Government Investigators Report on Fraudulent Land Grabs
Background: As railroads expanded across the Southwest, land that was not explicitly claimed by private owners became subject to land grabs by large ranching interests with funding from Europe or the east coast. In 1884, the General Land Office, an agency of the United States government responsible for public domain lands, investigated and reported on widespread fraud in the land claim system annual report to the federal government. A year earlier, New Mexico’s territorial governor, Edmund Ross, had acknowledged that vast numbers of land claims in New Mexico were likely fraudulent.
SANTA FE, N. MEX., November 3, 1884
SIR: In compliance with request of your letter "A”' of October 21. 1884, 1 have the honor to submit the following general statement of the substance of my experience, observation, examinations, and information relative to the character and extent of fraudulent entries or appropriation of public lands in the districts operated in by me since the 31st of March, 1883, being the whole time of my active service as inspector of the General Land Office.
Generally speaking, I believe that fraudulent entries of the public lands include a large per cent. of the whole number, excepting possibly cash entries.
The idea prevails to an almost universal extent that because the Government in its generosity has provided for the donation of the public domain to its citizens a strict compliance with the conditions imposed is not essential. Men who would scorn to commit a dishonest act toward an individual, though he were a total stranger, eagerly listen to every scheme for evading the letter and spirit of the settlement laws, and in a majority of instances I believe avail themselves of them. Our land officers partake of this feeling in many instances, and if they do not corruptly connive at fraudulent entries, modify their instructions and exceed their discretionary powers in examinations of final proof. This is especially the case of the entries under the timber culture law. . .
A more vicious system of fraudulent entries has been successfully practiced by and in the interest of cattlemen and stock corporations. If the law had been enacted solely for their benefit it could scarcely have been more successful. . .
A "cattle king" employs a number of men as herders — "cowboys" is the popular designation for them. The herd is located on a favorable portion of the public lands where grass, water, and shelter are convenient, and each herder is expected and required to make a timber-culture entry of lands along the stream. These entries often very nearly if not quite occupy all the watered lands in a township, and render the remainder undesirable for actual settlement for farming purposes. . . .
The prevention of further unlawful inclosures of the public lands and the destruction of existing ones should be accomplished if it takes every soldier in the United States to do it.
Very respectfully, A. R. GREENE, Inspector, G. L. O
Source: Titles to lands in New Mexico, March 25, 1885, Senate Report, 48th Congress, 2d sess. Ex. Doc No. 106 p. 378-381, https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=sYoFAAAAQAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA25-PA392.