The Vaquero: Father of the Cowboy

Sarah Johnson

Professor Cutchins

English 364

29 February 2008

The Vaquero: Father of the Cowboy

Cowboy—the son of America! This eidetic label elicits images of a hardened, tan man saddling his horse to ride the open range among the Indians or as a herdsman wrangling cattle. He is a wilderness man who rides into the “mainstream and modern” American identity as a symbol of romanticized dominance, restless freedom, and naturalized loyalty. But who sired this American icon—the cowboy? Jerald Underwood says that this forefather is “the forgotten man in [American] history” (2) and “Vaquero” is his name. He migrated from the Old, eastern world to the New, western lands in the Americas, leaving a distinct impact on the cowboy (Clayton et al.68).

The vaquero’s story has been hidden behind the chronicles of the cowboys (Rojas Vaquero 5); in fact, indifferent historians almost combined the cowboy and vaquero identities (xi). Though related, the vaquero is a descendant of the Spanish conquistadores and their noble horses of Andalucía, who were imports from the Moors from Morocco, the descendants of Arabia. In fact, “they swarmed out of Arabia across Africa and into Spain, France, and Austria” then across the seas to North American Mexico (Rojas The Last 7). They even introduced their horse lore to the Indians, affecting that facet of the West (14). Even the classic image of throwing a looping lasso high in the air was “the most difficult of the skills…developed since the first Spaniards landed in America” (17)—a skill the Arabs learned from central Asians (21-2). The cowboy’s father has a history of his own, spanning the continents.

Past the rich heritage however, becoming a vaquero required mastering patience. He had to learn to observe in detail and listen intently, claiming teachers of the arts (Rojas The Last 32). He “learn[ed] to read landmarks” so he wouldn’t get lost (34) and bridled his horse with respect and fortitude. He must be part of his horse and his mount, a part of him (Clayton et al. 8). A blend of Spanish and Indian, the vaquero was “a new bronze race… the true centaur of the New World” (8). He rode “his horse great distances, working cattle but also defending the hacienda against hostile Indians” (18). These were the skills that he passed down to the American cowboy.

Before unearthing these hidden histories of vaqueros from literally the basement of the library, I would have assumed this character sketch described a cowboy such as, Hondo Lane, in Louis Lamoure’s Hondo. But Underwood actually paints the vaquero’s image when he says:

It took great courage for a man to ride down an Apache warrior… he could ride down any wild cow and rope it; he could catch, ride, and break wild mustangs; he could dance all night; he was a ladies’ man and a break fighter who scorned danger. He had a determined look in his eyes—one that looked far off to the horizon. Few people have looked more at home on a horse than a vaquero (19).

Descriptions like above molded the folk hero of Northern Mexico, who was the precedent for the American icon—the cowboy—in spirit, identity, and behavior (Clayton et al. 68). In fact, instead of the classic image of the lone man riding into the horizon like Shane in Shane, in his chapter on cowboys, Clayton mostly details the more common cowboys of the 20^th century as hired herdsman. He admits that in actuality, “the vaquero [was] the ‘master teacher…’ He taught the British descendents… how to work the cattle in the wild, open country…and knew the brush,” not the Anglo males depicted in westerns today (71). The vaqueros were the real survivors who developed the typified riding style, Indian knowledge, and rope hand in the American, collective memory (19). He was the tough, working country man who first tamed the Americas, which as a whole was the original “West” (2). He taught the Indian and Anglo "vaquero" handiness, and then passed his knowledge to White and Black cowboys (Rojas Vaquero 4).

Though the U.S. has tried to invent a new, national identity, distanced from European influence such as vaqueros, the cowboy’s true heritage cannot be buried in libraries. The iconic “cowboy” in the American imaginary and fiction stems from the old world, even though today he symbolizes the new. The original man riding in American horizon was and is the vaquero—the “master teacher” of mastering the West. He spurred the identity that defines the cowboy in American history, teaching his son the arts of his horse lore, cattle herding, and survival.

Works Cited

Clayton, Lawrence, Jim Hoy, and Jerald Underwood. Vaqueros, Cowboys, and Buckaroos. Austin: U of Texas P, 2001.

Rojas, Arthur. Last of the Vaqueros. Fresno: Sierra Printing, 1960.

---. The Vaquero. Charlotte: Heritage Printers, Inc., 1964.