Wednesday, February 4, 2004

Wild West Tech

Local man gives lesson on lassos and vaqueros to TV's History Channel

Haley Wachdorf News-Bulletin Staff Writer; hwachdorf@news-bulletin.com

Belen A Belen historian will soon be helping History Channel viewers understand the technological accomplishments of the Wild West.

Don Chavez has dedicated a great deal of time to researching the early origins of the cowboy way of life, starting with the Spanish vaqueros. Chavez said most people don't think of the lasso or the saddle as a technological triumph.

"We think of technology as something electronic," he said. "Cars were technology. We don't see it as innovation. We see it as something that's a little beyond our reach."

That's just the kind of misconception the Wild West Tech series aims to set right.

In October, Chavez was contacted by executives from Greystone Television, a media group which films documentaries and series for A & E and the History Channel. In the process of doing research for their upcoming Wild West Tech project, they stumbled across Chavez' Web site dedicated to his research. They expressed interest in his knowledge about the evolution of the saddle and invited him to be interviewed for the series.

So, later that month, Chavez traveled to Oklahoma City to be interviewed inside the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Among the technology Chavez has researched is the lasso, a perfect example of the Spanish origins of the first cowboys.

"The cowboy culture came from the knights and ... when they first started chasing livestock, the knights used a lance with a blunt end, and they would chase and hit the steer with it and knock him off his footing.

"Then he would have a lower-class assistant who would ride alongside and, when he knocked that steer down, he would jump off and tie the steer so you could do your business — cut or brand or whatever you needed to do."

But the lance was awkward and time-consuming to use, and eventually it evolved into a lance-like tool with a loop on the end to place around the steer's neck. From there, the lasso, a simple rope thrown around the steer's neck, was developed.

A similar process helped create the modern-day saddle, Chavez said. Early saddles had no convenient place to tie a rope in order to lead a steer after it was caught. Some tried to tie the rope to the tail of the horse and later to a ring on the saddle, but both proved painful, either for the horse, or for the rider, whose leg was prone to be caught in the rope. So, once again, cowboy innovation came into play.

"Some enterprising genius, he was a vaquero, either Mexican or a Spaniard ... put what they call an apple on top of the saddle tree," he said. "They used that to tie the rope to, and that worked better, but that took hundreds of years."

Chavez said he was pleased to be able to share his research and that he hopes the program can open up the world of the Wild West to viewers.

"I think the History Channel has done a lot towards helping make history interesting," he said. "You know, people who don't like to read will watch TV and they'll click on the History Channel particularly if it's something like cowboys. And they're watching that and I think there's a growing number of people who are learning to appreciate history because of the History Channel."

E-mail this story Printer-friendly version