Guitars could have come to Hawaii from several sources: sailors, missionaries, or travelers to and from California. The most frequently told story is that it accompanied the Mexican cowboys ("vaqueros") brought by King Kamehameha III in 1832 in order to teach the natives how to control an overpopulation of cattle. The Hawaiian cowboys ("paniolo") used guitars in their traditional folk music. The Portuguese introduced an instrument called the "braguinha", a small, four-stringed Madeira variant of the cavaquinho; this instrument was a precursor to the `ukulele.