The brush country of south Texas, also referred to as the brasada, is home to numerous and varied species of plant life, each equipped with its own armament of thorns and barbs. The brasada of 1878 was thick with prickly-pear, cats-claw, Spanish dagger, black chaparral, twisted acacia, all-thorn, wild currant, and mesquite. Photo- Longhorns in the South Texas Brasada
The brasada required that a brush cowboy’s equipment be suited to working in these dense and dogged thickets. Every brush hand’s armor included toe-fenders on his stirrups, leather leggins that covered his legs all the way to his waist, (no respectable brush cowboy ever referred to his leggins as chaps), gloves that extended past his wrists, and a wide-brimmed hat that could be tied around his chin.
J. Frank Dobie wrote in A Vaquero in the Brush Country, that, “In running in the brush a man rides not so much on the back of the horse as under and alongside. He just hangs on, dodging limbs as if he were dodging bullets, back, forward, over, under, half of the time trusting his horse to course right on this or that side of a bush or tree. If he shuts his eyes to dodge, he is lost. Whether he shuts them or not, he will, if he runs true to form, get his head rammed or raked. Patches of the brush hand’s bandana hanging on thorns and stobs sometimes mark his trail. The bandana of red is his emblem.”
The brasada was also home to Texas and Mexican bandits and desperadoes. In the parlance of the time, they were known as owl hoots, bad men who rustled, robbed, and murdered at their own will. Texas and Mexican bandits used the brasada as an exchange point. The Texas rustlers often had Mexican cattle to dispose of that carried no known state brand and contrariwise.
Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2010
