There’s no take-back involved in this. Once we pushed the Indians off, the federal gov’t owned all the land. They sold some, some was acknowledged to be under Mexican land grants from before that war, some was awarded to railroad barons for resale in exchange for extending their lines, some of that was set aside for towns along the track, and some went out in the Homestead Act. The rest — including the ranges that cattle men insisted nobody owned — was under federal ownership in the Land Bank. So they didn’t TAKE anything.
There’s no take-back involved in this. Once we pushed the Indians off, the federal gov’t owned all the land. They sold some, some was acknowledged to be under Mexican land grants from before that war, some was awarded to railroad barons for resale in exchange for extending their lines, some of that was set aside for towns along the track, and some went out in the Homestead Act. The rest — including the ranges that cattle men insisted nobody owned — was under federal ownership in the Land Bank. So they didn’t TAKE anything.