I think what you might be referring to are leather wrist cuffs, which were/are used to protect you from just about anything that could rub your wrist raw (reins, scratchy brush, ropes, etc.) and to protect/clamp down the sleeve of your shirt (since a cowboy on a long cattle drive often only had the shirt on his back, it was good to keep it in one piece). I've seen their use dated back to the Spanish vaqueros. They spread in the US as the great cattle drives in the 19th century drew in foreign cowboys. OP, try an image search for "western leather wrist cuff" and tell me if that looks like what you're searching for.

Of course, searching for just "leather wrist cuffs" is bound to bring you to a whole other kind of product....

(Sorry for the brief reply, but I don't know what else I could really say about wrist cuffs. If you ask, I'll try to answer.)