supreme court, and United States district court, that San Francisco in 1835-46 was a pueblo; that as such it was entitled by Spanish and Mexican law and usage to four leagues of land, and that the United States was under obligation to recognize the pueblo title.[1]
- ↑ The position of Jones and Randolph as representing the opposition, was that there was at S. F. no pueblo, in the sense of a corporate body owning or entitled to own lands. There were two pueblos in the sense of settlements, each originally intended to become the nucleus of a town, and each having a certain territorial franchise or right to the use of certain lands — the presidio for military, and the mission for missionary purposes. The presidio might become the seat of a pueblo, civil community, or municipality, by the settlement of retired soldiers; but these soldiers settled elsewhere, and the presidio became merely an abandoned military post. The mission also might by secularization and the aggregation of settlers de razon to the ex-neophytes have become a pueblo, but did not, secularization proving a failure and the Ind. disappearing. The ayunt. established in 1835 was for the government of the whole partido, not specially for the pueblo, and its creation was not the creation of a Pueblo de S. Francisco. A third pueblo, or settlement, sprang up at Yerba Buena from 1835-6. As a matter of convenience, the govt at Monterey delegated to the partido ayunt. authority to grant lots at Yerba Buena, and later at Dolores, and such lots were legally granted. Each settlement might have obtained from the govt certain lands for propios, etc., but never did so. All the lots were granted either at Y. B. or at Dolores, never at the pueblo of S. F. The 'pueblo system' so much talked of was for the most part an invention of later times; or if not so, the 4 leagues of land to which à pueblo was entitled must be formally granted by the govt, or at least marked out officially, the U. S. being under no obligation to recognize a title that the Mex. govt might, under certain circumstances if applied to have seen fit to concede.
As a matter of fact S. F. was a pueblo exactly like S. Diego, Sta Bárbara, and Monterey. Much confusion has been caused by the multiplicity of names applied to peninsula establishments, such as presidio, mission, pueblo, establecimiento, port, S. Francisco, S. F. de Asis, Dolores, Yerba Buena, etc., and most of it may be removed by noting that San Francisco de Asis was the legal and proper name from the first for all on the peninsula, the other terms being used to indicate localities at S. F., very much as Mission, Presidio, or North Beach are still used. In early times S. F. was a mission-military establishment intended eventually to become a town or pueblo of Spanish citizens, composed of ex-neophyte Ind., retired soldiers and their descendants, colonists or settlers from abroad, naturalized foreigners — any or all of these. The pueblo would begin to exist, in the familiar sense of the term, whenever there should be any residents besides soldiers and neophytes; in the legal sense when a local civil govt should be provided for them. Nature in this case fixed the natural bounds of the pueblo lands on three sides; in the distribution of lots the convenience of citizens would be limited only by needs, actual and prospective, of military defence and of Ind. yet to be released from neophytism. In 1834 S. F. was a pueblo in the ordinary sense; in 1835, by the organization of an ayunt., it became a pueblo in a strictly legal sense. Nothing more was required. An ayunt. without a pueblo could have no existence; though the jurisdiction of every ayunt. extends far beyond its pueblo. This pueblo was not the presidio, it was not the mission, it was San Francisco. The presidio was the place of meeting, and the natural centre, or starting point, of the pueblo; but the residents did not want lots there, preferring Yerba Buena cove. The ayunt. had the right under the laws to grant town lots; possibly would have granted them without consulting the
