The New Mexico claim of Beaubin and Miranda transferred to L. B. Maxwell, was allowed by the Government in 1869, but for ninety-six thousand acres only. The owner refused to comply with the law, and in 1874 the Department of the Interior ordered the grant to be treated as public lands and thrown open to settlement. Despite this order, the Government officials in New Mexico, acting in collusion with other interested parties, illegally continued to assess it as private property. In 1877 a fraudulent tax sale was held, and the grant, fraudulently enlarged to 1,714,764.94 acres, was purchased by M. M. Mills, a member of the New Mexico Legislature. He transferred the title to T. B. Catron, the United States Attorney for New Mexico. Presently Elkins turned up as the principal owner. The details of how this claim was repeatedly shown up to be fraudulent by Land Commissioners and Congressional Committees; how the settlers in New Mexico fought it and sought to have it declared void, and the law enforced; [Footnote: "Land Titles in New Mexico and Colorado," House Reports First Session, Fifty-second Congress, 1891-92, Vol. iv, Report No. 1253. Also, House Reports, First Session, Fifty-second Congress, 1891-92, Vol. vii, Report No. 1824. Also, House Reports, First Session, Forty-ninth Congress, 1885-86, ii: 170.] and how Elkins, for some years himself a Delegate in Congress from New Mexico, succeeded in having the grant finally validated on technical grounds, and "judicially cleared" of all taint of fraud, by an astounding decision of the Supreme Court of the United States—a decision contrary to the facts as specifically shown by successive Government officials—all of these details are set forth fully in another part of this work. [Footnote: See "The Elkins Fortune," in Vol. iii.]
The forgeries and fraudulent surveys by which these huge estates were secured were astoundingly bold and frequent. Large numbers of private land claims, rejected by various Land Commissioners as fraudulent, were corruptly confirmed by Congress. In 1870, the heirs of one Gervacio Nolan applied for confirmation of two grants alleged to have been made to an ancestor under the colonization laws of New Mexico. They claimed more than 1,500,000 acres, but Congress conditionally confirmed their claim to the extent of forty-eight thousand acres only, asserting that the Mexican laws had limited to this area the area of public lands that could be granted to one individual. In 1880 the Land Office re-opened the claim, and a new survey was made by surveyors in collusion with the claimants, and hired by them. When the report of this survey reached Washington, the Land Office officials were interested to note that the estate had grown from forty-eight thousand acres to five hundred and seventy-five thousand acres, or twelve times the legal quantity. [Footnote: House Reports, First Session, Forty-ninth Congress, 1885-86, ii: 171.] The actual settlers were then evicted. The romancer might say that the officials were amazed; they were not; such fraudulent enlargements were common.
The New Mexico estate of Francis Martinez, granted under the Mexican laws restricting a single grant to forty-eight thousand acres, was by a fraudulent survey, extended to 594,515.55 acres, and patented in 1881. [Footnote: Ibid., 172.] A New Mexico grant said to have been made to Salvador Gonzales, in 1742, comprising "a spot of land to enable him to plant a cornfield for the support of his family." was fraudulently surveyed and enlarged to 103,959.31 acres—a survey amended later by reducing the area to 23,661 acres. [Footnote: House Reports, etc, 1885-86, ii: 172.] The B. M. Montaya grant in New Mexico, limited to forty-eight thousand acres, under the Mexican colonization laws, was fraudulently surveyed for 151,056.97 acres. The Estancia grant in New Mexico also restricted under the colonization act to forty-eight thousand acres, was enlarged by a fraudulent survey to 415,036.56 acres. [Footnote: Ibid., 173.] In 1768, Ignacio Chaves and others in New Mexico petitioned for a tract of about two and one-fourth superficial leagues, or approximately a little less than ten thousand acres. A fraudulent survey magnified this claim to 243,036.43 acres. [Footnote: Ibid.]
These are a very few of the large number of forged or otherwise fraudulent claims.
