The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992 Page: 464

                                
464              Southwestern Historzcal Quarterly
Through the Bourland and Miller Commission and subsequent claims
adjudication legislation, Texas avoided many of the difficulties the
United States Congress created for itself in New Mexico by refusing to
deal with the Spanish and Mexican land grant question.
Thus, the state's lawmakers recognized and gave validity (if only
grudgingly) to the Spanish and Mexican legal and cultural forms that
had shaped the look of the land in South Texas. Having discharged
that obligation, lawmakers left Mexican American titleholders to de-
fend themselves against the onrushing land sharks in the dangerous,
and for these new Texans uncharted, realm of the Anglo-American
legal system. But this is another story, one that deserves a complete and
detailed analysis of its own.