Seigneur de Sangre de Cristo: Carlos H. Beaubien

Seigneur de Sangre de Cristo: Carlos H. Beaubien Maria Mondragon-Valdez

A descendant of a wealthy Quebecois family, Alexis (Charles) Hippolyte Trotier, Sieur de Beaubien (1800 – 1864) was responsible for the emergence of French colonial long-lot land allocation in the uplands of southern Colorado. (Fig.1) The history of Spanish colonization of the southwest precedes him, and the region under discussion in this essay was home during his lifetime to the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande, as well as the Utes, Apaches, and Fig.1. Charles H. Beaubien: Charles H. Beaubien, French-Canadian fur Navajo, as it was before trader and owner of the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant in the New Mexico the Spanish arrived, and Territory. Photo undated, courtesy Museum of New Mexico Press, negative as it remains to this day. #8799 Beaubien lived through the transition from Spanish colonial rule to Mexican independence to American conquest. His role in the history of the San Luis Valley and the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the east still reverberates in the present.

The Priestly Beginning

Born in 1800, Beaubien grew to maturity in Nicolet, Quebec, on the Island of Moras, where his family resided on the Seigneurial Manor of Pierre Monte. Through intermarriage the Beaubien family controlled three baronial estates: Moras Island, Rivière-de-Loup, and des Ruisseau. His older brother inherited the

Fig.2. Multistory Taos Pueblo (National Registry of Historic Places): The Taos Pueblo is one of the longest continuously inhabited dwellings in the Americas, thought to have been built between 1000 and 1450 A.D., before the Spanish arrived in the region in 1540. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DSC_1844_ Taos_Pueblo,_New_Mexico.jpg

family estate, following the custom of primogeniture, and Alexis was destined for the priesthood. With abbots for paternal and maternal uncles, Beaubien was ordained and tonsured at 21. Beaubien likely completed his education at Séminaire de Nicolet where he read the classics and learned to speak and read Latin. Father Beaubien must have been dissatisfied, however, as priests were required to take the vow of poverty, stifling ambitions to prosperity or travel beyond the bounds of Canada. Within a year of ordination Beaubien resigned the priesthood. Shocked and disappointed, his family realized that the lure of the prosperous fur industry and travel to the unknown wilderness was stronger than a religious vocation.

The Secular Man Emerges

Leaving Nicolet, Alexis changed his name to Charles and never looked back. Charles settled briefly in Kaskaskia, Illinois, moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, and thus lived in three culturally rich French Colonial settlements before his arrival in Taos, New Mexico, in 1824, with his caravan of more than a dozen extranjeros casados (a term used for foreign beaver hunters). In his vocation as a French-Canadian trapper and trader, Charles Beaubien chose to experience this commodity market in a free-trade zone as a “Mountain Man.''

Fig.3. Long-lot subdivisions: The image is an example of the long-lot subdivision of land found in the San Luis Valley, also found in earlier French settlements in Illinois and Quebec. USGS Aerial Photo of San Francisco, Colorado, 1955. Source: Maria Mondragon-Valdez

In the 1820s, Taos was a village of extended families residing near earthen plazas with Indigenous neighbors living in multi-story pueblos. (Fig.2) Most residents raised sheep, goats, and farmed small plots of land. Money was scarce and bartering was customary: dry meat, pinon nuts, coffee, spices, and tobacco were traded for human captives, woven blankets, peltries, buffalo robes, horses, and mules. Like “Mountain Men'' of this era, Charles Beaubien would have worn leather clothing and a trapper’s wool coat with hood. Among his belongings were necessities of the trail: a pistol, long gun, tomahawk, several knives. Expecting to trade after months in the wilderness, the trappers rode their horses laden with beaver pelts through the dusty roadway intersecting the village plaza. After a day of bargaining, traders would visit the plaza to meet old friends, drink, gamble, and flirt with local women at a fandango (dance). The annual Taos Rendezvous introduced foreigners to local society and drove shifts in material culture and social norms.

