Dispossession of Indigenous homelands challenges the ability of communities to maintain their social and political cohesion, practice their culture, and imagine a secure future. The centuries-long experience of Indigenous communities across the Americas points to five mechanisms of land dispossession: (1) forced conquest during war and colonization; (2) forced displacement by settlers and governmental authorities; (3) confinement to specific lands; (4) legalized dispossession through the use of the courts; and (5) bureaucratic processes. In many cases, these five forms of dispossession connect with or build upon each other. Even when the law is found to support Indigenous communities—a rare moment indeed, because Indigenous rights are so often adjudicated in “the court of the conqueror”—legal and bureaucratic processes often combine to limit Indigenous peoples’ ability to assert their rights and status. Genocide, mass murder, and forced displacement gain much attention when it comes to the dispossession of Indigenous homelands. In the case of the United States of America, legalized dispossession through the courts has also served to limit Native American title claims to land. These court cases are pursued in a range of different legal venues and often lack any clear connection to Native rights, focusing instead on seemingly mundane legal matters such as property titles or contract disputes. Nonetheless, they have been employed as a regular means of dispossessing Native people of their land and property.

When the Spanish first established a permanent colonial presence in Alta California around 1769, the law of the time offered some limited protections to Native peoples already living there.¹ These protections continued, in various forms, until the United States acquired California in 1848 under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican-American War. The Treaty resulted in a major change in the recognition and protection of Native homelands, which would result in the large-scale dispossession of Native American tribes.² Although the Treaty had provisions intended to safeguard the rights of Native individuals living in the newly established state of California, it resulted in widespread, targeted discrimination and land expropriation contrary to its purpose.³ In integrating California into U.S. Indian policy, the U.S. Government began a systematic and legal reorganization of Native American tribes, which involved the confiscation of lands and the displacement of Native communities within California. Thus began a pattern of misuse of legal authority, exemplified by the case of Wilson v. Castro, which resulted in subtle acts of legalized dispossession.

The case of Wilson v. Castro (31 Cal. 420, 423 (Cal. 1866)) represents a prime example of Indigenous land loss during the transition from Mexican to U.S. law following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In 1839, Antonio Buelna Jr. a non-Native, received the Rancho San Francisquito and Rancho San Gregorio land grants in Alta California under the Mexican Colonization Law of 1824.⁴ A Native Tamien-speaking community that had survived the traumatic experience at Mission Santa Clara lived on these land grants. Antonio Buelna Jr. died without a will in 1845, leaving behind his non-Native widow, Maria Concepcion Encarnacion Valencia, and his siblings, but no direct lineal descendants. A dispute arose over his rightful heirs: his widow or his siblings and their descendants.⁵ Maria Concepcion Encarnacion Valencia kept the land and gave a portion to another individual, Salvador Castro, in 1849. In 1851, U.S. law required all land claimants to file for possession of their land grants or risk losing their property.⁶ Both Maria Concepcion Encarnacion Valencia and Salvador Castro petitioned the U.S. Government for the land in 1861, and both were eventually granted title.

However, the inheritance law of the era prioritized the claims of siblings over those of widows in cases where there was no valid will. In 1866, the heirs of Antonio Buelna Jr.’s siblings sued Castro, among others, in California State courts. The California Supreme Court found that Salvador Castro knew of the siblings’ potential status as legitimate heirs.⁷ The Court also evaluated whether the land was held by Maria Concepcion Encarnacion Valencia and Salvador Castro for the children of Antonio Buelna Jr.’s siblings in a “constructive trust,” which is established by the courts to hold assets when the court determines that a party cannot keep property with disputed ownership.⁸ Despite a holding in favor of the heirs of Antonio Buelna Jr.’s siblings and instructions to a lower court to evaluate the claims with a view toward a constructive trust, the lower court nevertheless found that the land belonged to Maria Concepcion Encarnacion Valencia.⁹ There is no evidence that the heirs of Antonio Buelna Jr.’s siblings received any land.

Ultimately, Maria Concepcion Encarnacion Valencia sold Rancho San Francisquito to the detriment of the other heirs of Antonio Buelna Jr. This outcome runs contrary to prevailing law of the era. To understand why, the outcome in Wilson must be considered within the context of racial animus toward Native American ownership of land in nineteenth-century California. Many Buelna descendants had died around the time of the court case in 1866, leaving few male heirs or women who were unlikely to inherit land under prevailing inheritance laws. Crucially, Wilson was considered shortly after the grandson of Antonio Buelna Jr. married Fernanda Josefa Mathews, a Tamien woman. When this marriage resulted in the birth of a son, it raised the real possibility that Rancho San Francisquito would pass to the ownership of a Native American if proper heirship was considered and inheritance law followed. Wilson forestalled this possibility.

