Unique exhibit allows visitors a look into a different lifestyle

When I think of a “cowboy,” I think of fair-skinned John Wayne, straddling a long-legged horse and saving a blonde starlet. I do not think of the faces currently lining the walls of The Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center. I do not imagine that their tobacco smiles and traditional hands worked in Texas as recently as the 1970s. When I think of “cowboy,” I do not imagine “Vaquero.”

“Vaquero” comes from the spanish word “vaca” or cow.

The United States’ Spanish-speaking population used the term, popularized in the 1850, to refer to a Mexican cowboy. “Vaquero,” however, has passed into history. Much like the old rides and roping of the South West, the traditional Mexican cowboy exists only in grainy photographs of the past. These poignant homages show the foundation of cattle work in the U.S., and compose the Sandoz Center’s newest exhibit, “Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy.”

Wrinkled, sun-baked eyes survey a brown field of cows. A young man with an old face looks into the camera. The photographs are all denim, leather, and sweat. Captured by photographer Bill Wittliff, these images show dusty vaqueros working on a ranch in Northern Mexico. Joe Frantz, a Texas historian, offered Wittliff the opportunity to record the vaqueros’ ways before they passed into obsolescence. This intimate and thoughtful exhibit features books, photos, and a roping station, where guests can practice wielding a lasso. This exhibit is also the Sandoz Center’s, first bilingual feature, with its captions in both Spanish and English.

“We’ve done vaquero programs with K-12 kids before,” Sarah Polak, director of the Sandoz Center, said. “The teachers were very excited, since some of the kids had been bullied for not being of euro-American, English-speaking descent. They’d been told they don’t have a place in our culture.”

Wittliff’s photos tell a different story about the history and culture of cattlemen.

One pedestal holds two copies of the book “The King Ranch” by Tom Lea, one in English and the other, Spanish. The book tells the story of King Ranch, one of the largest ranches in the world, in southern Texas. In this enormous ranch’s infancy, an entire village of vaqueros moved from Mexico to tend the King Ranch cattle. Their commitment to ranching helped develop the entire culture and practice of the “cowboy.” One panel of the exhibit recounts Wittliff’s interview with a vaquero. He asks how long the man had been working with cows. “Since I was six,” the man replies. Wittliff asks what his father did. “Vaquero,” the man says. His father before that? Vaquero. “Vaquero,” the ranch man responds, “Vaquero since the beginning.”

Of this forgotten heritage, Polak said, “I did not grow up in the ranch and country life, so anything that helps me understand the environment in which I now live is valuable to myself, as it is to the community.”

The exhibit will be open through May 9, including graduation.

“If your parents come in early, and you’d like an interesting, air-conditioned place to take them,” Polak said, “the exhibit will be open.”

The term that Polak used — “interesting” — is humble, as the exhibit, compact and thoughtful, also explores an important oversight in the American Western mystique. The mexican heritage of the cowboy does not stop at the vaquero. Words like rodeo and lariat were borrowed from the Spanish tongue, and the Old West’s cowboys were not all one color. The Sandoz Center’s newest exhibit shows not only images of the past, but truths about the inherited present.

“We want to show,” Polak said, “that not all cowboys were Marlboro men.”

The exhibit is free and open to the public 8 a.m. to noon and 1-4 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to noon and 1-4 p.m., Saturday.