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Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840-1900
When American settlers arrived in the southwestern borderlands, they assumed that the land was unencumbered by property claims. But, as María Montoya shows, the Southwest was no empty quarter simply waiting to be parceled up.
Although Anglo farmers claimed absolute rights under the Homestead Act, their claims were contested by Native Americans who had lived on the land for generations, Mexican magnates like Lucien Maxwell who controlled vast parcels under grants from Mexican governors, and foreign companies who thought they had purchased open land. The result was that the Southwest inevitably became a battleground between land regimes with radically different cultural concepts.
The struggle over the Maxwell Land Grant, a 1.7-million-acre tract straddling New Mexico and Colorado, demonstrates how contending parties reinterpreted the meaning of property to uphold their claims to the land. Montoya reveals how those claims, with their deep historical and racial roots, have been addressed to the satisfaction of some and the bitter frustration of others.
Translating Property describes how European and American investors effectively mistranslated prior property regimes into new rules that worked to their own advantage—and against those who had lived on the land previously. Montoya explores the legal, political, and cultural battles that swept across the Southwest as this land was drawn into world market systems. She shows that these legal issues still have real meaning for thousands of Mexican Americans who continue to fight for land granted to their families before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, or for continuing communal access to land now claimed by others.
This new edition of Montoya's book brings the land grant controversy up to date. A year after its original publication, the Colorado Supreme Court tried once more to translate Mexican property ideals into the U.S. system of legal rights; and in 2004 the Government Accounting Office issued the federal government's most comprehensive effort to sort out the tangled history of land rights, concluding that Congress was under no obligation to compensate heirs of land grants.
Montoya recaps these recent developments, further expanding our understanding of the battles over property rights and the persistence of inequality in the Southwest.
Although Anglo farmers claimed absolute rights under the Homestead Act, their claims were contested by Native Americans who had lived on the land for generations, Mexican magnates like Lucien Maxwell who controlled vast parcels under grants from Mexican governors, and foreign companies who thought they had purchased open land. The result was that the Southwest inevitably became a battleground between land regimes with radically different cultural concepts.
The struggle over the Maxwell Land Grant, a 1.7-million-acre tract straddling New Mexico and Colorado, demonstrates how contending parties reinterpreted the meaning of property to uphold their claims to the land. Montoya reveals how those claims, with their deep historical and racial roots, have been addressed to the satisfaction of some and the bitter frustration of others.
Translating Property describes how European and American investors effectively mistranslated prior property regimes into new rules that worked to their own advantage—and against those who had lived on the land previously. Montoya explores the legal, political, and cultural battles that swept across the Southwest as this land was drawn into world market systems. She shows that these legal issues still have real meaning for thousands of Mexican Americans who continue to fight for land granted to their families before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, or for continuing communal access to land now claimed by others.
This new edition of Montoya's book brings the land grant controversy up to date. A year after its original publication, the Colorado Supreme Court tried once more to translate Mexican property ideals into the U.S. system of legal rights; and in 2004 the Government Accounting Office issued the federal government's most comprehensive effort to sort out the tangled history of land rights, concluding that Congress was under no obligation to compensate heirs of land grants.
Montoya recaps these recent developments, further expanding our understanding of the battles over property rights and the persistence of inequality in the Southwest.
322 pages, Paperback
First published February 27, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 30, 2021
For fans of the New West History Movement, this book is a must. Dr. Montoyo has done amazing research and brings it to bear on a topic that has relevance now. The Maxwell land grant in New Mexico was created in the early 1840s. This is the story of the padrones, peons, and others who came to the property under Mexican aegis, continued in the behaviors, culture, and livlihoods under the US conquest and transition to US territory. How does one get from communal, shared, and subsistence endeavors of a Mexican system to a surveyed township system of fee simple ownership, aiming at market production? This is the story of this book. She takes us through the various peoples who populate the region, the 'owners' of the property, the outside commercial interests, the legal and illegal shenanigans, that provided for a small number winners and a multitued of losers. She details the American ideology that frames the intent, action, and outcomes of these events. Unfortunately, it is not a story for people interested in justice.
October 4, 2022
all i will say: it is much more enjoyable to read legal history when there is social context involved.
August 28, 2009
Badly edited, extremely repetitive, informative but quite long-winded. And the author is desperately trying to write a book all about women's rights in the early west, even if that's only tangentially related to the primary subject.
December 3, 2011
not the best book ever, but made a good case on how different people - Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglo Americans - viewed the ownership of land in the west as it passed from one to the next. had to read for grad class.
September 24, 2008
About as good as I expected; had to read it for legal history!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews