Pegging "Rodeo" and Honoring Route 66

September 13, 2011

I have this pet theory that the cowboys in the 1880s (up thru about 1922) wanted to distance themselves from vaquero tradition (or put more bluntly, to stay away from anything Mexican) and that these cowboys went out of their way to NOT call their competitions rodeos. I'm thinking they tried every other name they could think of, most notably "Cowboy Competition" and "Cowboy Steer Tying Contest". It isn't until the 1920s when a promoter in LA finally gives in and calls it the Spanish term "rodeo" that the term catches on and moves forward to today when everyone assumes it was always called rodeo.

Case in point: I received this page from Leslie's Weekly (1903) from Paul Andrew Hutton who bought it on ebay recently and gifted it to me (Thanks Paul!). It is a perfect example of my theory. It pictures "The dashing western cowboy's favorite pastime" which is an "exciting steer-tying contest in Arizona, in which many expert cattle-ropers took part." Nowhere is the term rodeo used.

It's also interesting to note that they had a competition called "Flag-Picking" (bottom right) which is a rip-off of the Mexican chicken pull. They buried roosters in the roadway up to their necks and riders had to grab the head at a run and twist it off.

My challenge to my fellow historians and rodeo fans is to come up with the earliest usage of the term "rodeo" on a poster or program of a United States event. As I mentioned, the earliest I have seen is from about 1922.

Now there were early mentions of the term "rodeo": Frederic Remington entitled one of his famous paintings "Going to the Rodeo" done in the late 1880s on a trip to a ranch in Chihuahua, Mexico. But that is not in the U.S. and as far as I can find it did not catch on with the anglos competing in the sport or putting on the shows. I may be wrong, but I dare anyone to find an example earlier than 1920.

One of my earliest memories is of traveling on Route 66 with my dad driving and seeing oncoming cars shimmering in heatwaves on the two-lane blacktop at the top of a distant ridge. I am painting a series of Arizona Centennial paintings (1912-2012) and I want to capture that classic effect.

It is more than a little ironic that the classic roadway—Route 66—we came out from Iowa on, is just as fading as is the Indian trails it followed. Thus the title "Old Trails."

We had an Old Trails Garage in Kingman when I was growing up and it referred to the old Indian trails and mining roads that were superceded by the muy modern, state of the art Route 66. Fifty years later, that classic road is as much a memory as the mining roads the preceded it.

And so it goes.

I've had the concept for a couple weeks, but I read a quote this morning that forced me to act. Here it is (and it's what led to the crude study above):

"The important thing is that when you come to understand something you act on it, no matter how small that act is. Eventually it will take you where you need to go."
—Helen Prejean