New Mexico Pueblos’ Aboriginal Water Rights Not Cut Off by Spain

The aboriginal water rights American Indian Pueblos had in the Jemez River Basin in New Mexico, which gave them a claim to the water, weren’t extinguished when Spain asserted sovereignty over the region in the 1500s, the Tenth Circuit said.

Although Spain authoritatively took control of the land, it never affirmatively extinguished the Pueblos’ water rights, the court said in an opinion by Judge David M. Ebel.

Pueblos are tribes that live in fixed structures in the Southwestern U.S. Aboriginal title refers to land claimed by the Pueblos by virtue of their exercise of sovereignty rather than by formal conveyance, ...