Mapping Indigenous Land: Native Land Grants in Colonial New Spain

In Mapping Indigenous Land, author Ana Pulido Rull investigates how Native nobles and painters used maps to intervene in land distribution in New Spain between 1536 and 1620. Mexico City’s Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) preserves over two hundred land-grant maps (mapas de mercedes de tierras) and appended court documents. While Pulido Rull focuses on fourteen maps, the volume’s findings emerged from an exhaustive examination of the genre’s corpus. In New Spain, painted maps were required evidence in land litigation, and the creation of a map was an essential step in the procurement of land titles. Pulido Rull shows how the design and visual conventions of Native-made maps influenced the outcomes of conflicts over land, arguing the cartographs represent subjective understandings of space. The analysis places renewed attention on the pictorial and legal processes that drove the commodification of Indigenous lands in the early colonial period, and further underlines the role of Native elites and painter-scribes (Nahuatl: tlacuiloque) in the legal history of rural land tenure.Each of the book’s five chapters analyzes the “visual-legal interplay” of maps and court records, many of which were transcribed for the first time by the author. Trained as an art historian, Pulido Rull shines when guiding the reader through the legal processes to acquire or dispute land grants. The author starts by examining the contradictions inherent in the Spanish Crown’s legal policies, which sought to incorporate Indigenous peoples and lands into the colonial system and protect Native communities from dispossession. Here, Pulido Rull illuminates how minor colonial officials, particularly Indigenous constables, shaped policies around land tenure. Particularly engaging are Pulido Rull’s nuanced accounts of Spanish schemes to delegitimize and ultimately divest Indigenous communities of their lands, resources, and profit structures.In the second chapter, Pulido Rull traces the preparation of a land grant map by tlacuiloque, arguing that “new challenges generated by colonial land requests and the new audiences the maps were painted for shaped the ways maps from this genre interpreted and represented space” (49). Interesting evidence for this claim is the example of the tlacuilo who used similar pictorial conventions to depict the primordial caves in the Manuscrito Tovar (ca. 1583) and later a land-grant map from Tenayuca. Yet, it is again Pulido Rull’s ability to invigorate court records through deep contextualization that reveals how Indigenous nobles and painters affected change within the colonial bureaucracy. This is especially apparent in the subsequent chapters, which take the form of case studies. Chapter 3 addresses how Indigenous communities used maps to acquire property. The fourth chapter examines how Native communities used maps to protect their territories and oppose Spanish land-grant requests. Finally, chapter 5 foregrounds the role of maps in land disputes, demonstrating how Indigenous communities resolved conflicts and negotiated better terms with Spanish administrators using maps painted specifically to accompany legal proceedings.Greater engagement with decolonizing approaches would have enhanced the author’s argument, which underplays the emergent material relations that cut through Indigenous connections to the land. While the author draws extensively on the interpretative frameworks of established scholarship, Pulido Rull excels at enlivening the multiple actors entangled in land allocation in New Spain. Free of academic jargon, the volume offers compelling portraits of how Indigenous communities confronted settler-colonial encroachment, which complements existing literature and is well suited to undergraduate and graduate students. Drawing on long-term research in the AGN’s Mapoteca section, Mapping Indigenous Land is copiously illustrated and enriches scholarship on cartography, property litigation, and spatial representation in the Americas.

