Let's Rodeo

By Dr. Richard W. Slatta, the Cowboy Professor at North Carolina State University

  • Bronc Rider Let's rodeo! Modern rodeo flourishes in all 50 states, most of Canada, and parts of Europe and Australia. Each year an estimated 16 million fans cheer at more than 800 sanctioned rodeos around the world. About 2,000 rodeos of all types are held annually in the US and Canada. Rodeo is a set of competitive events pitting people against livestock.
  • Origins: Many events originated from traditional cowboy skills, riding horses and roping cattle. The word's Spanish origin points to another important influence from south of the border. In Spanish the term means a gathering place of cattle, a roundup. Cowboys used the term in that sense in the nineteenth century. Gradually the meaning of the term when used in the United States came to mean the dazzling cowboy and cowgirl contests now enjoyed by millions.
  • Mexican Charro Mary Lou LeCompte (Journal of Sport History, Spring 1985) has shown that the "all-American sport" of rodeo owes a strong debt to Mexican equestrian displays and competitions. Riders in Mexico competed in charreadas long before rodeo appeared in the US. Early cowboy tournaments or contests in the Southwest often included vaqueros and Anglo cowboys. These contests included ranch work skills. But some events came directly from earlier vaquero and charro practices in Mexico.
  • Another point of origin probably stems from the great Texas cattle drives after the Civil War. Drovers would gather at corrals in the cow towns to see who was top hand. In Abilene, Dodge, and elsewhere, cowboys climbed aboard mustangs and roped wild cattle. Hands also competed against one another at ranch rodeos. On July 4, 1869 Mill Iron, Camp Stool and Hash Knife cowboys got together at Deer Trail, Colorado. Clifford Westermeier reprinted a contemporary journalist's account of the exciting saddle bronc ride (Trailing the Cowboy, pp. 344-45).
    Emilnie Gardenshire let it be known that he wanted the worst animal in the pen, and he got it in the shape of a bay, from the Hashknife ranch, known throughout the section as the Montana Blizzard. Gardenshire, rawhide whip in hand, crawled aboard cautiously and, once firm in his seat, began to larrup the bay unmercifully. For fifteen minutes he bay bucked, pawed, and jumped from side to side, than, amid cheers, the mighty Blizzard succumbed, and Gardenshire rode him around the circle at a gentle gallop. It was a magnificent piece of horsemanship, and the suit of clothes, together with the title "Champion Bronco Buster of the Plains," went to the lad from the Milliron ranch.
  • William F. Cody Such competitions provided a legacy of real ranch work skills, roping and riding, that continue to tie modern rodeo to its historical roots. As Mary Lou LeCompte (Cowgirls of the Rodeo), notes "women rarely participated in ranch-versus-ranch rodeos, because they were not hired hands like the cowboys."
  • Buffalo Bill Cody's "Old Glory Blowout," July 4, 1882, in North Platte, Nebraska, provides another important rodeo landmark. He convinced local merchants to donate prizes for a variety of riding and roping contests. Winning prizes and cash remains a part of modern rodeo. Pecos, Texas held another early competition, "the West of the Pecos," on July 4 of the following year. According to Charlie Siringo, Caldwell, Kansas held a "grand cowboy tournament" in May 1885. The Denver Republican (September 30, 1887) reported a near-tragedy at Montrose.
    The cowboys' tournament in which roping from the ground, from the saddle, heading and heeling, riding bucking bronchos, etc., afforded much sport, but well nigh terminated fatally. One of the cowboys was riding a bucking broncho when the animal made a dash towards where the ladies were seated and could not be checked before he struck Mrs. James A. Ladd, who was thrown violently to the ground beneath the animal's hoofs. The horse struck the lady with its front feet on her chest and pinioned her to the earth for a second or two, but he was quickly grasped by one or two gentlemen who stood near the lady and prevented from trampling her to death. Every lady on the grounds screamed and one or two fainted.
  • Prescott, Arizona holds claim to the first rodeo to charge admission and present a trophy. Juan Leivas won a silver-mounted medal at the Prescott Frontier Days Celebration, July 4, 1888. Payson, Arizona, also began celebrations that included rodeo competition during the early 1880s.