Canada, Louisiana, and Missouri: French-Colonial Inroads to the Frontier

Charles Beaubien may have learned of New Mexico in Quebec, an economic hub of fur trading, or from the inhabitants of Kaskaskia, Illinois which he visited

in 1822. Established as a mission ten years after the Spanish reconquest of New Mexico following the Pueblo revolt of 1680, this Illinois town lay west of the Mississippi near Saint Louis. Early in the eighteenth-century, slaves from SaintDomingue and Indigenous peoples comprised the majority of the population; the priests, French Creoles, and twenty French-Canadian voyageurs were the minority. Initially a mission and a trading post, the town supplied corn and wheat for Lower Louisiana and became pivotal to western expansion. Many settlers in Kaskaskia knew routes to and from New Mexico. One resident, Gervacio Nolán, a veteran of Montreal’s Northwest Trading Company, had traveled with a group of trappers into the western frontier to expand pelt trade along the tributaries of the Rio Grande del Norte. Beaubien and Nolán both later relocated to Taos, enjoying a life-long friendship.

When Beaubien was in Kaskaskia, he would have seen long-lot subdivisions worked by “habitants”, or agriculturalists. (Fig.3) Settlers could acquire a long narrow plot with the proviso that they would improve and cultivate the land. Large tracts were divided among habitants into family-sized parcels, leaving access to the waterfront and to a central road. Settlement of the tracts depended on the Cadastral system of surveying and keeping official records of such information. The long-lot settlement pattern, familiar to Beaubien and customary throughout New France and Quebec, helped establish French-Canadian communities.

During the trapping off-season, Beaubien lived in St. Louis, Missouri, learning about appraising pelts and brokering finances from Auguste Chouteau, a French creole from a wealthy mercantile family who controlled the pelt industry for a century. Auguste, who had traveled to New Mexico, the San Luis Valley, and the Rio Culebra, would no doubt have talked with Beaubien about his travels.

Competition created ruthless rivals, primarily among French and American trappers who dominated the trade in New Mexico. Stopping to rest at rustic forts along routes to and from the interior, Beaubien became acquainted with entrepreneurs who shared his aspirations. With three years of trapping experience and living on the trail, Beaubien forged friendships and grew to understand international business ventures in peltry. After all, many of the top hats worn by the Europeans, from London to Russia, were made of beaver harvested from the mountain ranges in New Mexico.

As explorers from French-Colonial Quebec expanded their range southwesterly beyond the Saint Lawrence River and throughout the Great Lakes Region, others from the old Acadian Colony in Louisiana were moving northward along the Mississippi River and westward along the Gulf coast into Texas. The earliest surviving record of the French in New Mexico is from 1692 when Governor Juan

de Vargas resettled the colony after the Pueblo Revolt. Known as the Reconquista or Reconquest, professional soldiers marching into New Mexico included Jean Ľ Archevêque (Juan de Archeveque) and Jacques Grollet (Santiago Gurule). For this expedition both men hispanized their names and swore allegiance to the Spanish crown, after having been members of La Salle’s last expedition in 1684, an ill-fated attempt to establish a French settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Arriving a few years later, a third survivor from La Salle’s expedition, Pierre Meunier, whose father was Sieur de Perville, resided in Santa Fe in 1696.

Early Visitations: The Upland in Transition

In 1703, twenty French colonists, likely voyageurs from Kaskaskia, crossed into Spanish Territory to explore possibilities of trading. After recolonization, fellow Frenchmen came to New Mexico from Europe, Canada, Louisiana, and Missouri; thus did France encroach upon Spanish territory. Spanish and French influences began to merge as traders and guides like Jean Baptiste La Lande (a French Creole) and Julius DeMun (an aristocrat born in Saint-Domingue) were in New Mexico by 1804. La Lande, originally from Kaskaskia, sequentially married three New Mexican women, two of whom two died at a young age, and produced nine children. His daughter married Gervacio Nolán, completing a circle of influence.

