Holguín. Martín García was also part of the presidio. He’s the one who would be exiled in 1710 for abusing native workers at Galisteo.

As for the auxiliaries, Madrid noted sixteen joined them from Tesuque, when they were en route to Picurís, and forty came there from Taos. In addition he mentioned Pamuje, a Tewa speaker, and Dirucaca from Jémez as men who gave him conflicting advice on a route. When he wanted to distract the Navajo while he positioned men to attack, he sent Naranjo and the governor of Zia. Their seconds were Juan Griego from San Juan and another war captain.

The other capitánes, militia men and auxiliaries were anonymous. Only one was killed, "and he was an Indian."

Notes:
Castrillón, Antonio Álvarez. Campaign journal for Roque Madrid’s campaign against the Navajo, republished in Hendricks.

Hendricks, Rick and John P. Wilson. The Navajos in 1705, 1996; biographies of men mentioned in journal.

Ulibarrí, Juan de. Diary of expedition to El Cuartelejo, 1706, in Alfred B. Thomas, After Coronado, 1935.

Bartolomé Sánchez Land Grant

To share information leave a comment or send an email to nasonmcormic@cybermesa.com.

In the past week new road signs have sprung up along county roads and private drives. One that puzzles me is on the way to the post office at the corner of Paseo de Oñate and what I call the Valdez Bridge Road. Officials call it Industrial Park Road on the west side of the intersection and Fairview Lane on the east.

The sign proclaims a boundary for the Bartolomé Sánchez Land Grant. Does anyone know who  Sánchez was and when he made his claim?

I found an on-line posting in a geology website from a woman who said she was a descendent of Maria Francisca Sánchez. That woman married Jose Guadalupe Naranjo and moved to Colorado.  Sánchez was born about 1830 in this area.

The writer said she had a copy of the grant registration from the early 1900's. I found it listed in the grants adjudicated before 1904 under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that annexed this part of the country to the United States.

It said the original claim had been for 10,000 acres and 4,469 had been allowed.

The next reference I found was to the Bartolo Me Land Grant corporation. It was apparently organized in 1941. A group using the name today says it has 3,300 acres for development in Española and Rio Arriba county.