Home : Wild West Shows :

Western Roots

Remember the scene from Rio Grande with Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr?

The word "rodeo” comes from the Spanish word rodear (to surround). It conjures up images of cowboys, cattle, horses, dirt, blood, guts, and stands packed with cheering spectators. Rodeo has come a long way from its western roots in the 1860s and 1870s roundup camps when the annual roundup and branding of cattle encouraged informal contests among the working cowboys. The rodeo was born on the range where cowboys pitted their herding skills against each other and ranches competed for bragging rights. The wild west shows picked up these competitions and included them as entertainment. Later, when the Wild West Shows became less popular, the rodeo still lived on. Rodeo is the only sport which began entirely in the United States.

It was after the Civil War, when cattle herds spread out throughout the West, that the ranks of the American cowboy grew. They worked for cattle barons driving cattle to the bustling stockyards of fast-growing towns. There in celebration of their job completed, informal competition was common. Cowboys might issue challenges to each other to see who really was the best at cutting cattle or throwing a rope. Spectators would inevitably gather.

Wild Cow Milking Contest: Get a drinkable amount of milk, in a quart bottle, from one of the cows in the fastest possible time.

All too soon, toward the end of the century this open range era would come to an end with the expansion of the railroads and the introduction of barbed wire. There was no longer a need for long cattle drives, and range lands were being divided amongst the increasing population of homesteaders and settlers. Along with the decline of the open West, demand for the cowboy’s labor began to dwindle. Many cowboys (and Native Americans as well), began to take jobs with a new American phenomenon, the Wild West Show.

Entrepreneurs like the legendary Buffalo Bill Cody began to organize these Wild West Shows. The shows were partly theater, and partly competition, with the objective of making money, glamorizing and preserving the disappearing American frontier. Other shows like the 101 Ranch Wild West Show and Pawnee Bill’s Wild West show also competed to present their version of the ‘Wild West’ to captive audiences. Much of the pageantry and showmanship of modern rodeo comes directly from these Wild West shows. Today rodeo competitors still call rodeos ‘shows’ and they participate in ‘performances’.

Back when it was just called The Bucking Contest.

At the same time, other cowboys were supplementing their income at their usual informal competitions, which were now being held in front of paying spectators. Small towns across the frontier would hold annual stock horse shows, known as 'rodeos', or ‘gatherings’. Cowboys would often travel to these gatherings and put on what would be known then as ‘Cowboy Competitions’.

Of these two types of shows only the cowboy competitions would survive. Eventually Wild West Shows began to die out due to high costs of mounting them and many producers begin strictly producing the less expensive cowboy competitions at local rodeos, or stock horse shows. The joining of competition with the gatherings would be the spark for what we now see as RODEO, originally two different aspects of western life joined to become a unique sport.

Spectators would now pay to see the competitions and cowboys would pay to compete, with their money going into the prize pool. Many towns began to organize and promote their local rodeo, just as they do today. In frontier towns all over the west (like Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Prescott, Arizona) the rodeo became the most anticipated event of the year.

In the year 1872 in Cheyenne, Wyoming the first rodeo was held in an arena. A typical rodeo includes a variety of events to test a cowboy's skill. From calf roping and steer wrestling to saddle-bronc and bull riding, the degree of danger varies but the competition is always exciting. Thousands of rodeos take place throughout the year in the U.S., ranging from junior rodeos to high school, intercollegiate and professional events. What started as fun and games at spring roundups is now a multi-million-dollar sport. The rodeo is a colorful epic of the cattle industry in the days of the Chisholm Trail, evoking the sturdy moral values of frontier life or, as the Pendleton (Oregon) Round-Up recently rephrased the idea, “Four Big Days of Fun in the Ol’ West.”

Rodeos come in all shapes and sizes. There are other big extravaganzas in addition to those domiciled at Cheyenne and Pendleton, many held in indoor sports arenas at Houston, Denver, San Antonio, Omaha, in San Francisco’s Cow Palace, and in Madison Square Garden in New York City. At least two unusual rodeos are exhibited in prisons. Middle-sized rodeos include La Fiesta de los Vaqueros at “sun-drenched” Tucson. There are also small, folksy rodeos, affectionately called “pun’kin rollers,” where the fan can get “dirt in the face and dung on the feet from close proximity to the arena action.” They are held all over: Grover, Colorado; Vernal, Utah; Hill City, Kansas.

Rodeo cowgirl Helen Bonham was selected as Miss Wyoming at the Cheyenne Frontier Days silver anniversary in 1917.

Girls Head For The Arena

Cowgirls played a major role in the winning of the Old West. Cowgirls roped cattle, busted broncs, appeared in Wild West shows and were featured performers in early rodeos. They became icons of the American West through a variety of advertising illustrations and were featured stars in the early Western silent movies.

Will Rogers dubbed Lucille Mulhall of Oklahoma, America's first cowgirl. A plucky young horsewoman, Mulhall debuted at a St. Louis County Fair in 1899. She was the first of many female stars to sail through the arena into the limelight, charming audiences across the world with skill and finesse.

Most of these young women grew up on Family ranches at the turn of the century, then, drawn to adventure, followed the rodeo road. In the arena, they challenged men in roping and bucking contests. By 1920, during a Golden Age for the cowgirl, audiences thrilled to see women clad in colorful costumes and widebrimmed hats roping steer, riding bucking broncs, competing in relay races and roman riding, and performing death-defying tricks on horseback.

