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A lasso or lazo ( or ), also called reata or la reata in Mexico, and in the United States riata or lariat (from Mexican Spanish lasso for roping cattle), is a loop of rope designed as a restraint to be thrown around a target and tightened when pulled. It is a well-known tool of the Mexican and South American cowboys, which was then adopted from the Mexicans by the of the United States. The word is also a verb; to lasso is to throw the loop of rope around something.
The rope or lasso used to restrain cattle is also called Reata or La Reata in Mexico, which was Anglicized to “Lariat” or “Riata” in the United States.
In Mexico reata is basically used as a synonym for rope, a colloquialism, specifically the one used for capturing cattle and other livestock. But in its original Castilian Spanish (in Spain) definition, reata means a group of horses, mules or donkeys tied together to go in a straight line or the leading mule of three that draw a cart and, in nautical settings, a rope for binding masts and spars (woolding).Other names are used in various countries where the Lasso is used. In Argentina, Chile and Venezuela is simply called “El Lazo” or “El Lazo Criollo” (the native lasso). In Colombia the equipment is called “Rejo”, in Costa Rica “Coyunda”, in Ecuador “Beta”, and Peru “Guasca”. Meanwhile in Colombia, the term Reata or Riata means: hardened, firm, rigid, severe; it also refers to a belt for pants.
A vaquero on horseback, carrying the desjarretadera, would gallop at full speed behind a wild bull and, positioning himself slightly to one side, would hit the back, the hock, of one of its legs, slicing through the flesh and cutting the nerves, thus, incapacitating the bull. The vaquero would then dismount and finish the bull off by stabbing it at the base of its neck, and would then skin it and remove the tallow, leaving the rest to rot. This activity was done in the early stages of cattle ranching in the Americas when the only thing valuable were the hides and tallow. The desjarretadera would later on be used as a weapon used primarily by militias.
The oldest mention of anything close to “roping from horseback” in the Americas was not about cattle but about wild horses. In Friar Diego de Ocaña’s travels through the province of Paraguay in 1601, he wrote about the great quantities of wild horses that inhabited the area and how the natives would capture them on horseback, bareback, by a rudimentary roping method utilizing a rope of which one end was tied behind the horse’s brazuelos (the forearm or gaskin) while the other end was made into a noose fastened to a pole, Ocaña writes: Neither Ocaña nor other writers before or after him ever mentioned this method being used to rope cattle in that region. The method sounds similar to the Mongolian method of capturing horses using the “uurga” with the exception that the rope was fastened to the horse’s body. If this method was independently developed here or brought from the outside is unknown since there is no evidence whatsoever of its existence in Spain before the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas.
The first documented evidence of cattle roping from horseback would appear until 1643, in the book —Exercicios de la Gineta— a book about jineta horsemanship by Gregorio de Tapia y Salcedo a Caballero of the Order of Santiago. In it he describes how two Black slaves from the Americas performed an extraordinary feat in a bullring in Madrid during a bullfight. They entered on horseback each carrying in his hand a pole of 13 palmos (approx. 1.5 meters), that had one end of a rope made into a noose tied around it while the other end was fastened to their horse’s tail. As the bull was let out, the Black horsemen approached it and one placed the noose around the bull’s horns. He goes on to say that even though they sometimes failed at “roping” the bull they kept trying until they succeeded. Salcedo says that this peculiar feat caused great sensation among the people and the Royal Court indicating it was completely unknown in Spain, and continues on to say:
The precise origin of these two Black slaves who performed this extraordinary feat is unknown as Salcedo never went into detail just stating they were from the Americas (the Indies). As such, we can never exactly pinpoint where such a method originated and we can also never know how wide spread it was.
Andrew Sluyter, a social scientist and professor at the Louisiana State University, argues that roping cattle from horseback originated in Mexico. He asserts that certain ranching laws enacted by the Mexican Mesta, the government association regulating ranching, targeted Black, Mulatto Indian and Mestizo vaqueros disproportionately with harsher punishments for violating them, including corporal punishment. Due to the indiscriminate killing of female cattle and, as a result, the subsequent decline of the herds, the great set of laws passed by the Mesta in January 1574 included a law that ordered that no Blacks, Mulattos, Mestizos or Indians who are or had been employed as vaqueros were allowed to own or keep desjarretaderas and garrochas (lances), under penalty of 20 gold pesos, a 10 month salary or more for the average vaquero. For those that were unable to pay, the punishment was at least 100 lashes in public. Black and mulatto slaves fared worst since they received no salary, so the automatic punishment was lashing. According to Sluyter, black and mulatto vaqueros developed roping from horseback as an alternative way for capturing cattle, circumventing the law.
