Vaqueros highlighted Wild West shows
(This is a guest blog courtesy of Lonn Taylor, a historian, and writer who lives in Fort Davis.)
On a wintry Sunday morning just before Christmas in 1886, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody treated New Yorkers to an almuerzo a lo Mexicano, a Mexican breakfast. His Wild West show was playing at Madison Square Garden and Cody wanted to honor the troupe of Mexican vaqueros who were part of it and to entertain and educate the New Yorkers who had been flocking to it. The breakfast was served in a temporary annex to the Garden that housed the vaqueros and the menu included chile con carne, chiles rellenos, picadillo, and tortillas. While the vaqueros undoubtedly enjoyed it, the New Yorkers were not appreciative. The New York Times reported the next day that the fare resembled something “the prodigal son subsisted on when he was in the hog business.”
While there were probably only eight or ten vaqueros in the 1886 Buffalo Bill show–the number is uncertain–the 1914 Miller 101 Wild West show had 40 of them. By that time every wild west show on the road, and there were at least a hundred, featured a vaquero act. Over the years–between the 1880s and the 1920s, the peak years of wild west shows–as many as a thousand vaqueros may have displayed their riding and roping skills under canvas. Many were Texans.
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Antonio “Tony” Esquivel was probably the best known of all vaquero performers. According to University of Chicago historian Pablo Rangel, who wrote a master’s thesis on wild west show vaqueros, Esquivel was born in 1862 in Bandera, Texas, to a Mexican father and a Polish mother. He grew up working on his father’s ranch near San Antonio. In the early 1880s he and his brother Demetrio Jose “Joe” started going on cattle drives to Kansas and Nebraska, and on a drive in 1883 they met Buffalo Bill, who recruited the brothers to join his original Wild West show. Both brothers stayed with the show for many years, touring Europe several times. Antonio was billed as the Champion Vaquero of Mexico and Demetrio as Chief of Cowboys. According to Rangel, Antonio was fluent in Spanish, English, Polish, and Lakota, and was valued by Cody as an interpreter as well as a performer.
Antonio developed a dramatic entrance into the arena on a large, ornately saddled black horse that he had trained to rear and walk on his hind feet. He gained notoriety when the show was in Manchester, England in 1888 by winning a ten-mile relay race against an English jockey named Latham. The riders changed horses every half mile. Latham rode English thoroughbreds; Esquivel rode broncos. Esquivel changed horses by employing the vaquero paso de la muerte, leaping from one galloping horse to another, and finished in 22 minutes, beating Latham by 400 yards and winning a £500 prize.
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In 1893, Antonio Esquivel married an Englishwoman, Clara Emma Richards, temporarily left the Wild West show, and settled with his wife in San Antonio. The couple eventually had five daughters. Esquivel trained polo ponies in San Antonio for a while, but he was back with Buffalo Bill from 1902 to 1905. In 1914 he was performing with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show. He died in San Antonio in 1938.
Jose Barerra, “Mexican Joe”, a native of San Antonio, Texas, was another well-known vaquero performer, having joined the Pawnee Bill Historical Wild West Show at the age of 15 in 1897. Pawnee Bill billed him as “the greatest trick roper in the world.” He also performed with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch shows. Barrera’s moment of glory came in New York in April 1914, during the Miller Brothers’ opening day parade down Broadway to Madison Square Garden. A six-ton elephant broke away from the parade and stampeded down a side street. Barrera took off after the elephant on horseback and roped him with an eight-foot loop just as the elephant was about to plow into a bakery storefront. The incident was reported in newspapers all over the English-speaking world.
Barrera married a fellow performer, equestrienne Effie Cole; they had a daughter named Mary Lou. After they retired from show business Barrera and his wife both went to work for Pawnee Bill’s ranch in Pawnee, Oklahoma, Jose as foreman and Effie as Pawnee Bill’s personal secretary. Barrera died in 1949.
A fourth significant vaquero performer was Mexican-born Vicente Oropeza, who succeeded Demetrio Esquivel as Buffalo Bill’s Chief of Cowboys. Oropeza (whose name was usually misspelled on programs and posters) may have been the greatest roper of all time; he taught Will Rogers how to throw a lariat. When Rogers first saw Oropeza perform, at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the 13-year old Oklahoma cowboy watched Oropeza rope a galloping horse blindfolded with his back to the horse, calling as the horse approached which hoof he intended to throw his loop around and then throwing his lariat over his shoulder. Oropeza ended his act by spelling out his full name, letter by letter, with his lariat loop while seated in the saddle. Rogers decided then and there to embark on a career as a trick roper, and Oropeza eventually became his mentor. In 1900, in a contest held in New York, Oropeza was named the first World Champion Trick and Fancy Roper, a title he never relinquished. Oropeza was with the Buffalo Bill show for sixteen years and was usually headlined as “The Premier Charro Mexicano of the World.” He retired to his ranch in Puebla, Mexico in 1916 and died there in 1923.
These four men were only the best known of the hundreds of vaquero performers who toured with wild west shows. Historians have culled the names of a few others from programs and posters: Indelicio Maldonado was a roper with Doc Carver’s Wild America show in 1889, and a woman called Senorita Rosalia and her performing partner Don Francisco were part of the 1898 Pawnee Bill show, but for the most part they have been completely forgotten.
Now the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, as part of its efforts to beef up its collections relating to Latino history, is making an effort to bring those vaqueros (and vaqueras) back into the spotlight. This column is prompted by an inquiry from my friend Steve Velasquez, Curator of Home and Community life there, who is trying to track down descendants of vaquero performers and locate any artifacts or memories of their ancestors that they might have. If any of my readers know of such, please contact Steve at velasquezs@si.edu.
(Lonn Taylor is a historian and writer who lives in Fort Davis. He can be reached at taylorw@fortdavis.net. His column The Rambling Boy appears weekly in the Marfa Big Bend Sentinel.)
Hello,
Antonio Esquivel was my great grandfather. Bessie ( his eldest daughter) was my grandmother. I have a picture of his wife and daughters taken in England. You can email.me if your interested in seeing it. Kimikobrown@gmail.com.
Thank you, Claire. I would love to see the photo you mention. Please send it to me at alfredo@mcmbooks.com.
Joe Esquivel (Tony’s brother) was my Great Grandfather, it is so exciting to read this history on Tony!
It is wonderful to see this article! I was just searching for some information on Antonio Esquivel to post for his birthday tomorrow (February 13). Imagine my surprise to encounter this article in which I am cited. Thank you for this publication and for the credit to my work. ¡Viva Los Vaqueros! And as we say in the archives, “the only invisible history is that which we choose to overlook.”
Thank you, Pablo. I will forward your comment to Lonn Taylor who wrote the column. I only reprinted it with his permission.
With a slight twist, my uncle Juan Light Salinas, a south Texas cowboy, after roping locally in the 1920 to 1936 era, decided in 1936 to make as many national rodeos as he could from coast to coast, in the tie-down calf roping event, and ended each year at the Finals Rodeo in Madison Square Garden. He never won a World Championship but he won his share. Read all about him in his biog that I wrote. TIO COWBOY, Texas A & M Press, 2007.
Thank you! You can get Tio Cowboy here: https://www.amazon.com/T%C3%ADo-Cowboy-Fronteras-International-University/dp/1603440798
I was very impressed with this,for me, new information!
Thank you. It is indeed new information.
Wow, first I hear of Vaqueros being main attractions of “Wild West Shows”!
Amazing what we were actually made to believe from what we saw in movies and/or read in books!