United States, under the Naturalization Act of 1790, only recognized "white persons" as eligible for citizenship through naturalization. The treaty thus legally classified Mexicans as "white" in order to allow them U.S. citizenship, yet this was applied only to the Spanish Mexican elite, mestizos, and assimilated Indigenous peoples. Without explicit legal protection, all unassimilated and autonomous Native Americans in the new territories were thereby subjected to prior United States' case law relating to "Amerindian" tribes. Early-American period The early-American period in the U.S. southwest was a period marked by violence and land loss. Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, all Mexicans were granted formal citizenship rights as American citizens, yet widespread dissatisfaction emerged amongst the Mexican Americans. Despite the treaty pledges of full and equal citizenship, rampant discrimination and violence were immediate and widespread. Realizing the potential dissatisfaction which the former Mexicans would face as American citizens, Mexico's president José Joaquín de Herrera issued a recolonization plan in August 1848, which promised economic resources and land for any former-Mexican who returned to Mexico. The commission hired three commissioners to recruit repatriates. Father Ramón Ortiz y Miera, the New Mexico commissioner, encouraged resettlement by criticizing the inferior status of the "treaty citizens". Such arguments had a strong resonance for the former Mexicans, as twenty-five percent of the country's Mexican American population repatriated after the war. Yet, the United States, despite guaranteeing the rights of former Mexicans to return to Mexico, developed legal arguments in order to institute formal barriers against this resettlement movement. The U.S. Secretary of War George W. Crawford even claimed that repatriation was prohibited. Because New Mexico served as the primary buffer between American settlers and indigenous groups, the U.S. believed it was in their best interest if the treaty citizens remained in the U.S. to maintain a "civilized" presence in the region and protect against Native encroachment. Society In 1850, the United States census counted approximately 80,000 Mexican treaty citizens living across California, Texas, and New Mexico. New Mexico was the largest United States territory at the time, with around 61,547 inhabitants, about 95% of whom were former Mexican citizens. The majority of the Nuevomexicanos lived in rural communities with populations of fewer than 1,000 people. According to the 1850 census, the three most common occupations held by Nuevomexicanos were farmer, laborer, and servant. In South Texas, Tejanos lived in a three-tiered society. At