California Land Act of 1851 Enables Systematic Legal Theft from Mexican Land Grant Holders

Congress passes the California Land Act of 1851 (9 Stat. 631), sponsored by California Senator William M. Gwin, establishing a three-member Board of Land Commissioners to determine the validity of prior Spanish and Mexican land grants. The Act places the burden of proof of title on landholders—contrary to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo under which the United States agreed to respect land grants and protect the property rights of Mexican nationals—and initiates a lengthy process of litigation that results in most Mexican Californians (Californios) losing their land titles. This requirement directly violates Articles Eight, Nine, and Ten of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which guaranteed property rights of Mexican nationals, demonstrating deliberate institutional bad faith and systematic dispossession cloaked in legal procedure.

The Board of Land Commissioners opens its sessions in San Francisco on January 2, 1852, consisting initially of Hiland Hall, Harry I. Thornton, and James Wilson appointed by President Millard Fillmore. In 1853, President Franklin Pierce changes the board by appointing Alpheus Felch, Thompson Campbell, and R. Augustus Thompson as commissioners. The commission operates for five years total (the period is twice extended by Congress from the original three-year term). While the commission eventually confirms 604 of the 813 claims, almost all claims go to court and result in protracted litigation. The confirmation process requires lawyers, translators, and surveyors, and takes an average of 17 years to resolve. All but three of the commission’s decisions are appealed to federal courts. The expense of proving ownership—which should not have been necessary under the treaty—causes many Californios to lose their holdings.

The expense of the long court battles requires many landholders to sell portions of their property or even trade it in payment for legal services. Even when Californio families win legal title to their lands, many find themselves bankrupt from attorney fees or taxes. The Peralta family, for example, loses all but 700 of their 49,000 acres in the East Bay to lawyers, taxes, squatters, and speculators. The rancheros become land-rich and cash-poor, and the burden of attempting to defend their claims is often financially overwhelming. Grantees lose their lands as a result of mortgage default, payment of attorney fees, or payment of other personal debts. Land is also lost as a result of fraud. Historian Hubert Howe Bancroft notes in his 1888 History of California: “It was to the Californians owning lands under genuine and valid titles, seven eighths of all the claimants before the commission, that the great wrong was done.”

The documents assembled for the commission consist of old land records from the Spanish and Mexican governments in Monterey, collected into 300 books of 800 pages each, “some pages worn and stained, a few with musket holes shot through.” Most documents are in Spanish and there is much disagreement in American legal circles as to intentions and meanings of various phrases. American officials discover that the Mexican government had given many land grants to Californios just before the Americans took control—the Mexican governors had rewarded loyal supporters. This provides justification for suspicion of all claims, even though most grants are legitimate. The California Land Act of 1851 demonstrates institutional corruption through deliberate treaty violation, reversal of the burden of proof to disadvantage the vulnerable, use of legal complexity and costs as weapons of dispossession, and the subordination of property rights and treaty obligations to Anglo settler interests and land speculation.