The result denied an inheritance to Fernanda Josefa Mathews’s son but also to Antonio Buelna Jr.’s heirs, who would go on to marry Native Americans. It is likely that the Buelna siblings were discriminated against because of their intermarriage with a Tamien ancestor. Such legalized dispossession aligned with other efforts during the same period to undermine the rights of Native communities in California. The state had undertaken military expeditions against Native communities beginning in the 1850s, which were subsequently funded by the U.S. Congress.¹⁰ The California State legislature proposed and enacted laws controlling Native land, lives, and all aspects of their livelihood.¹¹ Under these laws, Native people were denied the right to testify in court or to vote, effectively silencing their voices in legal and political matters.¹² Moreover, in exchange for limited access to their ancestral territories, many Native people were forced into a form of indentured servitude to non-Native landlords who controlled Indigenous lands and the labor of the Native communities that inhabited them. ¹³ California State law and cases such as Wilson contributed to a systematic pattern of abuse toward Native American tribes.

The conclusion of the case resulted in an entire portion of the Buelna family losing the right to have an ancestral home, an effect still felt today by members of the Tamien Nation—a California Native American Tribe that descends from the Native community that once lived at Rancho San Francisquito. Antonio Buelna Jr.’s legal heirs (his siblings and their lineal descendants) include the direct ancestors of Tamien Nation’s current members. Following Wilson, and without a place to call home, the Tamien-speaking community scattered, ultimately relocating to the Santa Cruz Mountains and to towns in central California. The effects of Wilson are therefore cumulative and reinforce the dispossession of the Tamien Nation from its ancestral homelands in present-day Santa Clara County, California. Additionally, Wilson also demonstrates how the mechanics of the U.S. legal system can be manipulated to avoid honoring land arrangements under Spanish and Mexican law to the detriment of Native people.

Wilson v. Castro is just one example in the long history of the dispossession of Native Americans in Alta California and the broader United States. Given its focus on non-Native people and their inheritance rights, it is not at all obvious that this case would have such an outsized impact on a single Native American community. As a less overt form of legalized dispossession, it could easily be overlooked historians seeking to understand the widespread loss of land experienced by Native Americans in California during the early American period. Yet this case is likely emblematic of other court cases from the period where racial animus played a significant role in undermining Native American ownership rights. The dispossession faced by the Buelnas and their heirs was likely a fate shared by many Native communities who sought to rebuild their lives on land grants following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Wilson v. Castro serves as a stark reminder that the structural dispossession of Native peoples often occurs through routine legal transactions, such as those related to birth, death, and inheritance, under the guise of lawful procedures.

References

An Act Concerning Crimes and Punishments 1850, Cal. Stat. 99.

Bigler, John. “Ltr. from Gov. John Bigler to Gen. E. Hitchcock, Commander of U.S. Troops in Cal. Apr. 8, 1852.” In The Other Californians: Prejudice and Discrimination Under Spain, Mexico, and the United States to 1920, edited by Robert F. Heizer and Alan F. Almquist, 207–9. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971.

Burgess, Larry E. “Commission to the Mission Indians 1891.” San Bernardino County Museum Association Quarterly 35, no. 1 (1988): 2–47.

Civil Practice Act of 1850, § 394.

“Constructive Trust.” Legal Information Institute. Accessed March 28, 2024. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/constructive_trust.

“Documents Pertaining to the Adjudication of Private Land Claims in California 1857.” University of California, Berkeley. Accessed March 28, 2024. https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/265450?v=pdf.

Indian Appropriation Act, Pub. L. No. 31-14, 31 Stat. 151.

“Plat of the Rancho San Francisquito, Finally Confirmed to Maria Concepcion Valencia de Rodriguez, California, 1866.” Calisphere, University of California. Accessed March 28, 2024. https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/hb709nb42x/.

The 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, Cal. Stat. 133.

Wilson v. Castro, 31 Cal. 420, 423 (Cal. 1866).

Wood, William. “The Trajectory of Indian Country in California: Rancherias, Villages, Pueblos, Missions, Ranchos, Reservations, Colonies, and Rancherias.” Tulsa Law Review 44, no. 2 (2008): 317–64.

For Additional Reading:

Hinton, Leanne. “The Ohlone Languages.” In The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice, edited by Leanne Hinton and Kenneth Hale. San Diego: Academic Press, 2001.

Milliken, Randall, Laurence H. Shoup, and Beverly R. Ortiz. “2009 - Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today.” Government Documents and Publications, no. 6 (2017). https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/hornbeck_ind_1/6.