By: Penny Warren
A good half century before the Western beef-cattle industry blossomed in Texas, a singular breed of professional horsemen calling themselves vaqueros had already set the style, evolved the equipment and techniques, and even developed much of the vocabulary that would become the stamp of the American cowboy.
The range of the vaquero was Spanish California, there, roughly from the time George Washington crossed the Delaware until the Untied States annexed Upper California in 1848, a unique pastoral society evolved, founded on Christ but ultimately flourishing on the cow.
When Franciscan missionaries first arrived in California around 1769 they brought with them a few modest herds of domestic cattle for dairy and brood stock. In the warm, grassy valleys of California the cows thrived and became an unexpected source of profit to the fathers. At San Diego and other California ports they had begun trading with Yankee ships like the Pilgrim, which Richard Henry Dana made famous in his book "Two Years Before the Mast".
On a more modest scale the same thing was happening at missions along the lower Rio Grande. There was, however, a major difference between this embryonic, California-centered cattle industry and the one that later grew on the prairies of the U.S. To the padres, beef was actually a by-product. Profits came from hides and tallow, the raw materials used by New England factories to manufacture leather goods, candles and soap. And from the first, profits were very good.
In consequence, the mission fathers were soon saving as many pesos as souls, and local Indians found themselves learning as much about cattle as about the Trinity. For as the business and the herds increased, the priests, many of them sons of Spanish nobility trained from birth as superb horsemen, needed help handling the cows.
The only laborers available were their Indian converts, who were known as neophytes-a religious euphemism meaning trained slaves. Those selected by the padres became skilled horsemen themselves, as they had to be to handle big herds of cattle on an open range.
The need to teach the Indians to ride created something of a dilemma, for an ancient Spanish colonial law, dating back to the time of the conquistadors, forbade the Indians the use of horses, which were then considered primarily tools of war. But the padres, laws unto themselves on the early frontier, decided to ignore the old edict in the interests of expediency. They also set about teaching the Indians how to snare a steer on the run by throwing a loop of braided rawhide rope, known for centuries in Spain as la reata and later Americanized to "lariat".
The Indian horsemen used a horn-equipped modification of the old Spanish war saddle. Once a steer had been caught, they learned to bring the animal to a stop by taking quick turns of the lariat around the horn. This they called dar la vuelta (to make the turn), which came to be the American Cowboys' "dally".
To protect their legs while riding through chaparral thickets, the mission hands wore heavy leather trousers called chaparreras - subsequently abbreviated to "chaps". As for themselves, the cowhands came to be called vaqueros (an extension of the Spanish vaca, meaning cow), and their American heirs changed it to "buckaroo."
Mexico broke away from Spain in 1821, and 12 years later the new republic took the mission range away from the Spanish padres. The holdings were then snatched up by private rancheros, the first real cattle barons of the West.
In 1846, when Mexico and the United States went to war, Mexican troops retreated below the Rio Grande, leaving the ranchos at the mercy of marauders, both Indian and white. Cattle were slaughtered and driven off by the thousands. Drought killed many more, and those that survived were herded north to feed hungry miners in the newly opened gold fields around San Francisco.
Ranges that once swarmed with cows were emptied even of breeding stock.
By the time the herds began to recover decades later, the emphasis of the cattle business had changed from hides and tallow to beef. And the center of the industry had moved to Texas, nearer the rail heads leading to Eastern markets. The men who worked beef cattle spoke English and called themselves cowboys. But whenever they swung a lariat, held a rodeo, or pulled on their chaps and wore wide-brimmed hats they were paying mute tribute to the vaquero who had started it all.
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