[mvpel]

But few could provide land titles to American courts, so most lost their lands and had to work for U.S.-owned farms, mines and industries.

Umm, if they didn't have title to the lands, then they weren't "their lands," were they?

[lentulusgracchus]

[Art.} But few could provide land titles to American courts, so most lost their lands and had to work for U.S.-owned farms, mines and industries.

Umm, if they didn't have title to the lands, then they weren't "their lands," were they?

Land speculation was rife in newly-independent Texas, which was cash-starved and sold off open land (that is why there is relatively less public land in Texas than in other Western States).

The Spanish land grants were recognized when recordeds (after all, most or all of the Texians held their Spanish mercedes on the same basis, duly granted and recorded by commissioned empresarios like Austin and Beaumont), but many of the Spanish-Mexican landowners held the new Texas government in contempt (cultural hostility => political hostility and non-cooperation) and so did not register their land titles. That cost them when American speculators and shysters started culling through the land records. Thus T.R. Fehrenbach in Lone Star, the pre-PC manual of Texas history.