Montoya, Maria E.,
Translating property : the Maxwell Land Grant and the conflict over land in the American West, 1840-1900 / Maria E. Montoya. - Lawrence, Kan. : University Press of Kansas, c2005. - xxii, 299 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Includes Index and Bibliography
Contested boundaries -- Regulating land, labor, and bodies : Mexican married women, peones, and the remains of feudalism -- From hacienda to colony -- Prejudice, confrontation, and resistance : taking control of the grant -- The law of the land : U.S. v. Maxwell Land Grant Company -- The legacy of land grants in the American West.
"Although Mexico lost its northern territories to the United States in 1848, battles over property rights and ownership have remained intense, struggles no less painful because they take place mainly in the courtroom rather than in the field. This turbulent, vividly narrated story of the Maxwell Land Grant, a single tract of 1.7 million acres in northeastern New Mexico and southern Colorado, shows how contending groups reinterpret the meaning of property to uphold their conflicting claims to land. The Southwest has been and continues to be the scene of a collision between land regimes with radically different cultural conceptions of the land's purpose." "We meet Jicarilla Apaches whose identity is rooted in a sense of place; Mexican governers and hacienda patrones seeking status as New World feudal magnates; "rings" of greedy territorial politicians on the make; women finding their own way in a man's world; Anglo homesteaders looking for a place to settle in the American West; and Dutch investors in search of gargantuan returns on their capital. The European and American newcomers all "mistranslated" the prior property regimes into new rules to their own advantage and the disadvantage of those who had lived on the land before them. Their efforts to control the Maxwell Land Grant by wrapping it in their own particular myths of law and custom inevitably led to conflict and even violence as cultures and legal regimes clashed. With transformations of the property systems came huge changes for those already living on the grant. At each stage in this history, the previous occupants resisted, accomodated, and in some cases were removed from the place they had called their home." "Maria E. Montoya explores all the battles - legal, political, cultural, and violent - that swept across the territory as New Mexico was drawn into the modern industrial and market systems of the eastern United States and Europe."--Jacket.
0700613811 (pbk. : alk. paper) 9780700613816 (pbk. : alk. paper)
2004030866
Land tenure--History--New Mexico--19th century.
Maxwell Land Grant (N.M. and Colo.)--History.
New Mexico--History--1848-
New Mexico--Race relations.
978.9 Mon 48
Translating property : the Maxwell Land Grant and the conflict over land in the American West, 1840-1900 / Maria E. Montoya. - Lawrence, Kan. : University Press of Kansas, c2005. - xxii, 299 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Includes Index and Bibliography
Contested boundaries -- Regulating land, labor, and bodies : Mexican married women, peones, and the remains of feudalism -- From hacienda to colony -- Prejudice, confrontation, and resistance : taking control of the grant -- The law of the land : U.S. v. Maxwell Land Grant Company -- The legacy of land grants in the American West.
"Although Mexico lost its northern territories to the United States in 1848, battles over property rights and ownership have remained intense, struggles no less painful because they take place mainly in the courtroom rather than in the field. This turbulent, vividly narrated story of the Maxwell Land Grant, a single tract of 1.7 million acres in northeastern New Mexico and southern Colorado, shows how contending groups reinterpret the meaning of property to uphold their conflicting claims to land. The Southwest has been and continues to be the scene of a collision between land regimes with radically different cultural conceptions of the land's purpose." "We meet Jicarilla Apaches whose identity is rooted in a sense of place; Mexican governers and hacienda patrones seeking status as New World feudal magnates; "rings" of greedy territorial politicians on the make; women finding their own way in a man's world; Anglo homesteaders looking for a place to settle in the American West; and Dutch investors in search of gargantuan returns on their capital. The European and American newcomers all "mistranslated" the prior property regimes into new rules to their own advantage and the disadvantage of those who had lived on the land before them. Their efforts to control the Maxwell Land Grant by wrapping it in their own particular myths of law and custom inevitably led to conflict and even violence as cultures and legal regimes clashed. With transformations of the property systems came huge changes for those already living on the grant. At each stage in this history, the previous occupants resisted, accomodated, and in some cases were removed from the place they had called their home." "Maria E. Montoya explores all the battles - legal, political, cultural, and violent - that swept across the territory as New Mexico was drawn into the modern industrial and market systems of the eastern United States and Europe."--Jacket.
0700613811 (pbk. : alk. paper) 9780700613816 (pbk. : alk. paper)
2004030866
Land tenure--History--New Mexico--19th century.
Maxwell Land Grant (N.M. and Colo.)--History.
New Mexico--History--1848-
New Mexico--Race relations.
978.9 Mon 48