Reviewed by: Trail of Footprints: A History of Indigenous Maps from Viceregal Mexico by Alex Hidalgo G. Rebecca Dobbs Trail of Footprints: A History of Indigenous Maps from Viceregal Mexico. Alex Hidalgo. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019. Pp. xv+166, color illustrations and maps, notes, index. $29.95, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4773-1752-5. Alex Hidalgo's Trail of Footprints is a handsome volume, richly illustrated in color on thick glossy paper, and quite readable. The author conveys a good deal of information about the intertwining systems within which the maps he examines were embedded during the centuries of Spanish colonial occupation in Mexico. His spatial focus is mainly on Oaxaca, though given the nature of these intertwining systems, some discussion necessarily extends to the Mexican colonial capital and even across the Atlantic to Spain. These systems include both indigenous and Spanish constructions of land tenure, social class, legal processes, information conveyance, religion, trade, travel, resource knowledge and use, the materiality of documents (including maps), and the power of archives. Hidalgo's overarching message is that the maps made by indigenous people in Oaxaca were key elements in the functioning of this system of systems, and that the changes observed in the maps over the time period were adaptations to increasing Spanish cultural, legal, and spatial hegemony. Hidalgo has done some things very well. For example, he leaves the reader in no doubt about how entwined the maps were with the colonial legal system. New maps might be made (or sometimes an older one copied) for the purpose of legally confirming a community's land holdings, or as part of a petition to colonial authorities for a grant of land. The map then was "authenticated" by one or more colonial officials; this was a complex process that altered the original map considerably and made it acceptable as evidence in the colonial legal system. Typically, the process involved officials, scribes, and translators traveling to the land in question, observing the land, walking the boundaries according to markers depicted on the map, listening to explanations, annotating the map with descriptions and comments, and finally affixing an official signature. By that point the document has become as much a colonial and textual one as an indigenous and visual one, and was stored with the rest of the (textual) documents for the case. Hidalgo also notes changes to visual styles and cartographic conventions in the indigenous maps over the colonial centuries, as well as some [End Page 153] that persisted. Emblematic of these changes is the title's "trail of footprints." Preconquest cartographic traditions in the area incorporated footprints to depict specific journeys or routes of travel more generally. Early colonial maps by indigenous mapmakers did the same, for instance, representing a walking of the boundaries of a community's land. With the increasing presence of Spanish settlers and the animals they brought, hoofprints were added to the symbology, typically presenting alternating human feet and horseshoe impressions. Later still, the whole convention was dropped as maps became more standardized to colonial legal parameters. Other changes along that trajectory are mentioned throughout the text, if not addressed collectively as a topic of focus. My personal favorite in the book is the chapter called Materials. This chapter engages with the materiality of the maps in fascinating detail and from both sides of the Atlantic system, covering inks, color agents, adhesives, paper, and document sizes. It seems that indigenous inks were superior to European inks of the time period; yet, as Spanish suppression of indigenous culture and knowledge proceeded, indigenous mapmakers adopted European iron-gall inks rather than the other way around. Similarly, whereas indigenous adhesives were highly effective and long lasting, allowing maps to be created on large composite sheets, over the colonial period mapmakers instead adopted the Spanish folio document sizing so that maps could more readily fit into legal case notes. Despite the satisfaction I experienced from learning about these things, however, the book overall has some weaknesses. It is repetitious, with insufficient unique content to effectively fill its pages. It could certainly have benefited from better editing to reduce overlaps, develop meaning, improve word choices, and correct spelling. More importantly, Hidalgo...

Due to incomplete records from the colonial period, particularly regarding cases of infringement on indigenous rights that often went undocumented, research struggles to fully reflect the legal impacts of that era. Therefore, this study explores the profound influence of colonial legal systems on indigenous rights and analyzes how modern legal redress mechanisms address and compensate for these historical injustices. The article first outlines how colonial legal systems deprived indigenous rights in areas such as land ownership, judicial fairness, and identity recognition, drawing on relevant legal documents and historical literature. Subsequently, through case analysis, the study examines the specific impacts of colonial legal systems on indigenous rights across different periods, employing qualitative and quantitative analysis to assess the effectiveness of modern legal redress mechanisms in restoring indigenous rights, safeguarding cultural heritage, and promoting social justice. The findings reveal the depth and breadth of these historical impacts. Data indicate that indigenous land ownership during the colonial period rated only 2 out of 10. Additionally, economic restrictions imposed on indigenous populations disadvantaged them in competition with Portuguese merchants. The study shows that, through a comparative analysis of legal influences over different periods, the rating of indigenous land rights improved to 4 in the pre-reversion period but continued to face challenges in cultural protection, scoring only 3.

Editorial Commentary

With the evolution and expansion of multiple legal institutions, litigants, former litigants, and future litigants had the opportunity to pursue many possible legal paths in British India. This chapter is the first of two that follow law’s travels, contests, and interactions across these multiple fora. The discussion focuses on the movement of litigants and their adversaries from the courtrooms of British India to other legal arenas as they engaged in forum-shopping and brought questions about legal outcomes to Islamic legal experts (muftis). Was the judge’s interpretation correct? Did he get Islamic law “right”? Was his determination appropriate for how pious Muslims should act in this context? Ordinary Muslims frequently presented these questions to muftis, as they worked to resolve their legal disputes in the context of an evolving and increasingly complex legal colonial system. These questions reflected litigants’ (and their adversaries’) understandings of how the colonial legal system was supposed to work; demonstrated their own knowledge about Islamic law and its interpretation; and revealed that a successful legal outcome often meant having the judge rule in your favor and making sure that the ruling fit with Islam.

