Rodeos

RODEOS

RODEOS were initially an aspect of open-range ranching in the late nineteenth century, contests of skill between cowhands. Although the rodeo eventually became a professional sport, it began as an amusement of working cowboys. Rodeos and roundups alike brought together people who led socially isolated lives and were festivals in which horsepeople proud of their occupation and expertise displayed fancy riding and expert roping. Cowboys played card games on blankets spread out in the firelight, exchanged songs, and occasionally engaged in "augering" matches, contests in story telling.

"Rodeo" comes from the Spanish rodear, to round up. Spanish settlers began the first ranching in America on the open range, and open-range conditions existed throughout the long period of expansion in the western United States. Barbed wire, which effectively parceled the land, was not introduced until the late 1860s, but laws evolved to regulate gathering stock while Texas and California were still Mexican territories. Roundups were opportunities for ranchers to exchange livestock that had drifted into other herds. Cattle were selected for slaughter; colts, calves,

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and unbranded animals were branded; young horses were broken; mares were "shaped up"; and animals belonging on distant ranges were separated out. Cowboys saw the gatherings as a way to mitigate the monotony and loneliness of long cattle drives, and riders from far and near participated.

During the 1870s and 1880s, with the Great Plains still largely unfenced, annual cattle drives brought owners and their herds together on drives to slaughterhouses near urban railheads. Roundups regulated by cattle associations of the Plains states that dwarfed the original rodeos systematized times, limits, and procedures. Although lesser numbers were common, often as many as two hundred to three hundred riders representing scores of brands gathered, and the general roundup boss directed units to each day's work, combing the range for strays, branding, and preparing cattle for shipping.

By the 1880s, various western towns hosted formalized cowboy competitions. These events were distinguished from the contests held by cowboys themselves by the presence of paying spectators. Around the same time, wild west shows, elaborate exhibitions that sensationalized life on the western frontier, also became popular. The most famous was Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. In 1897, Cheyenne, Wyoming, began its annual exhibition, which became famous all over the continent as Frontier Days. The Calgary Stampede (in Canada) and the Pendleton Roundup (Oregon), both of which started later, became equally famous.

Women competed in the same events as men in early rodeos. Women remained prominent until the 1930s, when female rodeo fatalities and gender values enforced by some rodeo promoters reduced the roles of women in rodeos. Eventually, women's events were dropped, and women's roles in modern rodeos became largely marginal. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, rodeos drew millions of spectators annually. Professionals followed the big rodeos, but all over the range country communities held rodeos in which local talent participated each summer and fall.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fredriksson, Kristine. American Rodeo: From Buffalo Bill to Big Business. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985.

Wooden, Wayne S., and Gavin Ehringer. Rodeo in America: Wrangler, Roughstock, and Paydirt. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996.

J. Frank Dobie

Deirdre Sheets

See also Cattle Drives ; Cowboys ; Wild West Show .