This article is found on page 16 in the Spring 2004 issue. Most people are familiar with roping only in the context of arena competition. However, few realize how closely roping is associated with our cowboy and ranching heritage.
The ability to catch livestock with a thrown rope from horseback was critical to the development of the western range cattle industry. Roping from the saddle evolved as a specialized occupational skill in response to an urgent and continuing need to catch and control cattle safely and efficiently. While there is little hard documentation, there is considerable circumstantial evidence that a combination of factors created that need in the late 16th century: large numbers of cattle, a shortage of workers, and legal requirements related to the Mexican Mesta.
After the introduction of cattle into Mexico in 1521, stock raisers found they needed an organization to regulate livestock-related issues. In 1537, at the direction of the Crown, colonial administrators drew up a set of ordinances based on the ancient Spanish stockmen's association called the Mesta. The Spanish Mesta had been oriented toward the sheep and wool industry, but the Mexican Mesta came to deal primarily with cattle raising. The Mesta regulated branding practices and the recording of brands and collected fees for the royal treasury.
As the livestock population increased and cattle-raising operations moved farther into the countryside, ownership of these animals was often impossible to establish, and branding regulations were not always enforced. Cattle multiplied so rapidly that vast numbers of them became feral. Controlling cattle on open range was almost impossible using Old World equipment and techniques.
Colonial Spaniards handled cattle ahorseback using garrochas, puntas, and picas to prod and punch up the stock when sorting and moving them, which worked satisfactorily in pens and along fenced lanes in Europe. However, Mexico was a rugged country, sparsely populated, and unfenced; cattle easily wandered away or escaped from the few herders and often became wilder and more dangerous than truly wild animals.
There were few herders because most colonists preferred the pursuit of quicker wealth in mining gold and silver or in the fortunes to be made from the encomienda system of labor on various types of haciendas. Individuals and church missions owned enormous herds. While there were never enough experienced Spaniards willing to do the necessary tasks associated with handling cattle, a roughly 50 percent decline in the native population from about 1540 to 1590 compounded the problem of an inadequate labor pool. The first vaqueros were "reduced" Indians at the missions, mestizos, and impoverished Spaniards.
A popular tool among these men was a medieval weapon called the media luna, or "half moon", also known as a desjarretadera, or "hocking knife" because of the way it was used on cattle. The hocking knife was a crescent-shaped blade mounted on an eight- or ten-foot shaft, either sharpened on the inside of the curve with the points forward or sharpened on the outside curve with the points to the rear. A variation had an "S"-shaped blade. It was used to disable and immobilize cattle before butchering. In an age of primitive and unreliable firearms, the hocking knife was a dependable tool and weapon, often employed against uncontrollable cattle. It played a key role in the development of roping as a necessary skill for vaqueros.
By the mid-sixteenth century, there were so many cattle in central Mexico that they were valued less for beef than for their hides and tallow. Saddlery and harness, bags for transporting gold and silver ore, shoes, ropes, and many items of clothing were made from leather or rawhide. Tallow was used in cooking and was the common lubricant for wagon axles; tallow candles and lamps provided lighting for mines and homes. Tens of thousands of cowhides were exported annually to Spain. Beginning with the silver strike in Zacatecas in 1546, and followed by other discoveries, the demand for hides increased even more.
By law and tradition, the hides belonged to the owner of the cattle. However, hide buyers often ignored the law, which encouraged theft and illegal skinning. The skinning business offered an opportunity for profit to ambitious and active men, often vaqueros, who began to prey on easily accessible domestic stock of mission herds and ranchos, instead of the more dangerous feral cattle in remote areas.
A horseman armed with a hocking knife would ride up behind a cow and slash one or both rear hamstrings or tendons. Without control of its lower hind legs, the animal would fall and be unable to rise. One man mounted on a fast horse could "hock" several cattle out of a small bunch on a single run and later return to kill them at his leisure and pull the hides. A few cow hunters could wipe out a herd of relatively gentle cattle very quickly. Some scholars have compared the sixteenth-century slaughter of cattle in Mexico to that of the buffalo three hundred years later on the Great Plains of the United States.
In the 1560s and 1570s heifers and cows were killed in such numbers that domestic herds were decimated. Stockraisers feared a shortage of breeding stock while Mesta and church officials experienced a loss of income. Concerns over excessive killing for the hide trade resulted in substantial revisions to the Mexican Mesta in 1574. The hocking knife was banned in an effort to conserve cattle and the revenue they provided. At the same time, branding requirements became more stringent; cattle operations were closely regulated as to the number of workers, both mounted and afoot, based on the number of cattle; and an annual time period was set for legal cow works. The Mesta also specified the ages at which animals must be branded and the number of cattle and other stock a potential ranchero must own to qualify for a land grant from the king. Inspectors verified the branding and collected fees. Later revisions and local ordinances based upon the Mesta were even more comprehensive. The provisions of the Mesta were approved by the Spanish crown and enforced by colonial officials.
In order to meet the requirements of the revised Mesta of 1574, and because of a continuing shortage of skilled labor, vaqueros developed a technology that would allow them to work more efficiently, that is to easily catch and control cattle from horseback. An ancient technique involved placing a loop on the end of a staff or garrocha and fishing it over the animal's head. This method, still common today in Mongolia and the French Camargue area, was awkward and inefficient for repetitive use, as when branding, or when wild stock had to be caught on the run in brushy areas. It was most effective with gentle cattle in small round corrales that limited their speed and movements.
Vaqueros discovered that throwing the rope was quicker, safer, more accurate, and less tiring than manipulating a loop hanging over the end of a pole while riding at a high lope after cattle. The first documented instance of a vaquero roping from the saddle occurred in 1634 in Mexico, although it was certainly practiced long before that date. As time passed, vaqueros invented ways of throwing the rope to make different catches, such as heeling and forefooting, in the interest of safety and efficiency. The cattle population gradually recovered, and the Mexican ranching industry thrived, later expanding to the north into California and Texas.
The first account of vaqueros in Texas roping cattle from horseback was recorded in 1767 near San Antonio. By the early 1850s Anglo Texan settlers were working their herds ahorseback with ropes. After the War Between the States, roping provided the surest means for catching and handling many of the cattle that were later trailed north. In 1868 Joseph G. McCoy hired Mark Withers and several others to promote his new rail shipping yards by roping buffalo for potential cattle buyers in Chicago. This first public exhibition of roping captured the buyers' attention. They flocked to Abilene and the classic trail drive era and the beef boom was born.
Within a few years northern ranges were stocked with Texas cattle, and the great range cattle industry was in full swing. Cowboys were roping and dragging calves to branding fires from the Mexican border to the Canadian provinces. Roping from the saddle had become one of the defining occupational skills of the cowboy and directly affected almost all aspects of the cowboy image, from horse gear to clothing to horsemanship. Maybe cattle raising in the West would have developed any-way in some less colorful fashion, but roping from horseback elevated the cowboy from a mere mounted herder to a skilled professional who built an industry.
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