Vaqueros: The First Cowboys Of The Open Range

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One out of every three cowboys in the late 1800s was the Mexican vaquero, says Kendall Nelson, a photographer from Idaho whose recent book, Gathering Remnants: A Tribute to the Working Cowboy, showcases the few remaining cowboys of the West. Nelson is currently working on a documentary of the same title, capping an eight-year documentation of the last cowboys.

The story of Nelson's photos and Costner's Open Range really begins in the Southwest, two decades before the pilgrims landed in 1620 on Plymouth Rock, when adventurous criollos (Spanish-born Americans) and mestizos (mixed Spanish and Indian settlers) pushed past the Rio Grande River to take advantage of land grants in the kingdom of New Mexico, which included most of the western states.

They were called caballeros, says Donald Gilbert Y Chavez, a historian of the cowboy's Spanish origins.

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"One of the highest stations you could have in life was to be a caballero," said Chavez, a resident of New Mexico whose lineage can be traced to the Don Juan de Oñate colony, the caballero who was among the first cowboys in the U.S.

"Even the poor Mexican vaqueros were very proud and there were few things they couldn't do from a saddle."

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