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The Court Of Private Land Claims
Grandpa, I told my teacher what you had told me about the size of the San
Joaquín del Río de Chama, Juan Bautista Valdez and La Petaca Grants before the
government took the land and how many acres they wound up with. I told him you
had mentioned so many numbers I was having a hard time remembering them and he suggested
we could make it easier to understand if we divided all the acres you talked
about by 640, the number of acres in a square mile to try and make it clearer how
unfair the government had been. I divided all the acreage we've been talking
about and it made a big difference for me. Can I go over the numbers before we move
on to something else?
Sure.
I'll start with some of the grants that received patents from Congress before
the Court of Private Land Claims got involved. The Maxwell and Sangre de Cristo Grants were supposed to be limited under
Mexican lawto eleven square leagues or approximately 153 square miles each. The
Maxwell Grant wound
up with 2,679 square miles—2,527 more than it was entitled to and the Sangre de
Cristo received 1,562 square miles—1,408
more than it should have had.
The Pablo Montoya and
Preston Beck, Jr. Grants
were only entitled to 76 square miles each yet the Pablo Montoya received 1,024
square miles and the Preston Beck, Jr. wound up with 498.
Those four grants together were entitled to 358 square miles and they wound
up with 5,762—5,300 square miles more than they were supposed to have.
The grants on page 113 of the GAO Report, the Cañón de Carnué, Cañón
de Chama [San
Joaquín del
Río de Chama], Don Fernando de Taos, Town
of Galisteo, Petaca, San Miguel del Bado and
the Santa Cruz were
treated just the opposite—they were entitled to 1,776 square miles. Guess how
many they wound up with, Grandpa?
How many, Hijo?
They only wound up with 26 square miles. The remaining 1,750 square
miles wound up belonging to the government..
Did you figure the square miles
for the Juan Bautista Valdez?
Sure did.
We used an estimate of 147,500 acres for the Juan Bautista. If the government had confirmed all the
acreage Spain actually granted to the San Joaquin, the La Petaca and the Juan
Bautista Valdez there would have been
approximately 810,000 acres—that means they should have received over 1,266
square miles.
How much did they actually get,
Hijo?
Six and a half square miles, Grandpa—6.5 of the 1,266 square miles they
had been granted forty years before the United States even claimed to have any
interest in New Mexico.
After we'd done the math, my teacher pulled out a copy of the census
for the San Joaquín del Río de Chama that showed there were more than 400
people living there in 1880—in more than 140 homes. He said, like you had said
earlier, Grandpa—they even had a school and a cemetery, but that all there is now
are a bunch of National Forest signs—no houses—no schoolhouse, no cemetery—just
Forest Service signs. The settlement that had been there for over 80 years is
nothing but dust.
Last Monday my teacher brought a copy of the Sunday Albuquerque Journal
to class. After he read an article about what the government is doing at a
cemetery at Fort Craig, near Socorro, he told us that it's interesting how the Bureau
of Reclamation can spend hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars at a
Cemetery recovering the remains of more than60 men, women and children—promising
to provide them decent burials at the National Cemetery—but at the same time it
won't spend a dime fixing up the San Joaquín del Río de Chama Cemetery—and the other land grant cemeteries around
the state.
I saw the story you're talking
about, Hijo. It was interesting to compare what the government was willing to
do at Ft. Craig with what it isn't willing to do for our
grants. When you stop to think about how the Forest Service has ignored the
condition of the land grants it becomes clear how unimportant our ancestors are
to the government.
To make it even worse many of the
men who were born, lived and are buried on the San Joaquín and the other grants—fought
as volunteers for the Union during the Civil War. They were veterans like the
government claims some of the remains at Ft. Craig were, yet our volunteers continue to be ignored.
From what the article said, Hijo,
the remains the government was finding at Ft. Craig weren't even Civil War
casualties—a lot of the ones they
identified didn't even get to New Mexico until after the battle at Glorieta, after the
end of the Civil War.
