New Mexico Territorial Laws and Treaties NM TERR LAWS ENABLING ACT § 2

The delegates to the convention thus elected shall meet in the hall of the house of representatives in the capital of the territory of New Mexico at twelve o'clock noon on the fourth Monday after their election, and they shall receive compensation for the period they actually are in session, but not for more than sixty days in all. After organization they shall declare on behalf of the people of said proposed state that they adopt the constitution of the United States, whereupon the said convention shall be, and is hereby, authorized to form a constitution and provide for a state government for said proposed state, all in the manner and under the conditions contained in this act. The constitution shall be republican in form and make no distinction in civil or political rights on account of race or color, and shall not be repugnant to the constitution of the United States and the principles of the declaration of independence.

And said convention shall provide, by an ordinance irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of said state:

A. that perfect toleration of religious sentiment shall be secured, and that no inhabitant of said state shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode of religious worship; and that polygamous or plural marriages, or polygamous cohabitation, and the sale, barter or giving of intoxicating liquors to Indians and the introduction of liquors into Indian country, which term shall also include all lands now owned or occupied by the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, are forever prohibited;

B. that the people inhabiting said proposed state do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated and ungranted public lands lying within the boundaries thereof and to all lands lying within said boundaries owned or held by any Indian or Indian tribes the right or title to which shall have been acquired through or from the United States or any prior sovereignty, and that until the title of such Indian or Indian tribes shall have been extinguished the same shall be and remain subject to the disposition and under the absolute jurisdiction and control of the congress of the United States; that the lands and other property belonging to citizens of the United States residing without the said state shall never be taxed at a higher rate than the lands and other property belonging to residents thereof; that no taxes shall be imposed by the state upon lands or property therein belonging to or which may hereafter be acquired by the United States or reserved for its use; but nothing herein, or in the ordinance herein provided for, shall preclude the said state from taxing, as other lands and other property are taxed, any lands and other property outside of an Indian reservation owned or held by any Indian, save and except such lands as have been granted or acquired as aforesaid or as may be granted or confirmed to any Indian or Indians under any act of congress, but said ordinance shall provide that all such lands shall be exempt from taxation by said state so long and to such extent as congress has prescribed or may hereafter prescribe;

C. that the debts and liabilities of said territory of New Mexico and the debts of the counties thereof which shall be valid and subsisting at the time of the passage of this act shall be assumed and paid by said proposed state, and that said state shall, as to all such debts and liabilities, be subrogated to all the rights, including rights of indemnity and reimbursement, existing in favor of said territory or of any of the several counties thereof at the time of the passage of this act: provided, that nothing in this act shall be construed as validating or in any manner legalizing any territorial, county, municipal or other bonds, obligations or evidences of indebtedness of said territory or the counties or municipalities thereof which now are or may be invalid or illegal at the time said proposed state is admitted, nor shall the legislature of said proposed state pass any law in any manner validating or legalizing the same;

D. that provisions shall be made for the establishment and maintenance of a system of public schools, which shall be open to all the children of said state and free from sectarian control, and that said schools shall always be conducted in English;

E. that said state shall never enact any law restricting or abridging the right of suffrage on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude;

F. that the capital of said state shall, until changed by the electors voting at an election provided for by the legislature of said state for that purpose, be at the city of Santa Fe, but no election shall be called or provided for prior to the thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and twenty-five;

G. that there be and are reserved to the United States, with full acquiescence of the state, all rights and powers for the carrying out of the provisions by the United States of the act of congress entitled “An act appropriating the receipts from the sale and disposal of public lands in certain states and territories to the construction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid lands,” approved June seventeenth, nineteen hundred and two, and acts amendatory thereof or supplementary thereto, to the same extent as if said state had remained a territory;

H. that whenever hereafter any of the lands contained within Indian reservations or allotments in said proposed state shall be allotted, sold, reserved or otherwise disposed of, they shall be subject for a period of twenty-five years after such allotment, sale, reservation or other disposal to all the laws of the United States prohibiting the introduction of liquor into the Indian country; and the terms “Indian” and “Indian country” shall include the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and the lands now owned or occupied by them;

I. that the state and its people consent to all and singular the provisions of this act concerning the lands hereby granted or confirmed to the state, the terms and conditions upon which said grants and confirmations are made and the means and manner of enforcing such terms and conditions, all in every respect and particular as in this act provided.

All of which ordinance described in this section shall, by proper reference, be made a part of any constitution that shall be formed hereunder, in such terms as shall positively preclude the making by any future constitutional amendment of any change or abrogation of the said ordinance in whole or in part without the consent of congress.