O. P. McMains and the Maxwell Land Grant Conflict

by Morris F. Taylor

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816506523
• ISBN13: 9780816506521
• Release Date: May 1979
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Length: 365 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

O.P. McMains: crusader of the Old West

This book in a larger sense is about "progress," about how new peoples equipped with newer laws, can overpower and replace older settlers and their traditions. In a land tenure policy dating back to the time Spanish settlers first inhabited what became New Mexico, governors were permitted to make grants to landless people, whether individuals or groups (usually related by blood in some way). These grants usually consisted of small agricultural areas, with the vast non-tillable regions (mountains, waterless desert stretches) carrying no title and open to all. It was with the influx of new settlers, mainly from the States, after 1846 that brought the concept of private ownership, especially of vast tracts of land. The Maxwell Land Grant, cobbled together from the earlier Beaubien-Miranda grant, was a huge, unsurveyed (thought at first to be anywhere between 97,000 and 1 million acres in size) parcel of land in northern New Mexico; how big it was, who actually owned it, and what rights previous settlers had on it were questions that roiled the are in conflict for decades until the Supreme Court settled the issue in 1887: the early Spanish settlers had no legitimate claims to their land any longer. O.P. McMains was a Methodist minister who had come to New Mexico in 1875 to avenge the murder of fellow minister, and land grant opposer, F.J. Tolby. Partially successful in this, he stayed on and became a leading spokesman for settlers fighting the illegally expanded Maxwell Land Grant. Fifteen times he brought the case of the settlers to Washington, to little avail. The cause became a personal crusade for McMains against not just land grant policy, but also against many injustices levelled against the "common people." He could be fanatical: once he had himself purposely arrested for manslaughter charges to gain a podium for his cause. Taylor's portrait of McMains is excellent; the man was truly admirable in many regards. Not only was he an indefatigable crusader, he also wrote poetry on the side. The book is a fascinating look at a particular period of time in the formation of the West and a man who fought the encroachments of the "new" as they ran roughshod over the traditions of the "old."