markmar,
Honestly, sometimes I find it impossible to follow your logic. With that said, read the following statement (
or, not), made by J.T. Kenney who represented the Peralta family in the Reavis trial. Not difficult to see that the Peralta heirs, although hopeful, didn't believe in the validity of the Peralta Grant and, had nothing (documentation) in their family history to supported it.
Your government conspiracy argument simply has no weight to it.
"I feel as though it was due to this Honorable Court, and due to my clients, and due to myself, that I make a further statement of the position that I occupy, and I feel more anxious to do this from the fact that the cases have been consolidated … . I represent, as may be known to this Court, what is known as the Peralta heirs... . Before assuming the position of attorney for these people, who live five hundred miles from where I reside, I took occasion to visit them, and have these Peralta heirs gather together. I spent a number of days in ascertaining this fact the first and most important to us before assuming the relation of attorney: and that was that they were the lineal descendants of Don Miguel Peralta and we took a large amount of informal testimony on that point. We established beyond peradventure of a doubt, in my mind, that they were such descendants. That was about three years ago, and they were induced to take this step from the fact that Mr. Reavis had published to the world throughout the newspapers that he had indubitable evidence that there was a grant made by the Viceroy of Spain to Don Miguel Peralta. Proceeding upon that basis then, my clients instituted this suit, and not being financially able themselves to accumulate the evidence to establish this grant, they depended entirely upon Mr. Reavis. Now, if twenty years of labor, and something like a quarter of a million dollars, which is said to have been expended, have failed to establish such a grant, then we necessarily fall with it, for we based and predicated all our hopes and expectations upon the fact of the grant being established by Mr. Reavis. Now, if Your Honors please, the Government Attorney on yesterday afternoon, placed in my hands the printed evidence upon which he largely depends, and to my mind it did seem as though that grant, upon which Reavis relies ‑ (To the reporter: and I hope you are taking down what I am saying as I want it to go in the record) ‑ it seems to me, from a cursory examination that I could give it, that it is a fabrication, and as such, if such it turns out to be, before this Honorable Court, I want it distinctly understood by the Court and by the Government Attorney, that we have had nothing to do with it. We wash our hands from all of it. I only saw Mr. Reavis once in my life, and that was at Tucson, Arizona, for three or four minutes, and in that conversation I merely called on him to get his book which he had published, which he refused to give me. He insulted my clients by saying that their petition was nothing more than a blackmailing affair. No, sirs, I don’t want it to be understood that I am here, in any possible sense of the word, the representative of Mr. Reavis, or any of the frauds, if frauds they be, that he has committed or attempted to perpetrate upon this Court. We have had nothing to do with it, and hardly know what course to pursue. We have no evidence to introduce before this Court of any sort, and I feel embarrassed from the fact that my clients’ case has been consolidated with his. I am sorry that Mr. Reavis is not here to give an account of himself, and to be present on the trial of this case, but he is not. We stand here in the position of heirs, based solely upon the hope and expectation that a valid subsisting grant would be established before this Court to Don Miguel Peralta, and then, as I supposed, our rights and interests would be litigated in the local courts. This much I feel as though it was my duty to present to this Court, and I shall be a spectator during a portion at least of the progress of this trial; I do not feel as though I could stay all the time, as the elevation seems to affect me, not only my lungs, but my heart, and it is with difficulty that I can speak, or even breathe freely; coming from the coast, as I did, it has a very serious effect upon me, hence I do not think I shall remain here very long, and my interests, whatever they are, I feel are in safe hands, and if it should turn out that the grant should be established, why then our interests will be looked after. I am much obliged to the Court for its attention."
Peralta Grant, Amended Answer and Cross‑Petition of the United States, Transcript of Testimony Taken on Trial of the Case and Final Decree of the Court 369‑372 (1895).
