LAND, AGRICULTURE, AND STOCK RAISING 
LAND 
Nothing is more precious to the Pueblo Indian than his land; one 
of his greatest fears, or sources of anxiety, is that he will be deprived 
of it. And with good reason, for ever since the coming of the White 
man the Pueblo Indian has been threatened with expropriation, and 
there have been many instances of loss and deprivation. The land 
question in the Pueblo country is an old and complicated one, but its 
history has been well summarized by S. D. Aberle (1948). 
After the conquest of New Mexico the Spanish king granted a tract 
of land to each pueblo; Sia was allotted 16,282 acres (Aberle, 1948, 
p. 82.) For decades, however, the acreage for this grant has been 
cited as 17,515 (Rep. Comm. Ind. Aff., 1874, p. 224; Royce, 1899, 
p. 922; Brayer, 1939, pp. 99-100; data given to me by the District 
Cadastral Engineer, General Land Office, Santa Fe, in 1933). The 
“Survey of Conditions of the Indians in the United States” (U.S. 
Senate, 1932, pt. 19, p. 9888) gave the acreage as of 1930 as 17,750. 
The Spanish grants were recognized by Mexico after it achieved 
independence in 1821, and they were also honored by the United 
States when it acquired the territory in 1848. Many pueblos of New 
Mexico lost land to squatters or from other kinds of encroachment 
during the 18th and 19th centuries. The lands of the Sia were so 
poor, however, that when the Pueblo Lands Board undertook a study 
of land problems in 1927 it “found no non-Indian encroachments” 
upon Sia lands (Brayer, 1939, p. 100). 
During the first four decades of the 20th century, many pueblos 
in New Mexico acquired the use of additional lands in one way or 
another. In 1924, “a tract of land amounting to 386.85 acres located 
in the public domain adjacent to the northwest corner of the Zia 
pueblo grant . . . was set apart as a reservation for the benefit, use, 
and occupancy of the Indians of Zia pueblo” (ibid., p. 100). In 1938, 
the Sia were given by Executive Order the use of three tracts of land 
totaling 40,585.41 acres (Aberle, 1948, p. 82). And in the same year 
they acquired, by lease or permit from Federal Government agencies, 
three additional tracts amounting to 57,807.24 acres (ibid., p. 82). 
Thus, by 1944, the Sia had 115,061 acres of land at their disposal 
(ibid., p. 84); no acreage had been added to or subtracted from their 
holdings between that date and 1957, when the present study was 
terminated. 
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