Some were rejected by Congress; many, despite Land Office protests, were confirmed. By these fraudulent and corrupt operations, enormous estates were obtained in New Mexico, Colorado and in other sections. The Pablo Montaya grant comprised in all, 655,468.07 acres; the Mora grant 827,621.01 acres; the Tierra Amarilla grant 594,515 acres, and the Sangre de Cristo grant 998,780.46 acres. All of these were corruptly obtained. [Footnote: See Resolution of House Committee on Private Land Claims, June, 1892, demanding a thorough investigation. The House took no action.—Report No. 1824, 1892.] Scores of other claims were confirmed for lesser areas. During Commissioner Sparks' tenure of office, claims to 8,500,000 acres in New Mexico alone were pending before Congress. A comprehensive account of the operations of the land-grabbers, giving the explicit facts, as told in Government and court records, of their system of fraud, is presented in the chapter on the Elkins fortune.
FORGERY, PERJURY AND FRAUDULENT SURVEY.
Reporting, in 1881, to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, Henry M. Atkinson, U. S. Surveyor-General of New Mexico, wrote that "the investigation of this office for the past five years has demonstrated that some of the alleged grants are forgeries." He set forth that unless the court before which these claims were adjudicated could have full access to the archives, "it is much more liable to be imposed upon by fraudulent title papers." [Footnote: "The Public Domain," etc. 1124. Also see next Footnote.] In fact, the many official reports describe with what cleverness the claimants to these great areas forged their papers, and the facility with which they bought up witnesses to perjure for them. Finding it impossible to go back of the aggregate and corroborative "evidence" thus offered, the courts were frequently forced to decide in favor of the claimants. To use a modern colloquial phrase, the cases were "framed up." In the case of Luis Jamarillo's claim to eighteen thousand acres in New Mexico, U. S. Surveyor-General Julian of New Mexico, in recommending the rejection of the claim and calling attention to the perjury committed, said:
When these facts are considered, in connection with the further and well-known fact that such witnesses can readily be found by grant claimants, and that in this way the most monstrous frauds have been practiced in extending the lines of such grants in New Mexico, it is not possible to accept the statement of this witness as to the west boundary of this grant, which he locates at such a distance from the east line as to include more than four times the amount of land actually granted. [Footnote: Senate Executive Documents, First Session, Fiftieth Congress, 1887-88, Vol. i, Private Land Claim No. 103, Ex. Doc. No. 20:3. Documents Nos. 3 to 11, 13 to 23, 25 to 29 and 38 in the same volume deal with similar claims.]
"The widespread belief of the people of this country," wrote Commissioner Sparks in 1885, "that the land department has been largely conducted to the advantage of speculation and monopoly, private and corporate, rather than in the public interest, I have found supported by developments in every branch of the service…. I am satisfied that thousands of claims without foundation in law or equity, involving millions of acres of public land, have been annually passed to patent upon the single proposition that nobody but the Government had any adverse interest. The vast machinery of the land department has been devoted to the chief result of conveying the title of the United States to public lands upon fraudulent entries under loose construction of law." [Footnote: House Ex. Docs., 1885-86, ii: 156.] Whenever a capitalist's interest was involved, the law was always "loosely construed," but the strictest interpretation was invariably given to laws passed against the working population.
It was estimated, in 1892, that 57,000,000 acres of land in New Mexico and Colorado had, for more than thirty years, been unlawfully treated by public officers as having been ceded to the United States by Mexico. The Maxwell, Sangre de Cristo, Nolan and other grants were within this area. The House Committee on Private Land Claims reported on April 29, 1892: "A long list of alleged Mexican and Spanish grants within the limits of the Texas cession have been confirmed, or quit claimed by Congress, under the false representation that said alleged grants were located in the territory of New Mexico ceded by the treaty; an enormous area of land has long been and is now held as confirmed Mexican and Spanish grants, located in the territory of Mexico ceded by the treaty when such is not the fact." [Footnote: House Report, 1892, No. 1253:8.]