The 1750 Spanish Cabballero

The Spanish Colonial Caballero – 1750

It was the Caballero (sometimes called El Hacendado) who owned a Spanish cattle and horse rancho. However, it was the mounted herdsmen who who worked for the Caballero (or Hacendado) that invented the fine art of handling hundreds of thousands of mean, feral long horned cattle and wild horses on the almost endless, unfenced open ranges of what is now Mexico and the American Southwest and far West. These men were called Vaqueros , pronounced “bok’-a-rowz” (which the American cowboys pronounced as “buckaroos”).  The vaqueros developed all the basic equipment, the methods, and even many of the terms that are used to this day by modern cowboys. The Vaquero was rounding up, roping, and branding cattle more than 300 years before the first American cowboy ever threw a leg over a horse. By 1800 a highly sophisticated Vaquero culture had reached its peak in what is now the state of California. To this day, no mounted herdsman on earth has ever achieved the elegance, the presence, nor the sheer artistry of the everyday work, the beautiful equipment, or the exquisite horsemanship of the Californio. The clothing, horse gear, and working skills developed by these men were unique to their culture and are covered at length in my presentations.

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