The vaquero (; , ) is a horse-mounted livestock herder of a tradition that has its roots in the Iberian Peninsula, and extensively developed in what is today Mexico (then New Spain) from methods 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 Mexico (Especially in Northern Mexico), along with the Californio (California), Neomexicano (New Mexico), Tejano (Texas), Central, and South America, as well as other places where there are related traditions.
Etymology
Vaquero is the Spanish word for cowherd or cattle-herder, s.v. vaqueroFreedman, R. (2001). In the days of the vaqueros: America's first true cowboys. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. from vaca, meaning 'cow', and the suffix -ero used in nouns to indicate a trade, job, occupation, profession or position. It derived from the Medieval , which means 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.
History
The origins of the vaquero tradition come from Spain and developed extensively in what today is Mexico and the United states, beginning with the hacienda system of New 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 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.
Arrival in the Americas
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 Mexico (then New Spain) and Central America. The traditions of Spain were transformed by the geographic, environmental and cultural circumstances of New Spain, which later became Mexico and later the Southwestern United States. They also developed this culture in all of western Latin America, originating the Gauchos in Argentina, the Huaso in Chile, vaquero in Mexico, and Morochuco in Peru. In turn, the land and people of the Americas also saw dramatic changes due to Spanish influence.
The arrival of horses in the Americas had profound consequences; equines had been extinct in the Americas since the end of the prehistoric ice age. Horses quickly multiplied in the American Continent 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, asserted that horses were so abundant they "roamed wild in the countryside, without an owner" and that there were "horses and mares that are over twenty years old, and they die of old age without ever seeing man."
The earliest horses were originally of Spanish, Barb and Arabian ancestry,Denhardt, p. 20. 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, stating that they were “light and marvelously fast, they rein well and respond to punishment, without bad habits like those from here in Spain, and they breed better and stronger hooves.”
The mustang and other colonial horse breeds are now called "wild", but in reality are feral horses—descendants of domesticated animals.
16th to 19th centuries
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.Haeber, Jonathan."Vaqueros: The First Cowboys of the Open Range." National Geographic News. August 15, 2003. Web page accessed September 2, 2007.
The vaqueros in New Spain (Colonial Mexico) in the 16th century were mostly mulatto and black, with the natives also taking part. By the 1570s, though, mulattoes and blacks had become the overwhelming majority, especially the former, as a result from the high mortality rate of the indigenous Mexicans due to Old World diseases and war, according to a Mexican Mesta ordinance. The ordinance, dated March 5, 1576, states: Don Martin Enriquez &c. Inasmuch as by the older cattle breeders of this New Spain it has been reported to me that all the cattle ranching, as well as the branding, collecting and removing the steers for the butcher shops, and doing the rodeos, was almost universally done by Mulattos, and since there began to be cattle, and cattle ranching, they had never received more than twelve, fifteen, twenty, and at most up to twenty-five or thirty pesos a year; and that for the last two years now, as there had been a high mortality of Indians who also helped in the said cattle ranching, the said Mulattos had demanded higher wages, and asked for fifty, eighty, one hundred, and even two hundred pesos, and they did not want to continue working if they were not given the said wages...
By the late 16th century, with the growth of the mestizo population, mestizos and mulattoes 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: Since in this land it is so necessary, so common and so easy for every kind of people to ride on horseback, because all the land is very rough, the settlements are very far apart, the roads lack provisions, and horses and other beasts exist in large quantities and along with this there are many herds of cattle where large quantities of Mulattos, Mestizos, Indians and other vile people work as vaqueros; […] and although the majority of those in this occupation of vaquero are mestizos or mulattos, even so I make mention here of this because Indians also take part […]
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, the largest cattle ranching region of all New Spain, a new type of vaquero began to appear. Called hombres de fuste ('saddle-tree men'), vagamundos ('drifters', 'vagabonds', or '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 1, 1603 in Guadalajara:
The number of Mestizos and Mulattoes has grown so much in these realms, and so have the excesses and crimes that they commit every day, striking terror to the heart of the population, who is unable to do anything about it, because as Vaqueros, they ride on horseback with desjarretaderas and scythes, and they gather in gangs and nobody dares to confront them. His Majesty would remedy this by ordering that none of the aforementioned be able to carry such a weapon (under penalty of death) in a town or in an uninhabited place if it is not on the appointed days that they are cattle hunting, and in the company of their boss...
In another description, in a letter dated April 20, 1607, by Spanish priest and lawyer Luis Ramírez de Alarcón, states:
In the Royal mining town of Zacatecas and towards the north, it fills up with Black, Mestizo and Mulatto outlaws, all of them Vaqueros, and they cannot be captured and be punished because they have light horses and protection from the estancieros […] these people are agile, robust and grow in their generation and multiply too much, and one can very well expect trouble, because […] there are men that gather 300 horsemen from these outlaws to work as vaqueros, and most are well armed with strong cueras, arquebuses, scythes, desjarretaderas and other weapons
Andrew Sluyter argues that the lasso originated among Mexican vaqueros. A set of discriminatory laws passed by the Mesta in 1574 prohibited black, mulatto, mestizo, and indigenous vaqueros from owning or keeping a desjarretadera, a hooked lance used to capture and kill cattle. Those caught with one would receive a punishment of either a fine of 20 gold pesos—ten months of pay for the average vaquero—or at least 100 lashes in public. Black and mulatto slaves fared worst since they received no salary, so the automatic punishment was lashing. According to Sluyter, black and mulatto vaqueros circumvented the law by roping from horseback as an alternative way to capture cattle. He further argues that the saddle horn has a specifically Afro-Mexican origin, and is derived from West African saddle designs where the horn was used to hang bags.
Rancheros 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."