From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Kye Ohtie wrote:   
   > In article <20040208211409.06160.00000308@mb-m21.aol.com>, johnw99@aol.com   
   > says...   
   >   
   >>Whoa Hoss?   
   >>   
   >>  Not really interested in Bonanza. I was thinking more of the 1820's in   
   >>Texas, when Mexico ruled the land.   
   >   
   >   
   > Well, several of us replied that you   
   > need to define what it is you mean   
   > by "hacienda?"  The word means "farm   
   > or ranch property." Or are you using   
   > the word in the corrupted sense of   
   > meaning "small house" - as it is used   
   > in the song I quoted?   
   >   
   > As with all farms and ranches everywhere,   
   > there are small, large and huge. Most   
   > farms (ranches) of 1820 would have been   
   > small operations, and since it was open   
   > range back then, who knows what the limits   
   > of a "ranch" might have been.   
      
   The etymology of "ranch" is pretty interesting. Derivation from the   
   spanish "rancho" makes sense, given the primative state of life in the   
   early Southwest. Rancho carried the meaning of a place for workers,   
   primarily the mess*, but also a rough place for housing workers. So, it   
   had the meaning both of the workers and their quarters. As in English,   
   the meaning of people is more proper and predating the notion of a   
   place, which would most properly be a mess-hall.   
      
   (*From Middle English "mes" - people eating together, which is   
   consistent with "mess" in it's most proper use, as the group, not the   
   place.)   
      
   This idea is made more clear by the derivation of rancho from the older   
   Spanish rancharse : to be billeted.   
      
   Hacienda derived from the Latin "facienda" (things to be done) and the   
   old Spanish "facienda" (estate or large enterprise). That derivation   
   from an implied wide range of "things to be done" fairly characterizes   
   the many activities that maintained the hacienda and its workers.   
      
   In the borrowing, ranch no doubt began as an appropriate word for the   
   very minimal shelter established on the range. It's expansion to cover a   
   large pasturage seems to me to be both a natural adoption of the Spanish   
   rancho and a humorously modest reference to "my little ole rancho". And,   
     again, the "ranch" was the house and work, rather than the land, in   
   the days of wholly open and free range. At the same time, there's a   
   natural jocularity in referring to a modest early ranch house as a   
   "hacienda", which it certainly was not. An early "ranch" was very much   
   more a company of men performing a task than a place.   
      
   "Hacienda" did, I think, regularly imply a large establishment that was   
   traditionally a substantially self-contained operation with a   
   generational community of workers who often were born, lived and died on   
   the hacienda, having all their basic needs provided by the "company   
   store", not uncommonly with the son inheriting the father's company   
   debt. Very much like "plantation" came to mean a large establishment   
   with many activities that kept it going.   
      
   It would seem that the Anglo Texians adapted the hacienda style of   
   cattle-raising (as opposed to methods from the "old states") - without   
   the permanent attachment of the workers to the establishment, they not   
   having either a tradition of that kind in the old states nor the   
   generations (and not the cash) to establish the closed owner-worker unit.   
      
   The King Ranch establishment, though, developed into something very much   
   like a true hacienda.   
      
   I have also seen 19th century usage of "ranch" to refer to a business of   
   any kind. Its use causes a reader to pause when it's clearly not a   
   reference to any kind of agriculture of stock-raising. I shall have to   
   see if I can remember one reference of the sort that puzzled me when I   
   first saw it. It was a frank use of "my ranch" in reference to the   
   writer's business enterprise, not a humorous use of the word.   
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)