the_jersey_lilly_2000
Well-known member
Got me to thinkin, so I did a search and found this. It's just a small part of an interview with Waddie Mitchell. His take on Cowboy/Buckaroo.
"Cowboy" is really a term that came from England. That's what they called the young kids—and they generally were young boys—who would take the cows out, graze them and then bring them back in at night. They just called them by what they were most closely associated with—cows. The "buckaroo" drew its tradition from a different source. It, too, is a European source originating with the Moors and passing through the Spanish who settled into early California. The Californio ranch hands were called vaqueros which is "cowboy" in Spanish. Americans have always been real good at bastardizing somebody else's language, so vaquero becomes "buckaroo." The Spanish land-grant owners, the original vaqueros, were fine horsemen and took a great deal of pride in their work and manner. As California filled up and the cowboys needed a place to go, the Great Basin was a natural place for them—just north and east of the old Californio ranches and missions. So that tradition is where we in the Great Basin draw the differences. The gear we use is more that of the vaquero—the fine silver mounted bits and tapaderos, the long rawhide riatas or ropes that we know as lassos or lariats—there's another word, lariata. That's really where the cowboy terminology out here comes from—from those Californios—at least for the buckaroo. It's been pretty widespread here of late. It used to be you could tell pretty much where a feller was from just by his gear. But with the onslaught of guys who came out and took pictures and put them in books, and the availability of different types of gear nationwide, we've homogenized. It's down to where it's pretty doggone hard to tell where a feller is from anymore, unless maybe it's a crease in his hat or maybe a little bit of an accent. Typically, and of course there are always rules to be broken in this stuff, the buckaroo in the Great Basin region looks a little different, works a little different, because it's a regional thing; but that regional thing stems from how things work best for the particular country you're from. If you're a brush popper in the brush country of Arizona, you are going to learn to work a little differently just because of the terrain you're working in. In the high basin region with the sagebrush country and millions of acres, typically, what the buckaroo uses has evolved over the years to be the best for this particular part of the world.
"Cowboy" is really a term that came from England. That's what they called the young kids—and they generally were young boys—who would take the cows out, graze them and then bring them back in at night. They just called them by what they were most closely associated with—cows. The "buckaroo" drew its tradition from a different source. It, too, is a European source originating with the Moors and passing through the Spanish who settled into early California. The Californio ranch hands were called vaqueros which is "cowboy" in Spanish. Americans have always been real good at bastardizing somebody else's language, so vaquero becomes "buckaroo." The Spanish land-grant owners, the original vaqueros, were fine horsemen and took a great deal of pride in their work and manner. As California filled up and the cowboys needed a place to go, the Great Basin was a natural place for them—just north and east of the old Californio ranches and missions. So that tradition is where we in the Great Basin draw the differences. The gear we use is more that of the vaquero—the fine silver mounted bits and tapaderos, the long rawhide riatas or ropes that we know as lassos or lariats—there's another word, lariata. That's really where the cowboy terminology out here comes from—from those Californios—at least for the buckaroo. It's been pretty widespread here of late. It used to be you could tell pretty much where a feller was from just by his gear. But with the onslaught of guys who came out and took pictures and put them in books, and the availability of different types of gear nationwide, we've homogenized. It's down to where it's pretty doggone hard to tell where a feller is from anymore, unless maybe it's a crease in his hat or maybe a little bit of an accent. Typically, and of course there are always rules to be broken in this stuff, the buckaroo in the Great Basin region looks a little different, works a little different, because it's a regional thing; but that regional thing stems from how things work best for the particular country you're from. If you're a brush popper in the brush country of Arizona, you are going to learn to work a little differently just because of the terrain you're working in. In the high basin region with the sagebrush country and millions of acres, typically, what the buckaroo uses has evolved over the years to be the best for this particular part of the world.