These early arrivals were followed by the Mallet Brothers and many others who were documented as illegally crossing into New Mexico. Not every party was caught in the act of trespassing; those who were apprehended were taken to Chihuahua to be interrogated, imprisoned, and their goods impounded. Oftentimes authorities allowed trespassers to settle to keep information from reaching French colonial Louisiana. This policy did not prohibit Jean Baptiste La Lande and Julius DeMun from illegally entering the “Rio de la Culevra” (Rio Culebra Basin) in the San Luis Valley. Camping and exploring the uplands, without regard to prohibitions imposed by the Spanish, DeMun recorded site-specific information. The strategic miscalculation by Spain and later Mexico to buffer and better protect its outlying provinces created challenges that would eventually open the door to resource exploitation and ineffectual boundary maintenance.

The international peltry market forged isolated regions into a monolithic economic system, driving the geopolitical re-balancing with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Doubling the size of America, the boundaries of the Louisiana Territory were unknown until the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific (1803-1806) and Zebulon Pike’s surveillance. Pike crossed the Arkansas river, the border of the Louisiana Territory, and entered Spanish territory, arriving in the San Luis Basin in the winter of 1807. His journal records impressions of wildlife, terrain, and watercourses of the Rio Grande. Walking eastward along a “large road,” he entered

the Rio Culebra Watershed. Initially a small group of Spanish scouts, including two Frenchmen from Santa Fe, approached Pike's stockade at Conejos, which was flying the American flag. Accused of spying, Pike was interrogated, but later released. Pike’s cartography was beautiful, although its repercussions would emerge after his writings were published, translated into five languages, and circulated in Europe, Canada, and America: Pike described a seemingly untouched landscape and routes in and out. Soon, trappers arrived to hunt, and adventurers in caravans hauled trade goods over the mountains, setting the stage for future invasion.

The Economy of Dependency

After generations of neglect from Spain and continued challenges from within, Mexican liberals overthrew Spanish rule in 1821. Ten percent of the male population died in this rebellion, leaving a quarter of the land vacant, resulting in poverty and hunger. The young Mexican government soon reversed Spain’s restrictions on international trade by opening the Santa Fe Trail to Missouri. The Santa Fe Trail enabled Mexico to collect tariffs, sell livestock, and trade for manufactured goods. An alternative pathway known as the Trappers Trail, formally the “Old Mexican Road'', traversed through the Rio Culebra, along foothills to the Rio Trinchera. By ascending the Sangre de Cristo Pass, riders moved east along the Arkansas River to Bent’s Fort, in what is now southeastern Colorado. Acting as a bank, rest stop, fortress, and marketplace, Bent’s Fort became a centrifugal force driving foreigners into New Mexico.

New Mexico, a free-trade zone and no longer a surrogate of Spain, became dependent on Saint Louis merchandise. Goods sold for Mexican pesos, which created a crisis: Pesos minted in Mexico contained more silver than did American coins used in Saint Louis. Pesos became so scarce that New Mexico was forced to fabricate copper coins. Sales of gold dust to Missouri banks added further asymmetry to the economy. New Mexico officials tried tariffs to stabilize their economy but were unable to force compliance on the foreigners who monopolized trading and trapping, resisted paying taxes, and refused to obtain passports.

New Mexicans spent an inordinate amount of time defending themselves from tribes and war parties that surrounded the province on all sides. Individuals, the shared plaza, and herds of grazing animals all needed protection. Some settlers owned antique muskets and lances, but most used bows and arrows. Betterarmed foreign companies operating out of forts along eastbound routes traded contraband, mainly weapons of war and liquor, which encouraged attacks on colonial villages and Pueblos alike. The constant raids rendered peace treaties obsolete and soured alliances. The continual threats left New Mexico without guilds or economic diversity.

