MEXICAN GRANTS. 455 
back was a superior animal and their master, yet they consid- 
ered a man on foot as a base and ferocious beast, and attacked 
him as they would attack a wolf. Their owner knew his 
property only by the brand placed on them when they were 
calves. From the time when the redhot iron burned into 
their flesh, they roamed untouched by the hands of man, until 
fate decreed that they should be slaughtered to furnish fresh 
meat for their master’s household, or hide and tallow for for- 
eign commerce. Evidently this people, with such habits and 
such occupations, did not need to have their lands precisely 
described. Most of the titles were legally valid under the 
Mexican law. There was no motive to commit fraud, because 
land was of little value, and great. tracts of rich soil were, up 
to the time of the American conquest, open to every pe- 
titioner. In most cases the actual occupation took place pre- 
vious to 1840, and had never been interrupted. This occupa- | ; 
tion, the most conclusive proof of good faith, and an equitable 
title in itself, was notorious, and susceptible of proof by hun- 
dreds of witnesses. The paper titles were mostly of indu- 
bitable genuineness, written by the hands of well-known of- 
ficials, bearing regular numbers, referred to in public lists of 
land-titles, and mentioned in government documents of various 
kinds. The proof of the genuineness of the title-papers, the 
good faith of the claimants, and the equitable validity of the 
claims, in nine cases out of ten, was abundant, and, to any man 
at all acquainted with the subject, ndubitable. It was then 
evidently the duty of the government of the United States to 
provide for the summary examination of the documents, and 
in every case, where genuine title-papers were found with 
ancient occupation, to order a survey for the establishment of 
boundaries, giving to the claimant at least a prima facie rec- 
ognition of title, subject, perhaps, to investigation in the courts, 
if any person should see fit to assail the validity of the grant. 
But the federal government pursued a policy very different 
from this plain duty. It delayed action through 1848, 1849, 
and 1850; and-first, in 1851, passed an act nominally to “ set- 