This chapter aims to explore Jaime Cortesao’s textual and visual narratives about indigenous knowledge. Although many scholars investigated Cortesao’s production during his exile in Brazil (1940–1957), little attention has been given to study how he investigated the role of indigenous knowledge in territorial exploration and mapping. To address this topic, I will identify debates and documents explored by Cortesao to approach indigenous maps. The chapter is divided into two sections. First, I will explore Cortesao’s dialogues, considering how academic debates and references encouraged him to study indigenous people’s spatial knowledge. Then, I will stress some textual and visual documents selected by Cortesao to discuss indigenous maps as a specific category. In addition to explorer’s narratives, Cortesao presented a group of maps from 1721 to 1724, discovered by him at the National Library of Rio de Janeiro and classified as bandeirantes due to its indigenous influence. By identifying Cortesao’s dialogues and documents, my primary intention here is to discuss his comments on indigenous mapping in the light of postcolonial and decolonial approaches to understanding exploration maps as co-produced and hybrid artefacts.

The Wealth of Knowledge:Land-Grab Universities in a British Imperial and Global Context Caitlin P. A. Harvey (bio) the colonial legacy of the American land-grant university traced by the Land-Grab Universities (LGU) project, of public universities "built not just on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous land," reveals a far-reaching pattern of institutional development that relied on the leasing and selling of enormous tracts of expropriated Indigenous lands to raise universities' endowment capital.1 The mechanism effecting this tremendous land redistribution was the Morrill Act (1862). Yet while it was the largest, the Morrill Act was not the only legislative grant of Indigenous land made to fund higher education in the United States or among settler societies worldwide. Contextualizing the LGU findings within the larger history of land-grant universities in British settlement societies makes clear that the American land-grant phenomenon was just one episode in the expanding territoriality of settler-colonial universities. Particularly in Canada and New Zealand but also in Australia and South Africa, fledgling public universities received substantial blocks of unceded Indigenous territory as financing from their governments. The development of America's educational institutions, therefore, did not unfold in isolation from the trends established in other Anglo-dominant settler societies. When we consider the land-grant university in British imperial and global perspective, the full territoriality of land-grant universities comprises over 15 million acres spread over three continents (table 1). Settlers' provincial and federal governments sponsored land-grant institutions with the aim of applying scientific methods to agriculture, fostering technological innovation, and creating an internationally competitive yet civic-minded workforce.2 In New Zealand (Aotearoa) in 1869, for instance, the Province of Otago's legislators issued deeds of 100,000 acres for the University of Otago, followed by another 100,000 acres on the South Island (Te Waipounamu) in the 1870s.3 The Ngāi Tahu disputed this reallocation. But with the New Zealand Wars ongoing and swayed by the complaints of Otago University's largest land lessee, Robert Campbell, the colonial state evicted the Māori landholders.4 [End Page 97] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Aggregate Totals of University Land by Grant and Location In England, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge had long relied on the rental income generated by landholding. Even today, the Oxbridge colleges "are among the largest institutional landowners" in land-scarce England.5 Settler societies carried on this European custom on a larger and more devastating scale. Particularly where capital was lacking from benefactions, fees, or government subsidies, the resort to land-granting was continuous. As early as 1619, the British government assigned 10,000 acres to a "Henrico College" in Virginia. Warfare with the Powhatan Confederacy and chronic underpopulation ensured that this institution was short-lived.6 Reaching forward to the nineteenth century and prior to the Morrill Act, The Constitutional History of New York indicates that in 1846 the U.S. [End Page 98] government released to "Tennessee 1,300,000 acres of public land in that state for the endowment of a college."7 This land, nearly the size of Delaware, lay to the "south and west of the Congressional reservation line." Supposedly "vacant and unappropriated Lands" existed there after the violent removal of the Cherokee.8 In nearly the same moment, one of the earliest educational land grants in British North America went to King's College, a precursor to the University of Toronto, in 1828. An Anglican bishop, John Strachan, secured 225,944 acres of valuable Crown Reserves for the new college.9 It is likely that much of this property once supported the Mississaugas of New Credit (Mississauga Ojibwa). Under the strain of recurring Indigenous-settler skirmishes, the Mississaugas ceded 250,808 acres of their land—covering most of what is now the city of Toronto and region of York—first to the British Crown in 1787 and then to the Upper Canadian government in 1805. The Toronto Purchase, as these agreements became known, followed the influx of Loyalists into Upper Canada after the American Revolutionary War.10 Following Canadian Confederation in 1867, institutions of higher learning repeated Toronto's (and, by then, also...