Land Granting: Colonial Maintenance of the Borderlands

The frontier in transition made use of land granting, a policy rooted in Old World feudalism. The estate owner would provide resources and grant plots Fig.4. Making Adobe bricks: The image shows the making of adobe bricks next of land, while the to the San Juan and Piedra rivers on the Colorado New Mexico border. The man in settler in return the center is Leon Madrid, a friend of photographer E.O. Richmond, who took this photo 1882 and 1912. Reproduced with permission of copyright holder (Reddart/ would work the Brown family collection) land, protect it, and return a portion of the output to the estate. At the Spanish Iberian border, land grants encouraged settlement with plots for home, garden, and agriculture, while the settlers defended against intruders. The land granting experience of Spain was modified for tierra nueva (new lands) of the Americas. Originally the Spanish who settled New Mexico were given large tracts. A small number of wealthy individuals benefited, with disastrous results. After the reconquest this faulted approach was refashioned, giving preference to communities organized by groups of pobladores (settlers). Community land grants allowed pobladores to become vecinos (neighbors). Vecinos were subsistence pastoralists who lived cooperatively within a larger group of interrelated families. Situated at watersheds, tending small crops and raising livestock of mostly sheep and goats, these fortified small villages lay on the periphery of older wellestablished colonies. Together these frontier plazas were New Mexico’s versions of medieval Spain. By the eighteenth century, elaborate documents penned in ink recorded these grants. Replete with Spanish legal terminology, these documents listed names of settlers, the location and size of the land grant, and described identifiable rivers and landmarks. Individual settlers were given a solar (home site), suerte (agricultural field), and access to the community held ejido (common land). In return the pobladores were required to protect the land, build homes, and raise crops.

Within three years of opening the Santa Fe Trail, Mexico City enacted colonization laws to mitigate an increase in illegal immigration. Between 1824 and 1837, five laws were passed defining how foreigners could settle. Laws granting land to foreigners varied by Province. In Texas, foreigners were allowed to become empresarios, (agents), recruiting settlers by offering individual plots for a small fee and payment of taxes after four years. California, on the other hand, did not allow foreign colonies near international boundaries or along coastlines, though the Governor sold land taken from missions to foreigners. Throughout the West, Mexican provinces were pressured by immigration despite these policies; Americans in Texas outnumbered the Mexican population ten to one, and nearly one-third of California was owned by foreigners.

In New Mexico during the Mexican Land Grant Era, foreigners could initially obtain as much as 71 square miles, with a preference for applicants of Mexican descent and citizens. To circumvent this requirement, foreigners became silent partners. As an example, in 1828 William Gordon, an American trader, attempted to gain control of the Rio Culebra Basin in partnership with two local men from Taos. This failed attempt was denied, though it indicated that foreigners were aware of Mexican Colonization Laws and were poised to exploit the system.

Beaubien the Family and Business Man

On a government-sanctioned trading venture to Chihuahua and Sonora in 1827, Beaubien profited handsomely, learned the route, and made business acquaintances. After returning, Charles moved to Taos and married the same year, allying himself with one of the most prominent and prestigious extended families in the Taos Valley. Charles renamed himself Carlos. He and his wife Paula lived in a large adobe plazuela, where they raised their children in the safety of the gated compound. (Fig.4) This pattern of marriage emerged between 1820-1850, as church records list 122 marriages to foreigners, some common law, most of which occurred in the Taos Valley. This is probably an underestimation; many did not document unions as cohabitation was accepted in the frontier.

Beaubien's wife, Maria Paula Lobato, likely had many servants, as her plazuela had 38 rooms. In addition to the family quarters, the Beaubien home had a large kitchen, rooms for servants, laundry space, and storage; an earthen oven for baking, sheds, and corrals were within the large compound. The dining room was grand and described as being large enough to seat 100 guests, and her furniture was said to be luxurious. Paula was well-dressed and wore imported New York and Paris fashions. An oil painting of Paula with a lace blouse covered by a shawl was not as revealing as photos of her adult daughters. Resembling their mother, the two eldest daughters were stout, matronly, and dressed in American styled clothing with

