Vaquero

The vaquero (Spanish: [baˈkeɾo]; Portuguese: vaqueiro, European Portuguese: [vɐˈkɐjɾu]) is a horse-mounted livestock herder of a tradition that has its roots in the Iberian Peninsula and extensively developed in what what is today Mexico (then New Spain) and Spanish Florida from a method brought to the Americas from Spain. The vaquero became the foundation for the North American cowboy, in Northern Mexico, Southwestern United States, Florida and Western Canada.
The cowboys of the Great Basin still use the term "buckaroo", which may be a corruption of vaquero, to describe themselves and their tradition. Many in Llano Estacado and along the southern Rio Grande prefer the term vaquero, while the indigenous and Hispanic communities in the age-old Nuevo México and New Mexico Territory regions use the term caballero. Vaquero heritage remains in the culture of the Californio (California), Neomexicano (New Mexico), and Tejano (Texas), along with Mexico, Central and South America, as well as other places where there are related traditions.
Vaquero is the Spanish word for cowherder or herder of cattle. It derives from the word vaca, the Spanish word for "cow" and thus, the Medieval Latin: vaccārius meaning cowherd, from vacca, meaning “cow”, and the suffix -ārius used to form nouns denoting an agent of use, such as a dealer or artisan, from other nouns.
A related term, buckaroo, still is used to refer to a certain style of cowboys and horsemanship most often seen in the Great Basin region of the United States that closely retains characteristics of the traditional vaquero. The word buckaroo is generally believed to be an anglicized version of vaquero and shows phonological characteristics compatible with that origin. Buckaroo first appeared in American English in 1827. The word may also have developed with influences from the English word "buck" or bucking, the behavior of young, untrained horses.
The origins of the vaquero tradition come from Spain, beginning with the hacienda system of medieval Spain. This style of cattle ranching spread throughout much of the Iberian Peninsula, and it was later brought to the Americas. Both regions possessed a dry climate with sparse grass, and thus large herds of cattle required vast amounts of land in order to obtain sufficient forage. The need to cover distances greater than a person on foot could manage gave rise to the development of the horseback-mounted vaquero.
During the 16th century, the Conquistadors, and other Spanish settlers brought their cattle-raising traditions as well as both horses and domesticated cattle to the Americas, starting with their arrival in what today is Florida (then Spanish Florida), Mexico (then New Spain) and Central America. The earliest Spanish Vaqueros in the Americas were in Spanish Florida who arrived with Ponce De Leon in 1521 with their Andalusian cattle. The traditions of Spain were transformed by the geographic, environmental and cultural circumstances of New Spain, which later became Mexico and the Southwestern United States. They also developed this culture in all of western Latin America, developing the Gaucho cowboys in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, and Peru. In turn, the land, and people of the Americas also saw dramatic changes due to Spanish influence.
In Brazil, the "vaqueiro" (in Portuguese) appeared in the 16th century, in the interior, specifically in the caatinga areas in the state of Bahia.
The arrival of horses in the Americas was particularly significant, as equines had been extinct there since the end of the prehistoric ice age. However, horses quickly multiplied in America and became crucial to the success of the Spanish and later settlers from other nations. In “Libro de Albeyteria” (1580), the Spanish-Mexican horseman and veterinarian, Don Juan Suárez de Peralta, wrote about the proliferation of horses in colonial Mexico:
The earliest horses were originally of Spanish, Barb and Arabian ancestry, but a number of uniquely American horse breeds developed in North and South America through selective breeding and by natural selection of animals that escaped to the wild and became feral. Spanish army Captain, Bernardo Vargas Machuca, wrote in 1599, that the best and finest horses were the Mexican ones:
The Mustang and other colonial horse breeds are now called "wild", but in reality are feral horses—descendants of domesticated animals.
The Spanish tradition evolved further in what today is Mexico, and the Southwestern United States. Most vaqueros were men of mestizo, and mulatto origin while most of the hacendados (ranch owners) were ethnically Spanish.