  • Bronc Rider Rodeo also appropriated some of entertainment style from wild west shows. Rodeo promoters drew upon Buffalo Bill Cody's flair for showmanship in promoting their attractions. The last of the great old troops, the Miller Brother's 101 Ranch Wild West Show, closed in 1931. Some contract performers (as opposed to contestants) moved their acts from wild west shows to rodeos. Trick riding at rodeos showed the common heritage and crowd-pleasing showmanship of rodeos and Wild West shows. Trick riders, such as Dick Griffin, Don Wilcox, and Bernice Taylor delighted audiences with their skill and courage on horseback. Trick ropers, such as Chester Byars and Jim Eskew, Jr., likewise amazed crowds with their talents.
  • Early rodeo and Wild West show performers shared some characteristics with the working cowboy. Like the early cowboy, rodeo riders gained unsavory reputations for wildness, fighting, and drunkenness. And like the cowboy, most rodeo riders remained poor. Many men stuck with cowboying because they loved the life; not because it made them wealthy. Many rodeo riders, too, go down the road each year for the sheer thrill of it. Of course, everybody hopes to make it big one day.
  • Cheyenne and Pendleton: In the United States, rodeo has become the "all-American sport." Rodeos in Pendleton, Oregon, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and elsewhere have gained international fame. First held in 1897, Cheyenne's Frontier Days became one of the biggest western spectacles. Boosters tried a variety of crowd-pleasing acts, including Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1898. At various times, promoters also added balloon flights, parachute drops, masquerade balls, and wolf roping. Some couples even decided to take their wedding vows in front of enthusiastic crowds in the grandstand.
  • Bulldogging Local boosters quickly recognized rodeos as a means of promoting tourism and business. Businessmen in Pendleton planned their cowboy extravaganza, which they called a "roundup," in 1910. According to original publicity, early events included "roping, racing, and relays, by cowboys, Indians and cowgirls; steer roping, maverick races, steer bulldogging, riding bucking horses, steers, bulls, buffaloes, and cows; stagecoach racing, Indian ceremonial and war dances, trick riding, mounted tug of war, the grand parade, and that wonderful finale, the wild horse race." What more could an audience want? "Let 'er buck!"
  • By 1915 major rodeo events had become annual occurrences in Cheyenne, Pendleton, Salinas (California), and Calgary (Alberta). The following year, Guy Weadick, a Wyoming rider and promoter, took rodeo performers to Brooklyn for the New York Stampede. Events became more standardized over the decades.
  • Bulldogging Along with big, famous shows like the Stampede, Roundup, and Frontier Days, many smaller events came into being. Amateur rodeos, often during summer holidays, became commonplace throughout the western United States and Canada. Every rodeo season finds a crowd of ever-hopeful would-be champions "goin' down the road."
  • It took a while for rodeo stars to emerge. Rough stock, however, quickly became legends in their own time. Bucking horses, like Steamboat, Midnight, Tipperary, and Five Minutes to Midnight, became more famous than the men who challenged them. According to rodeo legend, Tipperary first met his match in future stuntman and actor Yakima Canutt.
  • Getting Organized: Some rodeo events, such as saddle bronc riding, reflect real, essential old-time cowboy skills. Some performers come from cowboy backgrounds. Samuel Thomas "Booger Red" Privett cowboyed and rodeoed in the early twentieth century. Increasingly numbers of rodeo performers, however, come from non-ranch backgrounds.
  • Rodeo riders saw the need to organize on their own behalf. In 1936 they organized the Cowboy's Turtle Association, often referred to as "the Union." The turtle moniker reflected the fact that it took performers a long time to get organized. Sixty competitors demanded a bigger slice of the gate and walked out on Col. W.T. Johnson's rodeo at the Boston Garden. At the time the total purse was less than the sum of their entry fees. The union prompted Johnson to agree to their demands and grant them a $14,000 purse.
  • Calf Roping The name changed to the Rodeo Cowboys Association (RCA) in 1945. Members won an important victory over rodeo management in 1955. The RCA point system and standings became the single measure for naming rodeo world champions. Hawaiian riders formed the Hawaii Rodeo Association in 1966. The group presently numbers about 250 members and sanctions eight or nine rodeos per year. In 1974 the RCA adopted the present name, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA).
