rope the head of the largest cow and the
other cowboy leapt from his horse, beer
bottle in hand, scrambling desperately at
her udders to secure a few drops of milk.
She kicked. She bucked. She twisted,
trampled and jerked. Not only did she
throw the milker clear, she somehow
managed to unseat his counterpart from
his saddle and thoroughly rout him until
he scrambled for the fence. She pro-
ceeded to trot proudly around the
arena, ignoring the other teams as they
struggled with their own cows, glaring
fixedly from face to face in the stands as
if to ask, “Is this a dignified way to treat
a mother?” It took them 15 minutes to
catch her, and the crowd gave her the
loudest cheer of the evening.
The origins of rodeo are Spanish and
date back beyond the conquistadores to
bullfighting traditions in Spain. The
earliest rodeos were a combination of
cattle wrangling and prowess in bull rid-
ing, and were an important way not
only for early vaqueros to congregate
and show off their skills but also for
ranches to separate their cattle and hors-
es in the days before fencing. When the
range was vast, unpopulated and wide
open, cattle and horses from different
ranches would mingle and run wild
together, and the annual gathering of a
rodeo gave a rare opportunity for
rancheros to claim their stock and save
their investment before the fall roundup.
By the 19th century, rodeos had caught
on with the rapidly increasing Anglo
population in the west. A California law
was enacted in 1851 which actually
required rodeos: “Every owner of a
stock farm shall be obliged to give, year-
ly, one general Rodeo, within the limits
of his farm, from the first day of April
until the thirty-first day of July, in the
counties of San Luis Obispo, Santa
Barbara, and San Diego; and in the
remaining counties, from the first day of
March until the thirty-first day of
August...in order that parties interested
may meet, for the purpose of separating
their respective cattle." The rodeos pro-
vided much-needed camaraderie (and
not a little competitiveness) for the work-
ing hands, as well as entertainment to
the community.
The first time I witnessed a mutton
busting was in Alpine, at the Big Bend
Ranch Rodeo. I’d attended a fair few
rodeos by that time but had never even
heard of mutton busting and didn’t
know what to expect. I watched as a rag-
tag parade of toddlers, some barely big
enough to walk unaided, trouped into
the arena kicking dust with miniature
boots. The boys fiddled with their
miniature hats and the girls tugged at
the ribbons in their pigtails as a grown
man led a big wooly sheep to them.
What happened next was the funniest
thing I have ever seen—the man helped
the children one-by-one to mount the
sheep, a signal was given and away they
went! Most took a tumble immediately,
but one managed to stay on for a few
seconds. He was so shocked at his suc-
cess that he began listing to starboard,
his little arm outstretched like the hand
of a clock, until he was almost parallel to
the ground. When he came off the
sheep at last he leapt to his feet, rakishly
sweeping his hat off his head in salute to
the cheering crowd, and let loose a
piercing “YEEEEEE-HAAWWWW!”
Steer wrestling is a direct import from
the Spanish, which unlike roping, bronc
riding and racing failed to catch on with
Anglo rodeos until Bill Pickett popular-
ized it around the turn of the 20th cen-
tury. Pickett, a black Texas cowboy,
would bulldog a steer by biting its lip,
grabbing it by the horns and forcing it to
the ground. The feat became wildly
popular and Pickett became an interna-
tional sensation. Bulldogging competi-
tions became commonplace at Anglo
rodeos, and the first exhibition of female
bulldogging was accomplished in 1913
by Tillie Baldwin, though bulldogging
never became an official women’s event
in rodeo. In fact, before World War II
women were common competitors in all
rodeo events including bull and bronc
riding, often competing against men
(and often winning). When rodeo cow-
boys began to get together in the 1920s
to lobby for standardized rodeo rules,
women’s events all but disappeared.
Gene Autry himself discontinued
women’s bronc riding in the Madison
Square Garden rodeo, though it was the
Square’s most popular event. With the
consolidation of the cowboys’ organiza-
tions into the PRCA after World War II,
rodeos changed from the local, chaotic,
sometimes very dangerous community
affairs they had been to the standard,
heavily sponsored professional sports
they are today, and though female team
ropers are growing in number, for the
most part women are still relegated to
barrel racing.
Whenever I go to the rodeo I’m
struck by how small the horseback chil-
dren are. They ride as though the hors-
es are extensions of themselves, some-
times before they can truly walk, tiny
feet in truncated stirrups flopping wildly
as they canter around throwing practice
loops over roping dummies, and it
makes me a little sad to see because I
knew even at age 18 that I was too old to
learn that graceful fluidity of motion.
Now, I can sit a horse; I’ve even made a
living horseback from time to time, but
always it was with the knowledge that I
was missing the perfect equine rapport
with which a ranch child is born. That
first rodeo in Clovis was a sweet summer
evening; after the events there was a
dance, and someone had (mistakenly?)
booked a rock ‘n roll band. All the
teenagers in the county turned out and I
stood at the edge of the dance floor,
watching gangly youths two-stepping as
fast as they could to a George
Thorogood cover, all moving in a per-
fect clockwise circle around the dance
floor and leaving the requisite room for
the Holy Spirit in the circle of their
arms. I thought to myself, even as I was
chuckling under my breath, “That’s
probably how I look on a horse.”
To attempt to define a rodeo is to
attempt to define a culture comprised of
people so diverse they resemble a spec-
trum. What they have in common is not
race or gender, geographic location or
economic status. What they have in
common is what they do and how they
do it: the original American dream of
land, hard work and mastery of the ele-
ments; the ethic that spawned our most
prized American legends. Rodeo is no
mere competition or exposition of skill; it
is a direct line to the past and future of
traditions that have remained steadfast
in a nation of dizzying change. The
range may be fenced. The long trails are
paved. The conquistadores are dust. But
the rodeo lives on.
Cenizo
Third Quarter 2013
11