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The San Miguel del Vado Land Grant (also known as the San Miguel del Bado Land Grant) is one of the northern Spanish land grants in New Mexico. The original grant was lost, but a second grant was obtained by 58 men and their respective families on March 12, 1803. Two days later, the procedure was repeated at San José del Vado, three miles upstream from San Miguel, distributing farm land to an additional forty-seven heads of household, including two women. Fifty-three men had earlier submitted the petition, and were granted temporary possession on November 24, 1794, pending satisfaction of prescribed criteria. Thirteen of the original men who applied for the grant were genízaros, those Native Americans, captured or sold into slavery, some of whom had complained of poor conditions and were granted lands by the governor for farming, often to provide a buffer of protection for larger towns, such as Santa Fé, against enemies. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in ''United States v. Sandoval'' that the grant would be reduced from the surveyor general's estimated 315,000 acres, including common lands, to the little more than 5,000 acres then under private ownership. ==History== This land grant was in the vicinity of the Pecos River, below the Pecos Pueblo, which was eventually abandoned by the dwindling population of Native Americans, the remnants of which moved to Jemez Pueblo in 1838. A ''vado'' or ''bado'' is a word for a place where a river is forged.〔Malcolm Ebright, ''Land Grants and Law Suits in Northern New Mexico'' (1994)〕 This vado was a meeting place for trade between the Plains and Pueblo tribes. It was a passage through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains for the Puebloan peoples of the Rio Grande valley to access the plains for buffalo hunting. It became the passage for the later Spanish explorers, ''comancheros'' and other frontier traders, ''ciboleros'' and other buffalo hunters, Indian fighters, the Santa Fe Trail, Civil War armies, and later still for the southern route of the transcontinental railroad. In 1540, Pecos Pueblo (then known as ''Cicuique'') had been the only pueblo to send a delegation of about 20 men, led by Bigotes, to respond to Coronado's open invitation to the Pueblo Peoples to meet with him at the Zuni Pueblos (''Seis Ciudades de Cíbola'') following his "Conquest of Cíbola". Bigotes' men were multilingual and traveled as traders, emissaries, and spies. They enticed Coronado to appoint Captain Hernando de Alvarado to further expeditions eastward. Under this guidance, the Spanish saw the Tiwa Pueblos of the Rio Grande valley. Then they ventured further to Bigotes' Cicuique pueblo on the Pecos river, and through the mountain passage below, to see the plains buffalo further east. The first permanent Spanish settlement in northern New Mexico was led by Juan de Oñate in the summer of 1598. Oñate’s ''pobladores'' or colonists extended ''El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro'' over 600 miles, reaching the San Juan Pueblo (currently Ohkay Owingeh) in the Tewa province and establishing the Hispanic settlement of San Gabriel in the Tewa pueblo of Yunque on the Rio Grande. Oñate rewarded the ''pobladores'' with ''encomiendas'' or grants of Indian labor, for meritorious service, obligating these ''encomenderos'' to defend the Pueblos and provide them religious instruction. In return for these ''services'', Pueblo peoples were required to pay a tax, or ‘tribute.’ Prior to the Pueblo Revolt, Pecos was considered to be the richest ''encomienda'' due mainly to the procurement and export of buffalo hides from the plains. Pecos Pueblo had long been a hub for trade between Plains Indians to the east and the Pueblo peoples to the west. In 1583 the Chamuscado-Rodríguez party described Pecos Pueblo as the finest and largest of the pueblos seen by the party. Pecos Pueblo may have housed a garrison of ten Spanish soldiers and their family members from 1750 until the establishment of the San Miguel del Vado Grant. In 1794, the San Miguel petition was submitted with the partial truth that this was a genízaro settlement, in order to provide more viable argument for attaining the grant. The site was described as being about 20 miles downstream and southeast of Pecos pueblo, where the trail to the plains crossed the river, with sufficient space for both the petitioners and some of the more destitute residents of the province. The criteria to be met by the grantees were as follows:
The boundaries were described as:
