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Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982
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Item Title
Rancher Les Stewart Explains the Strategy for Sorting the Herd
Author/Creator
Narrator: Stewart, Leslie J.
Fleischhauer, Carl
Wilson, William A., interviewers.
Created/Published
May 09,1981
Notes
Les Stewart diagrams the 96 Ranch's strategy for parting and sorting the herd.
Les's description of how to part cattle mixes technique and protocol. In 1983, as he watched this segment in the Library of Congress exhibition The American Cowboy, he joked that he ought to show it to the foremen and buckaroos on a couple of ranches in the valley. He said he had recently observed the men on one ranch parting cattle in disorderly fashion, with shouting riders pushing into the bunched cattle willy-nilly.
Les uses the word "rodera" to refer to the group of bunched cattle from which specific categories of animals are segregated. The term has currency in Nevada; some buckaroos pronounce it "rodeer." The term is derived from the Spanish rodear, meaning "to surround," also the source of rodeo. Usage of prada, parada, or paratha varies. Here Les uses the term to name the group of animals, often dry cows, cut from the rodera. Clues to this usage and derivation may be found in Jo Mora's Californios (Mora 1949, 90-93). Mora describes early nineteenth-century rodeos--a kind of publicly administered roundup--in Spanish California in which small rancheros parted their stock from the larger holdings of the missions. According to Mora, the cut herd was called an apartado. This term is derived from the Spanish apartar, meaning to set apart or separate, and a cognate of English part. Alternatively, the word may be derived from parar and parada, meaning "to stop" and "stopping place."
Les said that parada can also name a group of horses, a meaning reported by folklorist Gary Stanton after interviewing other cowboys from the region. One former mustanger told Gary that he had used tame horses to lure wild horses into a trap, and called the bunch of tame animals a parada. (Personal communication from Gary Stanton, August 13, 1984)
Subject
Activities
Maps
Cattle sorting
Buckarooing
Ethnography
Motion Pictures
Ninety-Six Ranch
Object Type
Medium
3/4 inch video
Language
English
Call Number
NV81-VT1
Digital ID
afc96ran v014
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afc96ran.v014