For centuries, the buttero was central to livestock and rural life in the Maremma between Lazio and Tuscany. Though the trade is fading, new horsemen keep the region's history and identity alive.
At first sight, it could look like a scene from a Western: a man on horseback crossing the pastures to guard the livestock. Only this is not Texas, but Canale Monterano, where the figure of the buttero embodies the history and identity of the Lazio Maremma.
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Here, however, the horse is not a symbol of the past but a working tool and a direct link with a centuries-old tradition that continues to shape the area, with practices handed down from generation to generation and safeguarded above all by the Butteri di Canale Monterano association.
Unlike US cowboys, who are historically more recent, the figure of the buttero has its roots in very ancient traditions and is seen by many as a legacy of Etruscan civilisation. Their body of knowledge is thought to have reached us almost intact.
Modern butteri between Tolfa and Canale Monterano
Deriving from the Greek βουτόρος – "goader of oxen" – the buttero was for centuries a key figure in extensive cattle farming and central to life in rural communities. Even today, Maremma cattle live exclusively on open-range pasture and, to round them up, the herdsmen rely on their skill on horseback, an essential element of the trade, and they are riders specialised in the so-called "monta da lavoro", a style of riding for working with livestock.
As technology has advanced, the buttero's trade has almost disappeared, but the passion of people attached to this way of life has helped to preserve the role.
"I had uncles, my mother's cousins. To keep the memory and the tradition alive, we never abandoned it, even in our own small way," says Rinaldo Camilletti, a buttero and owner of a cattle and sheep farm in Canale Monterano, which he runs together with his son Cesare.
For Marta Papa, a vet and 27-year-old buttera, this role is less about driving the animals "and more about working alongside the livestock, because our horses and our cows were born and raised here, so all I can do is ride alongside them and accompany them".
For her and her 21-year-old brother Alessandro, family and their roots in the area also weighed heavily in the decision to become butteri, but Marta also stressed that "finding myself living in this environment is something I really love; for me it is a real breath of fresh air".
The buttero's role in rural life: a typical day and duties
In the past, "the buttero not only had to take care of managing the cattle herds, but also had to see to bringing them into the pens (putting them into the enclosures, ed.) and to weaning the calves." With the trained horses on which he spent most of the day, the herdsman "had to gather the herds, wean the calves and take them into pens made of chestnut posts, which we call rimessini," Camilletti notes.
To carry out these tasks, butteri also relied on trained dogs, often to bring the animals back onto the right path, "as ours is a hilly area, with terrain that is quite difficult in places", Camilletti says. Once in the pens, the cattle were cared for and branded so that the herd could be identified, given that in this area more than 70 per cent of the population lived off agriculture and livestock, and at the time there were no microchips or ear tags.
Branding with a hot iron – known as merca and used to recognise one's own animals even from a distance – was itself a central moment in rural life, a collective celebration for the owner, for the farm and for all the butteri and teams who had taken part in the work.
Canale Monterano's Riarto and the reworking of traditions
Of course, these traditions have now been revisited. "In the past, both the driving and the management and also the way of recognising the livestock were different, in the sense that every buttero, every group of butteri, knew which animals were theirs, which areas they grazed, how they moved, and for example here we used to have the tradition of branding the animals," says Marta, stressing that laws banning it have been in place for some time.
The means by which the buttero reaches the animals have changed too: "not only on horseback any more, but also with tractors and farm vehicles. Farms have become more efficient in many respects, and so there have been a number of changes that also make the work a bit easier," Marta adds.
According to the young buttera, these changes have brought many advantages but also many drawbacks for both the buttero and the herd, "in the sense that many people no longer do this job, or at least it is no longer their main source of income. It may have become a more marginal activity, both in numerical terms and in how practical the work itself is." At the same time, for the animals, "small everyday attentions that the buttero might have had 50 or 70 years ago have been lost, because the work we do with animals today is different from a few decades ago".
Every year in May, to keep the memory of the past alive, the Butteri di Canale Monterano association organises a festival called Riarto, which recalls the time before the start of transhumance, twice a year, when butteri met to trade goods and compete in skill contests. The most distinctive of these is the calf-roping event, a reworking of livestock branding. Teams of three riders have to catch the animal using the "lacciara", a non-rigid rope, unlike the one used in US rodeos, which makes the task more difficult. Once caught, the calf is then symbolically branded with chalk.
Breaking in horses and cattle
Another key moment in a buttero's life was breaking in the horse, which could take different forms. In this case, Camilletti explains, "it had to be a particular kind of breaking-in, with a bridle we call 'a mazzetto'. They had to hold the horse's reins in one hand only and always keep the other free to carry out other tasks with the animals".
This was also very demanding work, given that horses were less used to human contact than they are today and were "somewhat difficult animals by nature because they came from free-range grazing in the mountains", the breeder recalls. The buttero could break them in for himself or for others, and it was vital work "considering that at the time there were no mechanical vehicles".
The cattle also had to be broken in, "because there were huge wooden carts pulled by Maremma oxen, and oxen that in any case are somewhat difficult in temperament".
When he was not on horseback and, because looking after the herds meant spending months away from home, the buttero would rest in huts on the pastures made from branches and vegetation, with a hearth inside. One of the typical dishes of his daily life was acquacotta, made with wild seasonal vegetables, Camilletti recalls. The osteria, meanwhile, was a place to meet and socialise, often frequented by herdsmen on their afternoons off.