Cowgirls, like cowboys, learned to ride and rope growing up on a ranch. Like Mulhall, many young girls were expected to pull their own weight alongside their fathers and brothers. Mulhall's father said she could have as many cattle as she could rope and brand. When she proved herself proficient at this task, he asked her to stop or else he wouldn't have any of his own cattle left.

Alice and Margie Greenough, also Montana ranch girls, learned to ride and work alongside brothers. "Rodeo was born in us. We learned to ride horses before we could walk. Dad would give us a bucking horse and expect us to make a good horse out of him. If we bucked off, we better find him and bring him back home," Margie said.

There were a few exceptions to this ranchgirl rule. Famous rider Tillie Baldwin was a former hairdresser from Norway who moved west to try cowgirling. Vera McGinnis grew up in Missouri, then her family moved to a ranch in New Mexico. Her father worked as the county doctor, and her mom ran the cattle business. Since they didn't have a babysitter, they tied young Vera onto the back of a donkey where she spent many hours. When she learned to ride without ties, she grew to enjoy riding.

Because of the difficulty of ranch work and rodeo riding, cowgirls were the first to discard the sidesaddle and ride astride, or what some called clothespin style. At first, this style wasn't considered proper for a lady. One pioneer Montana lady said about another lady riding astride, "a very bright woman but very advanced in our day [the mid-1880s]. She scandalized our [cow] boys who were rather old fashioned, by borrowing their horses and riding astride; when the rest of us, if we did have to ride a man's saddle, would simply crook a knee over the saddle horn."

Equipped with their saddles and typical cowboy gear such as boots, hats, bridles, chaps, and spurs, cowgirls, like cowboys, headed for the arena in search of adventure and a paycheck. One year after Mulhall made her stunning debut at the St. Louis County Fair in 1899 riding astride in her father's Wild West show, she was seen by a special observer. Theodore Roosevelt watched Col. Zach Mulhall's show in Oklahoma on the Fourth of July and was so impressed with Lucille's performance, he urged the colonel to take his daughter on the road and show America her talents. Col. Mulhall took heed of Roosevelt's advice, and Lucille was on her way to becoming The Champion Lady Steer Roper of the World.

Other young western women followed her lead. To earn more money, women traveled with circuses, rodeos, and Wild West shows. In the latter two, audiences took it for granted that they would ride alongside the cowboy. Her daring exploits won America's heart. Bertha Blancett was one of the first cowgirls to ride slick. This meant that she didn't tie or hobble her stirrups when she rode a bucking bronc (stirrups were tied together under the horse in order to limit movement). Hobbles were banned, however, because they were considered extremely dangerous.

Bonnie Gray, another twenties cowgirl, accepted a $100 dare to ride a horse off a diving board into a pool 35-feet below. She also attracted attention by being one of the first to master rotating around and under the belly of a galloping horse and back into the saddle. Fans loved watching her jump her horse, King Tut, over automobiles.

Tillie Baldwin, the former Swedish hairdresser, was the first cowgirl to compete at the Pendleton Round-up in 1911. During this prestigious show, she impressed audiences with her bulldogging skill. Mabel Strickland, nicknamed the Lovely Lady of the Rodeo, and Crown Princess of the Rodeo, was also a famous bulldogger. Her well-known victory pose-standing on one leg with her arms in the airshowed off her finesse. Other cowgirls felt this euphoria. After committing to the life of a relay racer, Vera McGinnis, the girl who was believed to have "rode the fastest and dared the most," said, "This is the life I've been looking for, the continual challenge! I love it."

While the old-time cowgirl was respected for her talent and courage, she was also admired for her dress. As they used to say, she was "all westerned up in her colorful rags." Since there was nothing suitable through mail order, most women made their own costumes.

In 1915 Bonnie McCarroll took a nasty spill at the Pendleton Round-Up.

Initially, cowgirls wore split skirts. Most of these were made of leather and often heavily fringed. Embroidered shirts or fringed jackets and vests completed the ensemble. One gal wore a fancy unborn calf split skirt. A few girls purchased bicycle suits with skirts. Following the lead of Vera McGinnis, however, cowgirls started sewing elastic into the skirt hems, creating bloomers, which were safer and more practical. Trick riders often wore sneakers or rubber-soled tennis shoes instead of boots. Almost all the cowgirls wore silk scarves around their necks, silk and fringed sashes, wide-brimmed hats, beaded gauntlets, and fancy, stitched boots. By this time all the major spur makers made the most popular spur designs in both men's and women's sizes. Prairie Rose Henderson was famous for her flamboyant beaded outfits as was Lulu Belle Parr, an 1890 bronc rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

The Golden Age of the rodeo cowgirl started to decline when Bonnie McCarroll took a fatal fall at the Pendleton Round-up in 1929. Hit with bad publicity, the Pendleton Round-up eliminated women's bronc riding. Other rodeos did the same. The Rodeo Association of America didn't step in to help women and ignored their pleas to be included. Instead, the association created more regulations, making it more difficult for women to find competitions. Throughout the 30s and 40s, rodeos offered women more contract acts (acts which women were paid for) than competitions.

Elizabeth Clair Flood & William Manns. Cowgirls Of The Old West. 2006 Calendar.

Cowgirls: Women of the Wild West The cowgirl appeared on the American frontier in the mid-1800s. She worked with stock alongside the cowboy and was a determined and spirited pioneer. Rancher Lorraine Plass, at age 87, epitomizes the cowgirl spirit: As long as the colt stays under me Ill do all right. I will get the job done.

---

top of page

back a page