high collars. Images of the Beaubien's younger daughters are poignant; Eleanor on her wedding day, wearing a form-fitting blazer and a long skirt with ruffles, shapely and elegant, though without a bride’s veil or white dress. Her somber look was suggestive; her husband was reputed to have many mistresses, eventually cohabiting with another woman. Through a scandalous divorce, Eleanor fought to keep her inheritance, but died at a young age. The photograph of her younger sister Juana shows a woman who lived on the northern frontier. Attired in a plain dress and large shawl, Juana was visibly pregnant with two small children at her side. Residing in a rustic plazuela, Juana lived with the danger adherent to this outpost on the Rio Costilla and the village’s repeated epidemics and dysentery.

Descriptions of local women with coarse homemade clothing and black roboz (head covering) demonstrate their subservient status, however younger women of courting age favored bright festive skirts worn above the ankles, blouses with bare shoulders, and shawls, all popular items from Chihuahua merchants. Prestige items from American markets, like those worn by ricos (wealthy) were ready-made and imported from the East Coast.

Paula entertained many influential guests. In all likelihood when her husband dined with politicians and partners she arranged for a card game of “Mexican monte” before men talked business. If the event was more festive, perhaps she would have arranged for musicians to sing and play guitars. They may have hosted gatherings after baptisms, weddings, and wakes, as did the wealthy in small villages.

In the latter part of the 1820s Beaubien, Gervacio Nolán, and Antoine and Louis Robidoux became Mexican citizens to avoid the higher tax rates assessed to foreigners. Opening a business on the Taos Plaza, Carlos appraised pelts, sold trapping supplies, and hosted an informal gathering space. Beaubien forged a deep friendship with Ceran St. Vrain and Charles Bent (co-owners of Bent’s Fort). By 1835, Bent resided at Taos and Ceran St. Vrain at Santa Fe. St. Vrain, from an aristocratic Saint Louis family, and Charles Bent, son of a Missouri Supreme Court Justice, were both connected to merchandising houses. Together they monopolized trade. Citizenship conferred status to Beaubien and as a result he was named alcalde (magistrate judge and mayor) of Taos and later the Rio Arriba region. In honor, Carlos' name was prefaced with “Don” (a title of respect).

Opposition From Within

Initially, Mexico City hoped foreigners would assimilate, Mexicanize, become tax-paying citizens, and defend outlying colonies. The patriarchal society of interrelated families living in the valleys of the Rio Grande Watershed understood the fallacy of this theory, as the power differential confronting New Mexico grew

ominous. Some who were priests, large landowners, and compatriots understood the risks of the growing influence of foreigners in New Mexico but lacked support for change from Mexico City. The most outspoken was the Cura of Taos, Padre Antonio Jose Fig.5. Mexican Land Grants of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado: Martinez. The image shows the major land grants given by the Mexican government in the 1840’s to Beaubien, Miranda, St. Vrain and Nolán, among others. Beaubien’s Sangre de Cristo land grant is at the center. Land Grants Map adapted from Haflen, 1927. Padre Martinez Source: Maria Mondragon-Valdez was the equal to Charles Beaubien. Privately tutored and educated in a seminary, he read complex religious texts, spoke Latin, and excelled in Canon Law, Spanish Law, and Mexican Law. Son of a wealthy family, who lived in a large self-sufficient rancho, Martinez was previously married with one child, but became a cura (priest) after his wife died. Ordained in Durango, Mexico, he arrived at Taos with the only printing press in New Mexico. Opening a seminary, he attempted to meet the rectify shortage of priests, for the last native-born cura had died 52 years before. The Cura of Taos watched as tensions between locals and foreigners unfolded. From 1837 to 1843, violence and hand-to-hand combat by Texan-Americans was recurring until 325 armed men from Texas attempted to invade. Although the attackers were repelled, foreigners who were Mexican citizens were accused of disloyalty. Publishing a “Memorial” to the President of Mexico and to the Canadian Minister, Padre Martinez described the depravity of foreigners, their negative influence on Indigenous bands, and the “idle and ill-intentioned'' who support them. He complained that buffalos were on the brink of extinction, that the peltry market created hunger, intensified raiding, and destroyed peace. Although the Padre did not mention beaver, their population in the San Luis Basin was decimated by the mid-1830s due to over-trapping.

