THE DISPOSITION OF OUR PUBLIC LANDS 257 



proteges, every tract which has come to the government has been 

 reduced by the claims of previous residents. The policy of the 

 government has been to leave undisturbed actual occupants of 

 small estates and to construe liberally the grants of previous 

 governments. The Indian occupancy has always been recognized 

 as something which must be purchased before the United States 

 gained full title. Texas retained the whole body of public lands 

 within her limits. With these two exceptions, the United States 

 has since 1802 had to consider only private claims. As more 

 than one-half of the whole territory (1,865,457 out of 3,501,509 

 square miles) has once been Spanish, the land titles under the 

 grants and laws of Spain have been a troublesome thorn in 

 the flesh of successive land commissioners. No exact record 

 appears of the precise quantities of land confirmed to claimants 

 in California, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Florida, but up- 

 wards of fifty thousand square miles have doubtless never 

 entered the public domain. The general policy of the govern- 

 ment is to require a claimant to prove his title. Great hardship 

 has often ensued, and many grants are still unconfirmed by the 

 United States. 



If the government had never parted with any of the lands to 

 which it had undoubted title, we should now have a patrimony of 

 2,708,388 square miles. This area is but little less than that of 

 the whole United States, excluding Alaska. The fourth column 

 of Table I ^ shows the amount of land in possession of the United 

 States from year to year. It will be noticed that since 1803 we 

 have had more land than exclusive territory. A very considerable 

 part of the public domain lies therefore within the limits of 

 states. Another significant fact, shown by the same table,^ is the 

 rapid melting away of the area gained by each cession since 

 1805. We had less land in 1846 than before the Florida and 

 final Oregon annexations ; the area of Alaska barely made good 

 the acreage lost since 1848, and a new Texas would not much 

 more than restore the public lands parted with since 1867. Let 

 us look more closely into the process by which the United States 

 has divested itself of more than a million square miles. 

 ^ See footnote on page 256. 