The Wealth of Knowledge:Land-Grab Universities in a British Imperial and Global Context Caitlin P. A. Harvey (bio) the colonial legacy of the American land-grant university traced by the Land-Grab Universities (LGU) project, of public universities "built not just on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous land," reveals a far-reaching pattern of institutional development that relied on the leasing and selling of enormous tracts of expropriated Indigenous lands to raise universities' endowment capital.1 The mechanism effecting this tremendous land redistribution was the Morrill Act (1862). Yet while it was the largest, the Morrill Act was not the only legislative grant of Indigenous land made to fund higher education in the United States or among settler societies worldwide. Contextualizing the LGU findings within the larger history of land-grant universities in British settlement societies makes clear that the American land-grant phenomenon was just one episode in the expanding territoriality of settler-colonial universities. Particularly in Canada and New Zealand but also in Australia and South Africa, fledgling public universities received substantial blocks of unceded Indigenous territory as financing from their governments. The development of America's educational institutions, therefore, did not unfold in isolation from the trends established in other Anglo-dominant settler societies. When we consider the land-grant university in British imperial and global perspective, the full territoriality of land-grant universities comprises over 15 million acres spread over three continents (table 1). Settlers' provincial and federal governments sponsored land-grant institutions with the aim of applying scientific methods to agriculture, fostering technological innovation, and creating an internationally competitive yet civic-minded workforce.2 In New Zealand (Aotearoa) in 1869, for instance, the Province of Otago's legislators issued deeds of 100,000 acres for the University of Otago, followed by another 100,000 acres on the South Island (Te Waipounamu) in the 1870s.3 The Ngāi Tahu disputed this reallocation. But with the New Zealand Wars ongoing and swayed by the complaints of Otago University's largest land lessee, Robert Campbell, the colonial state evicted the Māori landholders.4 [End Page 97] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Aggregate Totals of University Land by Grant and Location In England, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge had long relied on the rental income generated by landholding. Even today, the Oxbridge colleges "are among the largest institutional landowners" in land-scarce England.5 Settler societies carried on this European custom on a larger and more devastating scale. Particularly where capital was lacking from benefactions, fees, or government subsidies, the resort to land-granting was continuous. As early as 1619, the British government assigned 10,000 acres to a "Henrico College" in Virginia. Warfare with the Powhatan Confederacy and chronic underpopulation ensured that this institution was short-lived.6 Reaching forward to the nineteenth century and prior to the Morrill Act, The Constitutional History of New York indicates that in 1846 the U.S. [End Page 98] government released to "Tennessee 1,300,000 acres of public land in that state for the endowment of a college."7 This land, nearly the size of Delaware, lay to the "south and west of the Congressional reservation line." Supposedly "vacant and unappropriated Lands" existed there after the violent removal of the Cherokee.8 In nearly the same moment, one of the earliest educational land grants in British North America went to King's College, a precursor to the University of Toronto, in 1828. An Anglican bishop, John Strachan, secured 225,944 acres of valuable Crown Reserves for the new college.9 It is likely that much of this property once supported the Mississaugas of New Credit (Mississauga Ojibwa). Under the strain of recurring Indigenous-settler skirmishes, the Mississaugas ceded 250,808 acres of their land—covering most of what is now the city of Toronto and region of York—first to the British Crown in 1787 and then to the Upper Canadian government in 1805. The Toronto Purchase, as these agreements became known, followed the influx of Loyalists into Upper Canada after the American Revolutionary War.10 Following Canadian Confederation in 1867, institutions of higher learning repeated Toronto's (and, by then, also...

This chapter tracks how legal problems and questions originating outside of the courtroom intersected with state law and the colonial legal system. Litigation was only one way to solve a legal problem, and it was often costly, time-consuming, and dependent upon the expertise of paid legal professionals. As a result, individuals who were excluded from or faced disadvantages within the courts found other outlets for their legal disputes. This chapter explores the dar-ul-ifta (dār al-iftāʼ) as one of those alternative arenas and presents the mufti as a legal advisor who took complicated personal concerns and translated them into concrete steps for action. Sometimes this work involved translating colonial law into Islamic legal terms; in other instances, it required explaining the next steps for pursuing legal action through the courts; and in some cases, it meant devising ways to keep Islam and state law in productive conversation through creative reinterpretations or redeployments of statutes and legal decrees. Along the way, these muftis provided explanations, offered advice, clarified procedures, and highlighted the next steps that disputants could pursue. This chapter takes inspiration from recent scholarship in legal anthropology to trace why and how individuals approached various legal options.