Father Martinez’s public statement fell on deaf ears. The Governor of New Mexico disregarded his objections and authorized mammoth Mexican Land Grants to foreigners who had become naturalized Mexican citizens or were in partnership with citizens. Carlos Beaubien, Guadalupe Miranda, Ceran St. Vrain, and Gervacio Nolán among them received grants adding up to 8,425,273-acres, roughly 13,164-square miles. Beaubien and his family’s included the Sangre de Cristo land grant. (Fig.5) Rich in minerals, pastureland, wildlife, and rivers and watershed, these privatized Mexican land grants given to four men who were in essence silent partners amounted to the largest private land holding in America, extending from the New Mexico borderlands into southern Colorado. The region was taken not by force, but by elaborate documents written in archaic Spanish.

Consequences of Forced Occupation and Military Rule

With the land partitioning completed, Brigadier General Stephen Kearny, commander of the Army of the West, organized his forces at Bent’s Fort at the beginning of the Mexican – American War (1846-1848). Kearny secured New Mexico after Governor Armijo dismissed 4,000 Mexican volunteers and left for Chihuahua. Kearny implemented a Code of Conduct and appointed foreign merchants to the highest positions, making Charles Bent Governor and Carlos Beaubien Justice of the Supreme Court. Though some thought that American democracy would bring positive change, people of the newly occupied land faced prejudice and hostility. They worried that Spanish and Mexican land tenure traditions and property rights would not be respected.

In 1847, villagers of Taos, Arroyo Hondo, Mora, Questa, and Taos Pueblo revolted against the American occupation and attacked the distillery at Arroyo Hondo, killing Charles Bent (Governor), Narcisco Beaubien (Carlos’s son), Stephen Louis Lee (Sheriff), Cornelio Vigil (Taos Alcalde). The distillery became an inferno when the roof was set ablaze. Though the rioters sought out Carlos Beaubien, he was elsewhere.

The American Army reacted by killing one hundred and fifty men and capturing four hundred after breaching the Taos Pueblo church with cannon. Seven Americans were lost and forty-five wounded. The military killed twenty-five locals at Mora and leveled the village with cannon in reprisal for the death of a single commander. Rebels were tried at Taos; sixteen were hung and 50 imprisoned for treason by a jury of friends of the deceased and by Judge Beaubien.

The Taos priest Padre Martinez was considered a threat. The Seventh Council of Baltimore authorized the newly arrived French Missionaries to replace the Archdiocese of Durango, Mexico. Father Jean-Baptiste Lamy was named the

Fig.6. Utes in Colorado: The image shows Utes crossing a river during the period of their defeat and relocation. Photo by E.O. Richmond, 1880’s. Reproduced with permission of copyright holder (Reddart/Brown family collection)

ecclesiastical head of New Mexico. The conflicts with Martinez ended when Lamy excommunicated Martinez in 1858.

From Bereavement to Forward Movement: Beaubien’s Seigneurial Colony

Soon after the death of his son and partners, Don Carlos began to colonize the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant. When the land was granted 1844, Don Carlos recruited extended families from the Taos and Chama Valley and appointed three alcaldes to manage the colony. In 1848, Beaubien’s men ejected a Scottish merchant from Taos who attempted to settle near where Don Carlos had a temporary sheep camp, suggesting he anticipated losing control once squatters and eastern homesteaders arrived.

Concurrently, the military’s peacekeeping force was patrolling the San Luis Basin. Beaubien lobbied the Army and offered a free twenty-five-year lease if the military would build a fort and pacify the Ute and Jicarilla Apache. In 1858 Fort Garland was constructed of adobe. Nearby northbound trails gave merchants and millers, including Carlos Beaubien and Ceran St. Vrain, along with freighters, farmers, wood-gathers, and laborers access to the lucrative military market.