Here's something I think our
heirs will find interesting. It's a comparison of President Roosevelt's 1905 Proclamation
establishing the Jémez Forest Reserve with the one President Harrison
used to set aside the Pecos River Forest Reserve in 1892.
The first difference was that Harrison's
proclamation number 316 had a township and range description of the land being
withdrawn while Roosevelt's Jemez Forest Reserve proclamation didn't have a
description—just a simple grid map, but that's not all. Harrison's proclamation
had a paragraph that read:
Excepting
from the force and effect of this proclamation all land which may have been
prior to the date hereof embraced in any valid Spanish or Mexican grant or in
any legal entry or covered by any lawful filing duly made in the proper United
States land office ….
Roosevelt's proclamation for the
Jémez Forest Reserve skipped that paragraph, Hijo. Even though the San Joaquín,
Juan Bautista and La Petaca grants had been removed from the government maps they
still physically existed. Since Roosevelt wanted all of the land in the three
grants he probably left that paragraph out intentionally so questions about our
grants wouldn't slow him down.
But you better believe that both proclamations
say the same thing when it comes to timber. The words are slightly different
but they make the same point. President Harrisons proclamation for the Pecos
River Forest Reserve had this to say:
And whereas the public lands in the Territory of New Mexico
within the limits hereinafter described are in part covered with timber, and it
appears that the public good would be promoted by setting apart and reserving
said lands as a public reservation.
Now listen to how that part of Roosevelt's
Jémez Proclamation read:
And
whereas, the public lands, in the Territory of New Mexico which are hereinafter
indicated, are in part covered with timber, and it appears that the public good
would be promoted by setting aside said lands as a public reservation …
Both show how important the timber
was—and that the forests should be placed in public reservations.
Before we go to something else I
want to read a Joint Memorial the New Mexico Legislature passed on February 4, 1905
and sent to Congress.
To
The President of the United States Protesting Against
The Creation of the Río De Jémez Reserve.
That
the said reserve has been established and set apart without the several
thousands of people who live within the boundaries thereof and are mostly
affected thereby, ever having any notice of the intent to establish it, and
without being given any opportunity to protest against the same.
That
the said reserve embraces a section of country almost as large or larger in
area than the state of New Jersey … and including within its outer boundaries
large tracts of land that are absolutely non-forest in character, and valuable
only for mining, agricultural and grazing purposes, besides fifteen or more
towns and villages and a large number of farms and stock ranches …
Your
memorialists further represent that New Mexico's chief industry is that of
sheep raising and that the territory has within the last four years, advanced
from the fourth to the first place in the nation as a wool producer, and that a
large portion of the country so included in this forest reserve has been for
nearly a half a century last past the principal grazing ground for a large
number of flocks [sic] of the territory and from which grazing ground all sheep
will be thereby excluded, thus irreparably injuring the owners thereof as well
as the territory at large.
That
the establishing of this reserve practically amounts to the confiscation of all
the ranches and homes of the people living within the boundaries thereof, and
although they established themselves there more than fifty years ago and
endured the great hardships and risks in the accumulation of the property they
possess, they are to be driven out to begin life anew.…
Wherefore,
your memorialists respectfully and earnestly pray that all that portion of the
Río de Jémez reserve that lies within Taos and Río Arriba counties, may be restored
to the public domain and consequent location and entry, relieving the people
who will suffer thereby so much in consequence of the establishment of said
reserve over such a large area of land of non-forest country: …
I'm glad we found that memorial, Grandpa, it makes it clear the New Mexico
Legislature was against Roosevelt setting up the Río de Jémez Reserve. Do we
have any other information that President Roosevelt was setting up reserves the
people didn't want?
Here's one we can start with:
In
January1907, there was considerable opposition to a Presidential proclamation
that reserved thousands of acres of prime Douglas-fir timberlands in northern
Washington State. The local press, chambers of commerce, and the Washington State
congressional delegation protested that the reserve would cause undue hardship
on residents by taking away homestead and "prime" agricultural lands
(the land, in fact, was not agricultural, abut[sic] heavily forested) as well
as impeding the future development of the State.