Departing from narratives that simplify colonial law as a top-down imposition, this work reveals how middle-ranking British officials were pivotal in shaping a hybrid and strategically manipulative legal system within Sudan’s Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. Focusing on inspectors lacking formal legal training, the analysis highlights their crucial role in exercising wide legal discretion to selectively blend elements of British Penal Codes, customary law, and a distorted interpretation of Islamic law. This pragmatic approach, driven by the interests of colonial control, allowed for the selective application of certain Islamic legal principles, even within British criminal courts, by subsuming them under the vague term "Mohammedan Law." The case of Sir Harold MacMichael offers insights into this broader trajectory, illustrating how these middlemen, themselves shaped by the colonial system, wielded agency to transform legal frameworks. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how colonial legal systems were dynamic and contested sites where hybridity was a tool of control, shaped by the selective use of Islamic elements, extensive legal discretion, and a pragmatic focus on maintaining power.

This article traces the history of the punishment of sexual assault cases in South Africa's Eastern Cape region from the late pre-colonial period through the turn of the twentieth century. Sexual assault crimes provide a revealing perspective on practices of punishment because they could be, and were, adjudicated through any of the broad array of legal systems – formal and informal, customary and Roman-Dutch, civil and criminal – which characterised the legal landscape of the colonial Eastern Cape. When British administrators created a colonial legal system in the Eastern Cape in the 1850s, they faced the task of governing a Xhosa-speaking population with substantially different ideas about punishment. Compensation payments, reckoned in cattle, were the standard punishment for most wrongs in pre-colonial Xhosaland. Discipline within the family might take the form of corporal punishment, but public punishments generally did not. The reliance on compensation payments harnessed kinship obligations to the maintenance of public order. British legal thought, however, considered compensation payments appropriate only in civil cases. Even fines (payable to the state) were appropriate only for minor crimes; major crimes required imprisonment, corporal punishment, or death. This difference posed a problem for administrators attempting to secure the legitimacy of the colonial legal system. In order to induce Africans to use the colonial legal system, they needed to satisfy expectations of compensation payments. The compromise that emerged consigned compensation payments to civil disputes, where customary law was recognised, and minor criminal cases. Unwilling to trust kin networks to rein in their unruly members, British administrators insisted on punishments whose weight was born by the individual – at least in the case of ‘serious’ crimes. However, allegations of forcible, even violent, non-consensual sex continued to be adjudicated within the customary (civil) court system, where they were labelled ‘seduction’ or ‘adultery’.

This article aims to reveal the position and status of Confucianism under the colonial legal system in the Dutch East Indies. By explaining this status, this article not only provides an explanation of the religion as a legal entity but also the limitations of its rights and obligations, including ownership rights over land used for its liturgical and social activities. For that, with a temporal scope of the colonial era, the method used to construct it is the historical method combined with the methodology of legal science. Through a combination of the two, it is hoped that this paper will be useful to provide explanations at least to the scholars from both disciplines. The data used in this research is colonial-era data, which consists of archival sources (especially manuscript) and contemporaneous information sources (old newspapers). The use of such data is based on the consideration that the information obtained has a high value of validity and legality and supports the objective judgements contained in the conclusions. The conclusion of this research is that there was a dualism within the colonial policy, between viewing Confucianism as a legitimate form of religion like other religions or making Confucianism an integral legal part of the Chinese community.

This chapter examines a more complicated form of transnational family, the polygamous transnational family, the liangtoujia . It shows the marital relations of the liangtoujia across spatial boundaries and under different legal systems in comparison to the relations of co-residential polygamous families. The chapter illuminates the intra- liangtoujia conflicts that are seldom mentioned in prior scholarship on family; and sheds light on the role of the gongqin inside and outside the colonial legal system and his mediation/execution across geographical boundaries. The liangtoujia that straddled Fujian and British Malaya navigated both the and British legal systems. The part of the family that remained in the hometown was subject to Qing law and, later, the Republican codes, whereas the household in Malaya was subject to British common law and Chinese customary law. The study of the gongqin is thus necessary to complete the story of the liangtoujia 's cross-border conflicts. Keywords: British Malaya; customary law; colonial legal system; cross-border conflicts; Fujian; gongqin ; liangtoujia ; Qing law; Republican codes