Assuming the Navajos and Plains Indians would be stopped by the Army, the Utes agreed to treaties that were later broken. Settlers’ plazas were far from the fort

Fig.7 Acequia Landscape Drawing:The image shows how the landscape around a river were typically irrigated and utilized in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. (Illustration by Arnold A. Valdez, 2015). Reproduced with permission of copyright holder Arnold A. Valdez

and hard to defend; a thousand sheep were taken in 1852, when military arrived too late to stop the theft. The Indian Agent took the Ute Chiefs to Washington, hoping to impress upon them the extent of American power, but resistance continued. An offer of small-pox infected blankets by the army to tribal leaders provoked attacks at Conejos and San Acacio. After a conflict in 1855 with the army and mercenaries, the Utes moved west of the Continental Divide, initiating the Indigenous diaspora from the San Luis Basin. (Fig.6)

Beaubien pushed to settle people on his land before the 1860 Census in order to comply with American land tenure laws. The census undergirded the creation of Colorado in 1861 and the future County of Costilla, which was one of the first seventeen districts in the new territory. Without people, borderlands could be redefined as public domain and not a private estate. Meanwhile, a bill in the US Senate changed the southern boundary so that certain land grants that had been part of northern New Mexico were reallocated to Territorial Colorado, where private property rights were safe from challenge.

With the Trinchera Watershed militarized, Carlos focused on the lateral streams of the Rio Culebra Watershed in the Sangre de Cristo Range. Early settlements

were established near bottomland and cottonwood forests to supply the water, clay, stone, and wood needed for construction.

To attract pobladores to move into the frontier, Beaubien offered “usufructuary rights”. This feudal concept allowed use of another’s land and was the foundation of the Manorial System. Beaubien followed the pattern and granted the settlers access to his own land. Such settlers' rights complemented individual property holdings, which were divided into long-lots. Known as vara (a unit of measurement equaling three feet) lots were narrow parcels and ran between and at right angles to streams. In addition to allowing water frontage, the land included river bottoms, pastures, woodlands, and foothills. Most people paid a dollar per vara of land. A few favored settlers obtained multiple tracts at various elevations in different watersheds. Beaubien organized the land he deeded to the settlers to replicate French colonial property divisions in Quebec, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, and Illinois. Along the Rio Costilla, south of Rio Culebra, was a mercantile store and individual plazuelas at the west where Juana Beaubien resided with her family. Construction had begun on a central church. It was erroneously thought that the southern edge of the Rio Costilla Basin was within the Territory of Colorado, but the government surveyor ruled that the Rio Costilla villages were in New Mexico, and the county seat was moved sixteen miles north to the Rio Culebra de San Luis.

Humanizing the Landscape

While the timeline of colonial establishment in San Luis is unclear in the earliest years, the population count was 1,700 persons in 1860, though land had yet to be deeded and the long-lots laid out. Settlers may have continued living in plazas along the Rio Costilla and Rio Culebra, since the long-lots were usually outside the villages and thus vulnerable to attack. Beaubien appointed John Gaspar, a Frenchman, as his local “Attorney in Fact” early in 1860, to assist him in creating an orderly settlement.

As along the Rio Costilla, the northern villages were sited along the Rio Culebra. Five plazas were designated along with a furte, or little fort. Plazas were named after a saint-protector, fortified with thick walls, and high gates. One village had a torreón or watch tower with portholes. The first villages of San Luis de la Culebra, San Pablo, San Acacio, and Los Fuertes were founded by 1853; additional plazas were founded at Chama and San Pedro soon after.

Prior to his death in 1864, Carlos Beaubien journeyed to the Rio Culebra in his modern horse-drawn buggy with camping gear, large compass, rods for surveying, paper, ink, prewritten lists, and other documents. He intended to walk the land to measure settlers’ parcels, from the upper Rio Culebra at San Francisco to the

middle village at San Luis. Because of his failing health, he assigned an assistant to divide the land at the western edge of the grant near San Acacio. His second was to file his instructions in a formal record book at the County Seat. Don Carlos met with the leading families to discuss his intent and present a list of individuals with an itemized allotment of land by location.