Sluyter also argues that the invention of the saddle-horn also points to Mexico as the origin of roping from horseback. According to him, the saddle with a horn for roping was the invention of these Black and Mulatto vaqueros, whose African elite ancestors knew about horns on saddles, not for roping or even herding cattle, but for hanging bags. The West African saddles, says Sluyter, look strikingly similar to the saddles developed in Mexico. The fact that there is no evidence whatsoever of the existence of horned saddles in Spain nor in any other European country, points to an African-Mexican origin.
Another possible clue is that many Mexican herdsmen in the 18th century would fastened their lasso on their horses' tails, as those Black horsemen in Madrid did, a method that would continue into the 19th century in Veracruz by the Jarochos, the vaqueros of that region, who were mostly of Black descent. Although the Llaneros of Venezuela also use this method, and continue to do so, they never developed the intricate form of roping that Mexican herdsmen did.By the 18th century, roping from horseback for the purpose of herding and capturing cattle was widely spread throughout Hispanic-America, from the Pampas in South America to the northern frontier of New Spain. The cumbersome pole once used was discarded, they were now roping more dexterously by throwing the lasso. Nonetheless, it was still very rudimentary as the herdsmen were roping in conjunction with garrochas (lances) and desjarretaderas which were still being used to drive and incapacitate cattle, respectively. One vaquero would lasso and hold a bull while another one with a desjarretadera would perform the necessary tasks. Jesuit priest Rafael Landivar vividly described in epic verse how bull hunts were performed in the Province of Mexico in 1782, stating that vaqueros would armed themselves with different weapons, some with garrochas, others with desjarretaderas and most with lassos fastened to their horses’ tails.
Also, a great deal of the roping was done on foot, including in Mexico where most of the well known roping techniques, like team roping hadn’t been invented yet. If a bull had to be captured and laid down, one vaquero had to first rope it, either by the horns or head, while another one, on foot, had to grab its tail and pull it down. Ignaz Pfefferkorn, a Jesuit missionary who visited Sonora in the 1760’s explained how the capturing and slaughtering of cattle was done at the time with roping, garrochas and tailing:
From the rudimentary roping of the 18th century, various distinct roping styles would emerge: Charro, Gaucho, Huaso, Llanero, Chagra and Montubio and Qorilazo.
Lassos are also mentioned in the Greek Histories of Herodotus; seventh book. Polymnia 7.85 records: "The wandering tribe known by the name of Sagartians – a people Old Persian in language, and in dress half Persian people, half Pakthas, who furnished the army as many as eight thousand horse. It is not the wont of this people to carry arms, either of bronze or steel, except only a dirk; but they use lassos made of thongs plaited together, and trust to these whenever they go to the wars. Now the manner in which they fight is the following: when they meet their enemy, straightway they discharge their lassos, which end in a noose; then, whatever the noose encircles, be it man or be it horse, they drag towards them; and the foe, entangled in the toils, is forthwith slain. Such is the manner in which this people fight; and now their horsemen were drawn up with the Persians". Lasso is mentioned by some sources as being one of the pieces of equipment of the Aswaran, the cavalry force of the Sasanian Empire. In the vast majority of these cases the lassos were used as weapons for war. When used for herding purposes it was generally done on foot, typically within the confines of an enclosure, in very rudimentary ways. Other such examples include the maut or arkan lasso of the Siberian natives for herding reindeer.
The lasso is used today in as part of the competitive events such as calf roping and team roping. It is also used on working to capture cattle or other livestock when necessary. After catching the cattle, the lasso can be tied or wrapped (dallied) around the horn, a typical feature on the front of a western saddle. With the lasso around the horn, the cowboy can use his horse analogously to a tow truck with a winch.
Part of the historical culture of both the of Mexico and the of the Western United States is a related skill now called "trick roping", a performance of assorted lasso spinning tricks. The Hollywood film star Will Rogers was a well-known practitioner of trick roping and the natural horsemanship practitioner Buck Brannaman also got his start as a trick roper when he was a child.
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