Strong Men
and yes ~ firm faith
Our Lady of Guadalupe ~ Tepayec hill (1531 AD)
link is to Jedediah Strong Smith
Long before cattle or cowboys first appeared in the American West, men were herding livestock in Spanish Mexico. Conscripted by wealthy Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century, these Native American vaqueros became spectacular riders and ropers as they mastered the art of cow herding. Three hundred years later, they taught the inexperienced settlers of the American West how to round up cattle, bring down a steer, and break a wild bronco. It was from the vaqueros that cowboys derived their distinctive clothing, saddles, and lingo -- words like lasso, dally, and buckaroo. But it is the cowboy whose fabled reputation we remember, while the vaquero has all but disappeared from history. Russell Freedman tells the fascinating story of the vaqueros in this dramatic account of the first true cowboys, illustrated with evocative period paintings and drawings.
The role of the vaquero -- the Hispanic cowboy -- in U.S. ranching history has been overlooked and misrepresented, particularly in popular culture. With this book, he intends to rectify that wrong and does so quite successfully. Sandler notes the role that Spanish explorers such as Cortes and Coronado played in the introduction of ranching to the continent, as well as the importance of the Spanish mission system. The systematically arranged chapters also follow a fairly direct chronological progression and present the tools and skills of the vaquero, later adapted by Anglo cowboys, and aspects of daily life. The chapter on the tales the vaqueros told to amuse themselves in the evenings will be especially interesting to students who relish ghost and scary stories. Sandler also addresses the "silencing," as it were, of the vaqueros-the deliberate denigration by Anglo writers and their removal from the accounts of the "Wild West."