The surviving copy of the lista, or list, has names checked off with notations along the edges; it was a working document and paper was limited. The list indicates that some who purchased varas were absentee owners with tenant farmers. Crossreferencing names to property records indicated that some never received deeds, though their names appear on the lista. Beaubien’s representatives, whom he deemed County Commissioners, received land for services rendered. The lista also contained an entry of a villager who paid in livestock with an additional $200 for 400 varas on the north fork of the Rio Culebra, which was the highest pasture land with trails and the headwaters of the river.

The list’s talking points were likely written by Beaubien’s secretary John Gaspar. Beaubien's primary concerns were the chapel, the commons of la vega, roads near the center of commerce, and that landowners be given access to acequias (irrigation ditches). Beaubien’s assistants marked entry to the long-lot with large rocks.

(Fig.7)

Later, Don Carlos described his intent for the grant. Written in archaic Spanish and filed in the Costilla County Clerk & Recorders Record Book 1, Page 256, this short entry, in ink on now yellowing paper, is perhaps the most celebrated real estate transaction in Colorado. It is the legal linchpin that holds the villagers common use rights to The Sangre de Cristo Land Grant.

Though vague, the paragraph sets the parameters for settlement following the tradition of the Seigneurial Regime. Introduced in 1627 by Cardinal Richelieu, the Chief Minister to King Louis XIII, the Manorial System was a feudal mechanism used to populate New France. An estate was usually given to nobles, the wealthy, clergy, and military men, and could be inherited. The Seigneur, or Lord of the Manor, was expected to divide a portion of the land among habitants. The tenants lived and worked on small long-lot plots that were purchased for a nominal fee, and were required to protect the manor, give surpluses, and contribute labor for road maintenance. The Cardinal dictated that the Seigneur provide a church, roads, and a mill.

Carlos Beaubien’s description of settlers' rights and obligations followed this manorial system, which he experienced in Canada as a young man. Rights to

graze and use water were communal, but the planted land would be protected from animals except for “domestic service”. The document underscored that “All inhabitants have the right to use pastures, water, wood, and lumber, always taking care that one does not cause damage to the others''. Beaubien granted 5,000 acres including the site for a mill for grinding wheat at San Luis to St. Vrain, who had led the militia against the rebels at Taos and later against the Utes.

Epilogue

Don Carlos’ final visit to the Rio Culebra Basin was early in the 1860s. He was overweight and struggling with his health. A photo of Beaubien, date unknown, shows him in his prime, a serious man, wearing a dark suit jacket, white shirt with buttons down the center and a high neck with a horizontal bow, with a deeply receding hairline.

Aware that his vast estates would be taxed under American rule, Beaubien subdivided the land grant, giving his daughters large estates as marriage gifts and selling the remainder of his holdings to the first Governor of Colorado. The original arrangements regarding settlement and land use in the Rio Culebra Basin were soon disrupted. The complexity of Beaubien’s later transactions left a burden on settlers after his death in 1864. Large tracts of land were subsequently bought by speculators from New York to Massachusetts, London, Germany, and Holland. More interested in profit than community, these owners’ interests would increasingly be at odds with those of the settlers and their descendants who inherited the traditions and the agreements of land use set down by Beaubien. In 2002, however, by a majority of four to three, the Colorado Supreme Court granted the descendants of the original settlers in San Luis property rights access to the upland and lowland in common. With this decision, an estimated 1,200 landowners can gather firewood and graze cattle on this land. The decision respects the history of the community of San Luis while similar issues arising from the early privatization of vast tracts of land in the southwest remain unaddressed.

Bibliography

Grassham, John Williams. “Charles Beaubien: 1800-1864.” University of New Mexico, 1983 (M.A. thesis).

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