Land Ordinances, 136/, 1695 
185 
It is to be noted that if in measuring criaderos and sitios de ganado 
mayor and menor under a legal pact and agreement the lines are not 
drawn from north to south and from east to west, it is ordained and 
commanded that the regulation prescribing measurement from the centre 
shall not be omitted, no matter whether or not the measurement has to be 
made over rocks, cliffs, up and down hills, crossing ravines, lakes, or 
cliffs; and if the lines of measurement are covered with undergrowth there 
shall be constructed pathways and exits, entryways and passages. 
It is ordered that whenever any kind of lands and sitios de ganado 
mayor and menor , criaderos and caballerías have been measured, each 
one of them shall be marked with landmarks. 
It is to be noted that on the boundaries of every plot of land the set¬ 
tlers themselves are each to leave without prejudice to each other ten yards 
of land for entries and exits, free from enclosure or boundary-mark for 
said passages, and if need be they may be compelled to do this. It is also 
to be noted that no person may settle nor build his house on his boundary¬ 
line nor very close to it on account of the injury which this might cause 
to his neighbors, except in case he has the consent of the neighbor to 
do so. But without such consent a settler may build his house within sixty 
paces of the boundary but not closer, it being noted that sixty paces make 
one hundred yards in the Castilian measurement. 
Royal Cédula. [Madrid, June 12, 1695.] 
The King. To the president and the oidores of my royal Audiencia of 
Mexico: Representation has been made to me on the part of the farmers 
of that New Spain that the troubles and vexations are many which they 
experience and suffer on account of the suits which are constantly brought 
against them by the Indians, redounding not only to the depreciation of 
their estates but to that of mine also. To remedy this they supplicate that 
I be pleased to order that the privileges shall be preserved which have been 
conceded to them by the kings, my predecessors, and that these privileges 
shall be observed literally and without interpretation. They ask that 
they be conceded a protector for their lawsuits, and that he shall be a 
minister of the royal Audiencia, for the Indians, in order to deprive them 
of their lands for cultivation or grazing, resort to building huts of grass 
or of stone and mud, and, having done this, appear before the Audiencia 
asking that, in conformity with the ordinance issued by the Marquis of 
Falces, Count of Santiestévan, on May 26, 1577, 18 they may have measured 
out to them five hundred yards which must intervene between the farms 
of the Spaniards and those of the Indians, by which method the latter 
intrude within the holdings of the former. Although this injury is of 
great seriousness, that which ensues under the cédula issued on June 4, 
1687, i s even greater, for by this cédula there are conceded to the Indian 
towns another one hundred yards in addition to the five hundred, with 
the command that they shall be measured in all four directions counting 
from the last house, so that the entire environs of the town are left free. 
As this regulation is so greatly to the detriment of the farmers, they ask 
that it shall not be observed, and that the scope of the ordinance shall be 
