![]() ![]() ![]() I wore a bush jacket, chaps, men's boots, a hat, and spurs." We would change horses about two or three times a day. I held the cows during branding and helped bring them in. ![]() The men at the corrida would pick out a horse for me. "I was not afraid of anything, and loved working the cows. These families became known as Los KineƱos- King's people- and through generations of service, they revolutionized the cattle business and helped build the King Ranch into the legend it is today. Boys and girls went to a ranch school until they were old enough to learn to be a vaquero or vaquera. King fed and housed the entire vaquero community on his ranch and paid the cowboys a monthly wage. Their roping, riding, and ranching knowledge was unsurpassed. The cowboys understood the social structure of cattle herds so well that they knew just where to look for the hiding strays. Seasoned vaqueros could stop a horse in its tracks or send it into a flat-out gallop with the slightest sway of the reins. King knew that these Mexican cowboys knew what to do with horses and cattle much better than he did. The vaqueros were so renowned for their skills that rancher Richard King traveled to Mexico in 1854 to recruit entire vaquero families to manage his herds. Vaqueros had been herding and driving cattle and wild horses for hundreds of years by the time they became part of the Texas ranching landscape. ![]()
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