This article examines the complex interplay between colonial legal systems and Indigenous laws, using the legal challenges faced by Arabunna Elder Kevin Buzzacott as a focal point. Buzzacott's 2004 conviction for the reclamation of a bronze Australian coat of arms, an act he deemed a fulfillment of his legal obligations under Arabunna Law, underscores the colonial legal system's refusal to acknowledge Aboriginal laws and ways of being. The authors argue that the colonial legal framework operates as a ‘nomocidal’ regime, perpetuating physical and conceptual violence against Indigenous peoples by asserting a singular legal authority that erases ontological difference. Through analysis of the Buzzacott case, the article further exposes the colonial legal system's preoccupation with Eurocentric notions of justice, which undermine Indigenous law-ways by eschewing engagement with ontological difference in favour of a universalist claim to authority. By exploring alternative legal worlds and ontologies, the authors advocate for a decolonial approach to justice that acknowledges and respects the multiplicity of legal realities. This shift requires a re-evaluation of the legal system to accommodate ontological pluralism, moving towards a more inclusive and just legal landscape that provides space for Indigenous laws and ways of being. The article is a tribute to Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, highlighting his struggle for recognition and justice as emblematic of the broader challenges faced by Indigenous peoples in colonial legal contexts.

The Genizaro Land Grant Settlements of New Mexico Moises Gonzales (bio) Historical Context of Genizaro Settlements in New Mexico As defined by Fray Angelico Chavez, genizaro was the designation given to North American Indians of mixed tribal derivation living among the Hispanic population in Spanish fashion: that is, having Spanish surnames from their masters, Christian names through baptism, speaking a simple form of Spanish, and living together or sprinkled among the Hispanic towns and ranchos.1 Beginning in the 18th century, genizaro settlements were established by the Spanish to provide defensible communities on the frontier of New Spain. The strategic planning of these new towns was vital to the ability of the Spanish to sustain a presence in New Mexico during the early 1700s due to increased attacks by nomadic tribes such as the Navajo, Ute, Comanche, Apache, and Kiowa. Due to the immense pressure on the colony caused by these attacks, the settlement policy established by Governor Tomas Velez Gachupin, and continued by his successors, was to establish genizaro settlements at the fringe of the frontier to serve as a buffer zone between the nomadic tribes and the villas (principal settlements) of Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque as well as many of the Pueblo communities.2 The permanence of these communities would alter the cultural landscape of New Mexico as well as blur the lines of distinction between European Spanish and Amerindian settlements in New Mexico. From the 1740s to the 1790s, towns such as Abiquiu, Las Trampas, San Miguel del Vado, Belen, Ojo Caliente, and San Miguel de Carnué were established as genizaro buffer settlements.3 During this period, [End Page 583] genizaros were specifically targeted for recruitment to establish frontier communities, which Spanish officials planned as a network of high mountain communities located along mountain passes used by nomadic tribes as routes of attack. One might ask: Why would an individual in the mid-18th century volunteer to establish a settlement that was at risk of constant attack by nomadic tribes? One answer is that for genizaros, as well as mestizos, establishing buffer settlements was a way to become a landowner and gain social status, and escape the domination and servitude by the Spanish ruling caste.4 While many genizaros brought into servitude at birth or by purchase to work for Spanish families eventually earned freedom at adulthood, many others would remain working for the same families that they served for the duration of their lives because, under the Spanish colonial caste system, genizaros were unable to secure land. However, the only way in which a genizaro or mestizo could gain social and economic position in colonial society was through acquiring land. Therefore, the opportunity to acquire land by participating in the organization and construction of a buffer settlement, although dangerous, was worth the ability to become economically self-reliant. Colonial officials conceived a policy of settling genizaros on the frontier of the colony, granting them land in return for their building of fortified villages and serving in the frontier militia.5 In such a community, away from the direct domination of the church, genizaros could be semi-autonomous, live among a similar caste group, and practice their native customs. Even today, the genizaro dance known as the captive dance is still danced in the Pueblo of Abiquiu on the Catholic feast day of Santo Tomas, which attests to the survival of genizaro culture.6 The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of five genizaro land grant communities that were established in the 18th century and then explore the complexity of identity and indigenous land rights in contemporary New Mexico. Although there are other communities that were established during this period by, or including, genizaros, such as Ojo Caliente and Barrio de Analco, the five communities in this article were chosen because of their role in land rights policy today. Research Methodology The methodology for developing the ethnographic history of genizaro land grant communities in this article was developed by examining archival records of community land grants in New Mexico during the [End Page 584] 18th century in which genizaros participated in the formulation of...