The Spanish Borderlands

Excerpt from The Spanish Borderlands

There are still other marks of Spanish days on the southern border. We see them in social, religious, economic, and even in legal customs. California has her Portola festival, her rodeos, and her Mission Play. Everywhere in the Southwest there are quaint church customs brought from Spain or Mexico by the early pioneers. From the Spaniard the American cowboy inherited his trade, his horse, his outfit, his vocabulary, and his methods. Spain is stamped on the land surveys. Horn Sacramento to St. Augustine nearly every body holds his land by a title going back to Mexico or Madrid. Most of the farms along the border are divisions of famous grants which are still known by their original Spanish names. In the realm of law, principles regarding mines, water rights on streams.