Why is it important to talk about what was happening in Washington State?
You'll see what I'm getting at soon
enough. Here's more of the article:
After
considerable pressure, Pinchot and President Roosevelt relented by, by[sic]
saying that the reserve had been a "clerical" error. Soon thereafter,
Senator Charles W. Fulton of Oregon, who had been implicated in the land frauds
in that State, introduced an amendment to the annual agricultural
appropriations bill.
I thought it was important that
Roosevelt, when he got caught setting up that Forest Reserve in Washington, claimed it had been a "clerical error,"
withdrew the proclamation and returned the land to the State of Washington.
It's too bad he wasn't pressured into declaring the Jémez Forest
Reserve a "clerical error."
Our world would have been a
completely different place if that had happened. Here's the rest of the part I wanted
to read:
This
amendment, the Fulton Amendment prohibited the President from creating any
additional forest reserves in the six Western States of Washington Oregon,
Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado; took away his power to proclaim reserves,
established under the Forest Reserve (Creative) Act of 1891; and gave Congress
alone the authority to establish reserves. However, before this bill was signed
into law on March 4, 1907, Gifford Pinchot and the President came up with a
plan.
On
the eve of the bill's signing, Chief Forester Pinchot and his assistant Arthur
C. Ringland used a heavy blue pencil to draw many new forest reserves on maps.
As soon as the map was finished and a proclamation written, the President
signed the paper to establish another forest reserve. On March 1st and 2nd,
Roosevelt established 17 new or combined forest reserves containing over 16
million acres in these six Western States. These have since been referred to as
the "Midnight Reserves."
What did the Forest Service have to say about that?
Well—one thing it couldn't do was
deny that President Roosevelt and Chief Forester Pinchot established all the
reserves that the article mentioned because the article I was reading was from a
Forest Service Newsletter. By publishing the article in a Forest Service Newsletter
the government was actually blowing a whistle on itself.
The article said Roosevelt had
established 17 new or combined forest reserves containing 16,000,000 acres in the
six Western States. We looked into what actually happened in those 2 days and the
documents we found indicated that, counting other forest reserves they
proclaimed outside the six Western States, they had actually converted more
like 30,000,000 acres to forest reserves. Instead of seventeen new or combined
reserves like the article claimed, our documents show that thirty-three reserves
were actually created, combined, enlarged or modified. Of those five were new,
eight were set apart from existing reserves, fifteen, including the Jémez
Forest Reserve, were enlarged, and five others were modified.
Did you find any other articles about Pinchot and Roosevelt making the
reserves—any other information to support what you just said? It's pretty serious,
Grandpa, for you to say that the President and Chief Forester were ignoring
Congress when they were making those reserves. It sounds like you're saying Roosevelt
and Pinchot were intentionally converting millions of acres of private lands
into public lands at the same time Congress was trying to take his power to establish forest reserves.
That's exactly what I'm saying,
Hijo. I don't know of any better evidence of what I just said than what I'm
going to read next—from President
Roosevelt's own words—from his own memoir:
While the Agricultural
Appropriation Bill was passing through the Senate, in 1907, Senator Fulton, of
Oregon, secured an amendment providing that the President could not set aside
any additional National Forests in the six Northwestern States. This meant
retaining some sixteen million of acres to be exploited by land grabbers and by
the representatives of the great special interests, at the expense of the
public interest.
But for four years the Forest Service
had been gathering field notes as to what forests ought to be set aside in
these States, and so was prepared to act. It was equally undesirable to veto
the whole agricultural bill, and to sign it with this amendment effective.
Accordingly, a plan to create the necessary National Forest in these States
before the Agricultural Bill could be passed and signed was laid before me by
Mr. Pinchot. I approved it. The necessary papers were immediately prepared. I
signed the last proclamation a couple of days before by my signature, the bill
became law; and when the friends of the special interests in
the Senate got their amendment
through and woke up, they discovered that sixteen million acres of timberland
had been saved for the people by putting them in the National Forests before
the land grabbers could get at them.