Following a period of about 20 years of development to meet the grant requirements, individual parcels of land were allotted by don Pedro Bautista Pino in the name of Governor Chacón's verbal order of March 12, 1803. Pino measured the total distance along the river that was under irrigation with the aid of his assistant José Miguel Tafoya. After setting aside a portion of land for grazing their livestock and sheep as commons and additional land for future inhabitants to cultivate under oversight of the justice of the precinct, the remainder was divided by the number of families to obtain the number of ''suertes'' or chances, and heads of families drew lots for their ''repartos'' or shares, which they were not allowed to sell for a period of ten years. Two days later, he repeated a similar procedure at the settlement of San José del Vado, three miles upstream from San Miguel, distributing farm land to an additional forty-five men and two women as heads of household. On March 30, 1803 Governor Fernando Chacón approved the grant.〔Allotment of lands at San José del Bado, March 14, 1803, and Approval by Governor Fernando Chacón, SANM I: 887.〕 The San Miguel settlers had finished their church by 1811, and in 1812 the Pecos Pueblo priest moved to San Miguel. San Miguel's population now outnumbered the declining Pecos Pueblo which was suffering from Hispanic encroachment of their land and Comanche raids. Following the Mexican War of Independence which ended in 1821, San Miguel del Bado became the administrative headquarters for the northeastern plains region of New Mexico with the election of an ''ayuntamiento'' or town council. In 1827 a detachment of Santa Fe ''presidio'' (the only formal presidio in New Mexico in the Mexican period) soldiers stationed at San Miguel classified as a separate company for protection against Indians and to reduce Santa Fe Trail smuggling and import tax evasion. In order to pacify hostile Plains Indians, soldiers were regularly provided with lances, firearm parts and trinkets for gifts. Bishop José Antonio Laureano de Zubiría, the first bishop to visit New Mexico in 72 years, visited the San Miguel church in 1833, describing it as "utterly deprived" and noted that "this parish church lacks even the most essential things for the celebration of the divine mysteries." The customs house was moved from Santa Fe to San Miguel in 1835. This military protection encouraged permanent settlement of the Las Vegas grant. The expansion of the increasing population of San Miguel into areas further south along the Pecos River and into areas of northeastern New Mexico (such as Las Vegas, Sapello, and Ocate) was also supported in an 1831 petition to the governor by José Francisco Leyba, the parish priest of San Miguel. He also included the observation that losses of cattle and sheep growers suffered under Indians would be lessened if Las Vegas became a permanent settlement with occasional military protection. The Las Vegas grant was completed between 1835 and 1838.〔''ibid.'' Ebright, Malcolm, The Villanueva State Park〕 During the Mexican–American War in 1846 General Kearny's forces followed the Santa Fe Trail below Bent's Fort to invade and establish a U.S. provisional government of New Mexico. Prior to reaching Santa Fe, he gave speeches from house-tops in Las Vegas, Tecolote and San Miguel, absolving the people from their allegiance to governor Manuel Armijo and Mexico. He promised protection of life, property and religion to all who would peacably submit to the United States government, and death for those who would resist.〔Bancroft, Hubert Howe & Oak, Henry Lebbeus (''History of Arizona and New Mexico: 1530–1888'' ) History Company (1889)〕 After leaving Tecolote, the following events within the San Miguel del Vado land grant, as well as some occurring five years earlier during the 1841 Texan Santa Fe Expedition, were described.〔Connelley, William Elsey (''War with Mexico, 1846–1847 Doniphan's Expedition and the Conquest of New Mexico and California'' ) (1907)〕
Donaciano Vigil had, over a 25-year military career, advanced from private to eventually become captain and company commander of the San Miguel del Bado militia. He had participated in the capture of the Texas Santa Fe expedition, and was the officer who protested against governor Armijo's order to disband the troops he had positioned at Apache Canyon to resist Kearny's approaching forces. In April 1849 the Santa Fe native Father Ramón Ortiz y Miera, who had earlier voted against ratifying the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as a member of the Mexican congress, arrived in New Mexico from Chihuahua in the capacity of commissioner for repatriation of families wishing to emigrate to Mexico. He reported that upon his arrival in San Miguel del Vado, the people of the town submitted 900 requests for repatriation assistance out of a total of only 1,000 families. His statement read, "they preferred to lose all rather than belong to a government in which they had fewer guarantees and were treated with more disregard than the African race." The U.S. provisional government, represented by Governor John M. Washington and Secretary Donaciano Vigil, responded to this report of potential depopulation by officially discouraging all New Mexicans from emigration, and appropriating the function of obtaining petition signatures from potential emigrants. They prohibited Father Ortiz from further solicitations.〔Martín González de la Vara, "The Return to Mexico: The Relocation of New Mexican Families to Chihuahua and the Confirmation of a Frontier Region, 1848–1854" from (''The Contested Homeland: a Chicano History of New Mexico'' ), ed. David R. Maciel & Erlinda Gonzales-Berry (2000) University of New Mexico Press〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「San Miguel del Vado Land Grant」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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