To all the world, nothing seems more completely American than the cowboy. Yet the truth is that the cowboy’s horse, clothes, and trade are all part of the rich heritage contributed by Mexico to her northern neighbor.
Even the word cowboy is a translation of the Mexican term vaquero. The word cowboy was unknown to the American settlers who first headed west to texas in the 1820’s. These people thought of themselves as farmers. In fact, the only cattle most of them brought were a cow or two for milk and a yoke of oxen to draw their plows. It was their Mexican neighbors—the Tejanos whose herds had roamed the open ranges since the early 1700’s—who introduced them to cattle raising, taunght them to use the lariat, the branding iron, and the homed saddle, and showed them how to break the wild mustangs and round up the free-ranging longhorns. So well did the new Texans take to Tejano ways that soon you spoke fighin’ words if you referred to th
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