Some American Riders by Colonel Theodore Ayrault Dodge

American Riders - Page 3

The cowboy will stay in the saddle an almost unheard-of period, often forty-eight hours at a time when holding big bunches of cattle. He is up by daylight and works till dark, and then well on into the night or all night long by turns. He is faithful and untiring, and wedded to his master’s interests. Much of the vice attributed to the cowboy must be laid to the score of the bad man of the Plains, a class which used to exist in great numbers, but has been for the most part hunted down and driven out by the ranchmen, who were the greatest sufferers. The cowboy is no saint, but he is a manly fellow, and averages quite as well as the farmer or mechanic; the stranger who has been cast on his hospitality, and has accepted it as tendered, would say much higher.

The cowboy rides with the easy balance bred of constant habit, swaying about in the saddle much like a drunken man, but with a graceful method in his reeling.

He does not, however, ride all over his horse, like the Indian on his pad or bare-back. When he ropes a steer or a pony, he gets well over on the nigh side, and throws his weight against the strain, resting the back of the right thigh in the saddle.

Cattle Round-up.

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He can perform all the tricks of the Indian, and much of his fun as well as his work is astride his ponies. On foot he reminds one of Jack ashore, partly from the stiffness of his chaperajos; but with his loose garments, his bright kerchief, and his jingling spurs, he is a most picturesque fellow, in perfect keeping with his surroundings.

The best cowboys are usually bred to the business, which is by no means an easy one to learn. The Southwest yields the best supply. They are apt to claim kinship with the South rather than the East. The word "round-up” originated in the southern Alleghenies, "corral” in Mexico. The cattle business is of Mexican origin, and the dress and method of riding are unquestionably of Spanish descent. But, as in every other business, there are men from every section who succeed, and vastly more who fail.

The American cowboy has a Mexican cousin, the vaquero, who does cow-punching in Chihuahua, and raises horses for the Mexican cavalry and an occasional shipment across the Rio Grande. The vaquero is generally a peon, and as lazy, shiftless, and unreliable a vagabond as all men held to involuntary servitude are wont to be. He is essentially a low-down fellow in his habits and instinct. Anything is grub to him which is not poison, and he will thrive on offal which no human being except a starving savage will touch.

In his ways the vaquero is a sort of tinsel imitation of a Mexican gentleman, and very cheap tinsel at that. Our cowboy is independent, and quite sufficient unto himself. Everything not cowboy is tenderfoot, cumbering the ground, and of no use in the world’s economy except as a consumer of beef. He has as long an array of manly qualities as any fellow living, and, despite many rough-and-tumble traits, compels our honest admiration. Not only this, but the percentage of American cowboys who are not pretty decent fellows is small. One cannot claim so much for the vaquero in question, though the term vaquero covers a great territory and class, and applies to the just and unjust alike.

Our Chihuahua vaquero wears white cotton clothes, and goat-skin chaperajos with the hair left on, naked feet, and huarachos, or sandals, and big jingling spurs. A gourd, lashed to his cantle, does the duty of canteen. He rides the Mexican tree, and his saddle is loaded down with an abundance of cheap plunder. His seat is the same as the Mexican gentleman’s -- forked, with toes stuck far out to the front, and balancing in the saddle.

Mexican Vaquero, Frederic Remington, Harper's

Weekly, July, 1891.

He is supposed to be a famous rider, and is a very good one. He breaks his own ponies, which sufficiently proves his case. He likes to show off, in the true style of the Romance nations and their offshoots, and will often. ride a half-busted bronco with his feet stuck out parade fashion, much as a Yankee boy would carry a chip on his shoulder. But in breaking in his pony he grips with thigh and knee and calf, and heels besides, as any rider perforce must.

The Mexican cow-ponies are proverbially tough and serviceable. But the vaquero has to turn in most of his good-sized ponies, and is apt to be seen on a rackabones of undersized or old stock, or on a mare with a colt at foot. His gait is the lope, with an occasional fox-trot, and he uses his quirt as constantly as an Indian. No savage can be more cruel to his pony than a vaquero, or pay less heed to his welfare. Averaging the vaquero of northern Mexico, one American cowboy is worth half a dozen of him to work; and though he is used to Apache raids, worth more than a gross of him to fight. In view of the origin of both these cow-punchers, this is not a singular fact.

The prototype of the vaquero, the Mexican gentleman, is a rider of quite another quality. No city man ever acquires the second-nature seat on a horse which one can boast who spends all the working hours of the day, and at times most of his nights, in the saddle. He may be a better horseman; he may be able to ride on the road, or do some one special thing, such as riding to hounds, or playing polo, or tilting, exceedingly well; but for all that, a chair is more natural to him than a saddle; and to ask him to ride sixteen consecutive hours, which a cowboy does every day, and will double up with a smile, is to ask him to work to the point of complete exhaustion.

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