  • Cowgirl Women: County and state fairs throughout the nation began including rodeo competition. Women quickly found a place in rodeo, just as they had on the frontier and in wild west shows. Mary Lou LeCompte (Cowgirls of the Rodeo) found records of at least sixteen women who competed in rodeos or wild west shows during the 1880s. In early rodeos, women competed head to heat with men in what later became men's events, such as saddle bronc riding.
  • May Lillie, married to wild west show entrepreneur Pawnee Bill, well captured the allure of horseback life. "Let any normally healthy woman who is ordinarily strong screw up her courage and tackle a bucking bronco, and she will find the most fascinating pastime in the field of feminine athletic endeavor."
  • "Prairie Lillie" Allen, Fox Wilson and other daring cowgirls competed in rodeos. Missouri-born Lucille Mulhall became the best known rodeo cowgirl of the early twentieth century. She also became friend and mentor to Ruth Roach and other up-and-comers.
  • Bertha Kapernick gave the first bronc riding exhibition by a woman at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1904. She later married bulldogger Dell Blancett are rode as his hazer. (Some sources state that in 1901 "Prairie Rose" Henderson became the first woman bronc rider at Cheyenne. Mary Lou LeCompte found no evidence of her participation there before 1910.)
  • Guy Weadick included a full range of women's events for the September 2, 1912 Calgary Stampede. The program lists the following women's events: "Fancy and trick riding by cowgirls, Cowgirls relay race, Fancy roping by cowgirls, Bucking horse riding by cowgirls."
  • Beginning in the 1930s, rodeo promoters reduced women's participation. When men riders organized their union in 1936, they excluded women. Women no longer competed against men. Rodeo promoter and singing star Gene Autry also played a leading role in marginalizing rodeo cowgirls. Autry took control of major rodeos in the early 1940s and reshaped them to reflect his conservative, strongly gendered values. In 1942, he eliminated women's bronc riding from competitions in New York and Boston. Rodeo cowgirls found themselves relegated to the sidelines as rodeo queens or to special events, such as barrel racing.
  • Cowgirl Faced with the setbacks of the forties, a group of Texas women organized the Girls Rodeo Association in 1948. This organization later became the Women's Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA). Since the 1950s, women have worked to close the gender gap in rodeo. They have competed in all-girl rodeos and sought to reestablish their lost status in men's rodeo.
  • Charmayne James Rodman and other modern cowgirls have pushed far beyond the rodeo queen role. In 1992 Rodman rode Scamper to her ninth straight barrel racing title at Las Vegas. Competitors run a cloverleaf pattern around three barrels. Her string is a rodeo record for men and women. (Bull rider Donnie Gay and calf roper Dean Oliver each managed eight straight.) Not bad for a twenty-two-year-old! The first and so far only "million-dollar cowgirl," Rodman drives her own rig some 90,000 miles each rodeo season.
  • Rodeo culture is very tradition-minded. This traditionalism is reflected in the rodeo queen competitions still held. A Miss College Rodeo is chosen each year. Women must excel in appearance, sportsmanship, personality, congeniality, and horsemanship. Not all women are content to limit their rodeo participation to a horseback beauty pageant. Increasing numbers of women have made their way back into the rough stock events. Twenty-one-year-old Tonya Butts, for example, ranked among the leading bull riders of the Women's Professional Rodeo Association. Tammy George won the 1992 women's bull riding championship. Veteran Jan Youren was twice WPRA world champion bareback-bronc rider and has been inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. As sexist barriers fall throughout society, fans will see a blurring of the sex-segregated lines in rodeo events. Women in rodeo likely will narrow the gap between their earnings and visibility, just as women have in other professional sports. (Women's Professional Rodeo Association, Rt. 5, Box 698, Blanchard, OK 73010; tel. 405-485-2277).
  • Rodeo Today: It's been a long road from the Union of 1936 to today's Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, with headquarters next door to the Prorodeo Hall of Champions. About 10,000 riders hold PRCA memberships. Only about 300, however, rodeo full-time. The remainder support their rodeo habit with other jobs. Top riders fly from rodeo to rodeo in chartered planes. By 1992 total PRCA prize money approached $20 million, double the 1980 figure.