By the 1570’s, mulattos, and blacks had become the overwhelming majority, especially the former, as a result from the high mortality rate of the Natives in Mexico due to European and African diseases and war, according to a Mexican Mesta ordinance. The ordinance, dated March 5th, 1576, states:
By the late 16th century, with the growth of the Mestizo population, Mestizos and Mulattos had become the bulk of the Vaquero population. In “Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions” (1629), Spanish Priest Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón explained the distinct geographic, environmental and cultural circumstances of Mexico and the racial composition of Vaqueros:
In Santa Fe de Nuevo México, however, both Hispano and Pueblo people owned land and livestock.
Those early Vaqueros in the 16th century, whether slave or free, lived on a cattle estancia and worked for a single cattle baron for most of their lives. But towards the end of that century, in the Bajío region and in the Kingdom of Nueva Galicia, a new type of Vaquero began to appear. Called “Hombres de fuste” (saddle-tree men), “Vagamundos” (drifters, vagabonds, nomads), and “Forajidos” (outlaws), these Vaqueros roamed the Mexican countryside on horseback going from village to village, estancia to estancia, working for the highest bidder. They were superior horsemen and spent their entire lives on horseback. Many were runaway black or Mulatto slaves, others dabble in the crime of “abigeato” (cattle rustling), among other crimes. They carried weapons such as an arquebus, desjarretadera (hocking lance), sickle, and knives. Spanish priest and auditor Gaspar de la Fuente warned of the existence of these outlaw nomadic Vaqueros in a report to the King, dated April 1st, 1603 in Guadalajara:
In another description, in a letter dated April 20th, 1607, by Spanish priest and lawyer Luis Ramírez de Alarcón, states:
Eventually, towards the 18th century, those nomadic Vaqueros, as well as those that lived on the cattle estancias, began to be known under the name of “Rancheros”. The term "Ranchero" comes from "Rancho", a term that was given in Mexico, since the 18th century, to the countryside or hamlets where cattle were raised or land was sowed. Spanish priest, Mateo José de Arteaga, in his —"Description of the Diocese of Guadalajara de Indias" (1770)— defined "Rancho" as: "those places in which few people live with few goods and housed in huts". While the Spanish friar, José Alejandro Patiño, in his text —"Topografía del Curato de Tlaxomulco" (1778)— defined it as: "In these Indian kingdoms, Ranchos are country houses of little pomp and value, where men of average means and the poor live, cultivating the small plots of land that they own or rent, sowing to the extent that each one can afford and raising their domestic, country animals, according to their strength."
These rural lands and hamlets, were part of a Hacienda, since most land belonged to the landed elites. Thus, a hacienda was made up of Ranchos, and in those Ranchos lived the people that worked for the hacienda, the Rancheros. The Rancheros managed the cattle and horses, working as Vaqueros, Caporales, Mayordomos or Horse-tamers, among other jobs. By the 1840s, Spanish (from Spain) dictionaries included the Mexican definition of Rancho as: "In Mexico it is a separate farmhouse dependent on a hacienda"; while for "Ranchero" they give the definition: "the one who lives on a rancho; it is usually understood the same as CAMPESINO [countryman, or farmer]". Spanish historian and journalist Niceto de Zamacois, defined the terms Ranchero and Rancho, as follows:
Thomas Mayne Reid, an Irish-American novelist who fought in the Mexican-American War, defined the terms in the 1840’s, as follows:
Thus, Ranchero is the inhabitant of the Mexican countryside, a horse-mounted countryman, who performed all his duties on the hacienda or countryside on horseback, working as Vaqueros and Caporales, among other jobs. The term “Charro” started off in the 18th century as a derogatory term for Rancheros, synonymous with the English terms yokel, or “bumpkin”, but evolved to be synonymous with Ranchero; thus both, Ranchero and Charro were, historically, the same thing, a name for the people of the countryside, more specifically the horse-mounted country people (horsemen). Although, in some instances, Charro was used specifically, for the Vaqueros of “Tierra-Adentro”, or the interior land, which included the Bajio and northern Mexico, or anything beyond north of Mexico City. English naval officer and explorer, George Francis Lyon, explained that while most Rancheros had a light, active and sinewy frame, some of the vaqueros of the Tierra Adentro were as tall and muscular as the Yorkshiremen. Rancheros or Charros were known for their superb horsemanship and athleticism, and for their colorful and unique costume, designed for horse riding.
