"Alcalde Rafael Aguilar, his lieutenant Juan Domingo Vigil, and "General" José Manuel Armenta, all Pecos Indians, appealed to the Diputación to halt the unlawful alienation of their lands. Some recipients of these grants were speculating. Without having acquired any legal rights to the land or having occupied it the required five years, they had begun selling it off. ..."It is not nor has it been our desire," the Pecos insisted, "that they give them our lands." What the Indians had not planted, they used as pasture for their livestock. Had they no rights under God and the nation? "Well we know that since the conquest we have earned more merits than all the pueblos of this province." If grants were to be made, they should be of land truly vacant, "as it is at Lo de Mora, at Las Candelarias, at El Coyote, at El Sapelló, on the plains of the lower Río Pecos, as it is on the lower Río Salado and the Río Colorado [the Canadian].""