  • The PRCA sanctions most rodeos held in the U.S., 770 in 1992. That year between 16 and 17 million fans attended PRCA events. (Slightly under 14 million people attended pro football games.) The PRCA also sponsors the National Rodeo Finals (NFR) each year. Dallas hosted the first NFR in 1959. The contest later moved to Oklahoma City. After a twenty-year tenure there, the NFR moved to Las Vegas in 1985. The year's top fifteen money-winners compete in nine days of events. Leading WPRCA barrel racers also ride for the national crown. By the early 1990s, NFR prize money neared three million dollars. Like any sport, rodeo has its "groupies." "Buckle bunnies" flock to rodeo stars just as groupies do to other professional athletes.
  • Rodeo is popular and big business from Pendleton, Oregon to Paris and Tokyo. In 1990 world champion Ty Murray won more than $213,000. Murray became the PRCA's youngest all-around champion in 1989 at age twenty. In 1992 Murray became one of only three cowboys to qualify for all three NFR rough-stock events: bull riding, bareback riding, and saddle bronc riding. Winning his fourth straight title in 1992, the 22-year-old won $225,000.
  • A few riders hit it big time, but the average rodeo winner makes about $29,000. And not every rider has a winning season. Six-time all-around world champion Larry Mahan explained the basics of rodeo "survival skills." You had to learn to travel without a car, borrow clothes, and put up with ten men in a motel room. Competitors also subsist on a diet heavy in "rodeo steak" (hot dogs.) Contestants pay a fee to compete and earn no salary. On a bad day, a rider end up several hundred dollars poorer.
  • Rodeo has millions of fans, but the sport also has its detractors. Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence (Rodeo) argues that rodeo has institutionalized macho values and attitudes of the Old West. Man reenacts the taming of west through his mastery over wild animals. As Lawrence points out, however, rodeo people strongly identify with the livestock. Famous rodeo animals share the spotlight with humans at the Prorodeo Hall of Champions.
  • Mastery over animals can involve what appears to be cruel, violent treatment. The Fund for Animals, People for the Ethnical Treatment of Animals, and other groups strongly criticize rodeo. Animals rights advocates level specific criticisms. They argue that the flank strap inflicts pain to the genitals of bucking bronc or bull. A flank strap or scratcher cinch extends around the animal's body at the flanks. Critics take strong exception to calf roping. Calves can be injured when the taut rope pulls them sharply to the ground. Animals rights advocates also object to using electric cattle prods or twisting an animal's tail in the chutes to get it to buck more wildly.
  • Rodeo fans will reject such the criticism, but rodeo is definitely hard on man and beast alike. Saddle-bronc rider Pete Knight's dominated his event in the mid-1930s, winning four world championships. In a 1937 California rodeo, however, a horse named Duster bucked him off and planted a hoof in his ribs. Knight walked away from the ride but died that night of internal injuries at age thirty-three. Roper Bob "Wild Horse" Crosby became a legend for competing while seriously injured. A charging bull gored and killed 1987 World Champion bull rider Lane Frost. The twenty-five-year-old Texan died before a horrified crowd at Cheyenne Frontier Days.
  • Arena dangers created another job, the rodeo clown. These funny, entertaining figures have a serious task. They distract animals from fallen performers in the arena. Clowning and humorous bull fighting date back to at least the 1920s. A Wild West performer and bronc rider named "Red" Sublett turned his talents to clowning and bull fighting during the Twenties. John Lindsey and Hoyt Hefner became well known rodeo clowns of the Thirties and Forties. Today rodeo clowns have their own bull fighting championships and remain crowd favorites.
  • Rodeo performers project a toughness, endurance, and stoicism. Some working cowboys still become rodeo performers, but many rodeo stars never worked cattle on a ranch. Both working cowboys and rodeo riders, however, the two share a common culture and exhibit similar values. Rodeo people would agree with Gene Lamb (Rodeo: Back of the Chutes:) "Rodeo is the last Frontier for the individual."
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