The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955 Page: 206
650 p. : ill., maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
never been attempted anywhere else. The performer sits on the
crossbar, called La Maroma, that connects the corral gate posts.
When he gives the word, the gates are thrown open, and a dozen
or so wild broncs stream out hell-bent for leather, and the gaucho
drops from his perch onto one of them and rides him to a finish.
The cow supplied most of the gaucho's simple wants. His sole
diet was meat and matd, a tea brewed of dried holly leaves, and
he sat on stools made of cattle hip bones lashed together with
rawhide. From the cow's skin he made his boots and horse gear,
and, when he wanted a bowl, he cut off a cow's udder and dried it.
His tropilla of from eight to twenty geldings, for no gaucho
would demean himself by riding a mare, was his dearest possession,
and was trained to follow a faithful bell mare. At a whistle, the
animals lined up and stood quietly while their owner saddled a
fresh mount. This enabled the gaucho to make phenomenal rides,
with his tropilla galloping beside him.
His Creole pingo was a sturdy, chunky, little horse of un-
believable stamina, about fourteen and a half hands high, that
owed its thick neck, slightly Roman nose, and low-set tail to its
barb ancestry. It did not have the refinement of outline and proud
way of moving of the best of the Mexican horses, whose larger
admixture of Arab blood shows in their dish faces, close coupling,
large, luminous, eyes, and graceful tail carriage.
In comparison with South America, the United States was a
late comer in the cattle business, for we only began after 1846
when, as the result of the Mexican War, we annexed California
and the Southwest with their huge wild herds. The Mexicans
had been working these cattle for generations, and we fell heir to
the lore and methods they had inherited from Spain. We also
borrowed a large part of their vocabulary. I checked a dictionary
of cowboy terms, and found one out of every fifteen was of
Spanish origin.
But that is not all, for Texas has inherited part of the great
Hispanic culture that moulded Mexico and the other countries to
the south. The Hispano-Mexican Missions, outstanding archi-
tectural monuments in Texas, were built by the early padres and
soldiers, and much of the regional architecture of the Southwest
today shows Spanish characteristics. The great collection of books
and documents in the distinguished Hispanic Institute of the Uni-2o6
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955, periodical, 1955; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101158/m1/247/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.