In his book —Mexico in 1842 (1844)– Spanish lawyer and monarchist, Luis Manuel del Rivero, wrote:
An 1849 report on Guanajuato, in the Bajio region, states:
Mexican traditions spread both South and North, influencing equestrian traditions from Argentina to Canada.
As English-speaking traders and settlers expanded westward, English and Spanish traditions, language and culture merged to some degree. Before the Mexican–American War in 1848, New England merchants who traveled by ship to California encountered both hacendados and vaqueros, trading manufactured goods for the hides and tallow produced from vast cattle ranches. American traders along what later became known as the Santa Fe Trail had similar contacts with vaquero life. Starting with these early encounters, the lifestyle and language of the vaquero began a transformation which merged with English cultural traditions and produced what became known in American culture as the "cowboy".
Mesteñeros were Charros that caught, broke and drove Mustangs to market in the Spanish and later Mexican, and then American territories. They caught the horses that roamed in Northern Mexico, the Great Plains and the San Joaquin Valley of California, and later in the Great Basin, from the 18th century to the early 20th century.
"Vaqueros invented the cowboy trade as we know it today." The vaquero heritage had an influence on cowboy traditions which arose throughout the California, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, Texas, and broader Western United States, distinguished by their own local culture, geography and historical patterns of settlement. Cowboy styles reflect origins in Texas, the southeast, and Mexico, while buckaroos have adopted, quite remarkably intact, techniques from Spanish and Mexican California. "The Southwestern United States has a caballero heritage that originates in New Mexico's Hispanic and indigenous groups from the region, whereas the "Texas" vaquero tradition melded Tejano techniques with ranching styles of eastern states from Louisiana to Florida, while the "buckaroo" or "California" tradition resembled Northern Mexico traditions. The modern distinction between caballero, vaquero, and buckaroo within American English reflects parallels between traditions of western horsemanship.
In the Southwestern United States, the Hispano, Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache traditions of Santa Fe de Nuevo México continue to hold significant influence over cowboy lifestyles in the region. This area became the New Mexico Territory and eventually the Southwestern US states of New Mexico, Arizona, and the southern portions of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. Descendants of the Hispano and indigenous cowboys of former Nuevo México have long been referred to as caballero or caballera, a Spanish term which translates to gentlemen or lady, but regionally means cowboy or cowgirl.
Cowboys in the Southwest are associated with popularizing Native American jewelry, Christian icons, Southwestern and New Mexican cuisine, Western music styles of Tejano and New Mexico music, along with other aspects into the general Western lifestyle.
Cowboys of this tradition were dubbed buckaroos by English-speaking settlers. The words buckaroo and vaquero are still used on occasion in the Great Basin, parts of California and, less often, in the Pacific Northwest. Elsewhere, the term "cowboy" is more common. The vaqueros of the Americas were the horsemen and cattle herders of New Spain, who first came to California with the Jesuit priest Eusebio Kino in 1687, and later with expeditions in 1769 and the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition in 1774. They were the first cowboys in the region.
Even though the lands of the California vaqueros were fertile for farming, "it was not the disposition of Spanish Californians to over-exert themselves, so the raising of cattle, which was little drain on the energies, was a very much more agreeable way of life than farming ... there were few in the world who could surpass ... [the] vaquero in horsemanship." The future Mexican or Spanish vaqueros were placed in the saddle at 5 years of age, and sometimes earlier, and worked with young, often trained horses, which had originally arrived from Mexico in the 18th century and flourished in California and bordering territories during the Spanish/Mexican era.
Although the Californios were considered by most foreigners as great horsemen, their treatment and method of training the horses was frowned upon. Englishman William Robert Garner mention that their method of breaking and training horses: “. . . likewise tends to break the spirit of the animals, and injure them in their joints.[…] when it is tired they take the saddle off it, and make it fast to a post, without anything to eat, and keep it there for four or five days, on nothing but water.” William Redmond Ryan, another English writer and immigrant, said that: “of the wild horses subjected to this process of training, at least one-fourth are killed, and a still larger proportion seriously injured.” German immigrant Edward Vischer once commented that: “The barbarous Californians look upon a horse as a useful commodity which is of little value and easily replaced.”