The opponents of the Forest Service
turned handsprings in their wrath; and dire were their threats against the
Executive; but the threats could not be carried out, and were really only a
tribute to the efficiency of our action.
Have
we found any information on exactly how many acres President Roosevelt placed
in forest reserves during the time he was President?
Yes. We've found some information and believe
it's accurate:
The forest reserves of the United
States quadrupled to about 194,000,000 acres under President Roosevelt's
orders, equal in area to all the states on the Atlantic coast from Maine to
Virginia and the states of Vermont, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. This is a
greater area than France, Belgium, and The Netherlands combined.
Over Roosevelt's articulate
objections, "An Act Making appropriations for the Department of
Agriculture for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and
eight," H.R. 24815, Public Act No. 242, U.S. Congress. 59th. 2nd Session
was passed on Feb. 25, 1907. Unwilling to pocket-veto the entire appropriations
act, Roosevelt permitted Gifford Pinchot and his staff to identify some
16,000,000 acres of forest in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado and
Wyoming which the President then designated as new national forest lands by
executive order, between Congress's passage of the bill and its signing on Marth
[sic] 4th by the reluctant President, who was now forbidden to create or
enlarge the newly designated National Forests.
Do you have the names of the New Mexico reserves and the dates they
were established?
We sure do. The Jémez was established,
as we've already discussed, on October 12, 1905; the Lincoln and Portales were proclaimed on October 3, 1905; the Lincoln was enlarged on June 25, 1906; the Mount
Taylor was
proclaimed on October 6, 1906; the Gallinas, Magdalena, Peloncillo and San Mateo were established on November 5, 1906 and the Manzano was established on November 6, 1906.
As we said earlier, Roosevelt increases
the Jémez Forest Reserve by over 223,000 acres and created the Taos Forest Reserve,
all on the same day—November 7, 1906 and he created
the Big Burros on
February 6, 1907, and the Las Ánimas in Colorado and New Mexico on March 1, 1907.
The Jémez Reserve was enlarged in 1906?
Sure was. It was extended east toward
the Río Grande Gorge and took in more land to the west.
On May 2, 1907, two months after
Pinchot and Roosevelt established the "Midnight Reserves," James Wilson, the
Secretary of Agriculture approved a pamphlet for publication that you're going
to find interesting. Its' called, The Use
of the Forest.
Here's
some of what it says:
At
first a great many of the National Forests were made without knowing exactly
where the boundary lines should run. This was unfortunate; because some
agricultural lands which should have been excluded were taken in, and a good
deal of timber land which should have been included was left out. This could
have been avoided by making examinations on the ground, but there was no money
for the work, and so the boundaries had to be drawn very roughly …
Since
1900, however, men and money have been available for field examinations and
rough and inaccurate work has been done away with entirely. The old and
carelessly made National Forests have been surveyed and mapped, and the
President has put back into the public domain those lands which should not have
been included. Now, before new Forests or additions to old ones are made, all
the lands are examined on the ground.
The
greatest care is used in this work. Every section of land is examined, mapped,
and described, and the boundaries are drawn to exclude, as far as possible,
everything which does not properly belong in a National Forest. Two very
detailed maps are made. One shows just what is growing on the land, the other
shows who owns or claims the land. Every bit of cultivated land is located and
mapped, as well as the land which is suited to cultivation but which is not
cultivated at present …
Before
any new National Forest is made it is known just why it should be made, just
what effect it will have, and just where it should be located.
What do you think about that,
Hijo?
All I can say, Grandpa, is whoever wrote that had no clue what Pinchot and
President Roosevelt had been up to two months earlier.
Why do you say that?
Because it was the exact opposite of what they had done. Do you have
any idea who wrote it?
Sure do—Gifford Pinchot.
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