Settlers originally arriving from the United States prior to 1846 (Mexican War) could marry a Californio woman or apply for Mexican citizenship in order to receive a land grant, which would then almost require the new citizen to acquire the vaquero skills and life styles, a life style in which he would "invariably [keep] a horse saddled before his door, awaiting his pleasure. If it was necessary to go more than fifty steps, he rode." After the conquest of California, with the conclusion of the Mexican–American War in 1848, Americans began to flood the newly conquered territory with immigration, for the 1849 goldrush, which resulted in most of them being miners rather than livestock ranchers. The California vaquero or buckaroo, unlike the Texas cowboy, was considered a highly skilled worker, who usually stayed on the same ranch where he was born or had grown up. He generally married and raised a family. In addition, the geography and climate of much of California was dramatically different from that of Texas, allowing more intensive grazing with less open range, plus cattle in California were marketed primarily at a regional level, without the need (nor, until much later, even the logistical possibility) to be driven hundreds of miles to railroad lines. Thus, a horse- and livestock-handling culture remained in California and the Pacific Northwest that retained a stronger direct Mexican and Spanish influence than that of Texas.
The Texas tradition arose from a combination of cultural influences, as well as the need to adapt to the geography and climate of west Texas and, later, the need to conduct long cattle drives to get animals to market. In the early 1800s, the Spanish Crown, and later, independent Mexico, offered empresario grants in what would later be Texas to non-citizens, such as settlers from the United States. In 1821, Stephen F. Austin and his East Coast comrades became the first Anglo-Saxon community in Texas. Following Texas independence in 1836, even more Americans immigrated into the empresario ranching areas of Texas. Here the settlers were strongly influenced by the Mexican vaquero culture, borrowing vocabulary and attire from their counterparts, but also retaining some of the livestock-handling traditions and culture of the Eastern United States and Great Britain.
Following the American Civil War, vaquero culture diffused eastward and northward, combining with the cow herding traditions of the eastern United States that evolved as settlers moved west. Other influences developed out of Texas as cattle trails were created to meet up with the railroad lines of Kansas and Nebraska, in addition to expanding ranching opportunities in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Front, east of the Continental Divide. The Texas-style vaquero tended to be an itinerant single male who moved from ranch to ranch.
The Hawaiian cowboy, the paniolo, is also a direct descendant of the vaquero of California and Mexico. Experts in Hawaiian etymology believe "Paniolo" is a Hawaiianized pronunciation of español. (The Hawaiian language has no /s/ sound, and all syllables and words must end in a vowel.) Paniolo, like cowboys on the mainland of North America, learned their skills from Mexican vaqueros.
Curtis J. Lyons, scientist and assistant government surveyor, wrote in 1892 for the Hawaiian Historical Society, that:
By the early 19th century, Capt. George Vancouver's gift of cattle to Pai`ea Kamehameha, monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, had multiplied astonishingly, and were wreaking havoc throughout the countryside. About 1812, John Parker, a sailor who had jumped ship and settled in the islands, received permission from Kamehameha to capture the wild cattle and develop a beef industry.
The Hawaiian style of ranching originally included capturing wild cattle by driving them into pits dug in the forest floor. Once tamed somewhat by hunger and thirst, they were hauled out up a steep ramp, and tied by their horns to the horns of a tame, older steer (or ox) that knew where the paddock with food and water was located. The industry grew slowly under the reign of Kamehameha's son Liholiho (Kamehameha II). Later, Liholiho's brother, Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III), visited California, then still a part of Mexico. He was impressed with the skill of the Mexican vaqueros, and invited several to Hawaii in 1832 to teach the Hawaiian people how to work cattle.
Even today, traditional paniolo dress, as well as certain styles of Hawaiian formal attire, reflect the Spanish heritage of the vaquero. The traditional Hawaiian saddle, the noho lio, and many other tools of the cowboy's trade have a distinctly Mexican/Spanish look and many Hawaiian ranching families still carry the names of the vaqueros who married Hawaiian women and made Hawaii their home.