Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America, Australia and New Zealand. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States, western Canada, and northern Mexico. Today it is a sporting event that consists of events that involve horses and other livestock, designed to test the skill and speed of the human cowboy and cowgirl athletes who participate. American style professional rodeos generally comprise the following events: tie-down roping, team roping, steer wrestling, saddle bronc riding, bareback bronc riding, bull riding and barrel racing. The events are divided into two basic categories: the rough stock events and the timed events. Depending on sanctioning organization and region, other events such as breakaway roping, goat tying, or pole bending may also be a part of some rodeos.
American rodeo, particularly popular today within the Canadian province of Alberta and throughout the western United States, is the official state sport of Wyoming, South Dakota, and Texas. The iconic silhouette image of a "Bucking Horse and Rider" is a federal and state-registered trademark of the State of Wyoming.[1] The Legislative Assembly of Alberta has considered making American rodeo the official sport of that province. However, enabling legislation has yet to be passed.
In the United States, professional rodeos are governed and sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) and Women's Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA), while other associations govern children's, high school, collegiate, and senior rodeos. Associations also exist for Native Americans and other minority groups. The traditional season for competitive rodeo runs from spring through fall, while the modern professional rodeo circuit runs longer, and concludes with the PRCA National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in Las Vegas, Nevada, now held in December.
Rodeo has provoked opposition from animal rights and animal welfare advocates, who argue that various competitions constitute animal cruelty. The American rodeo industry has made progress in improving the welfare of rodeo animals, with specific requirements for veterinary care and other regulations that protect rodeo animals. However, rodeo is opposed by a number of animal welfare organizations in the United States and Canada. Some local and state governments in North America have banned or restricted rodeos, certain rodeo events, or types of equipment. Internationally, rodeo is banned in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, with other European nations placing restrictions on certain practices.
Etymology
The American English word "rodeo" is taken directly from Spanish rodeo ([ro?ðe.o]), which roughly translates into English as "round up."
The Spanish word is derived from the verb rodear, meaning "to surround" or "go around," used to refer to "a pen for cattle at a fair or market," derived from the Latin rota or rotare, meaning to rotate or go around.
In Spanish America, the rodeo was the process that was used by vaqueros to gather cattle for various purposes, such as moving them to new pastures, separating the cattle owned by different ranchers, or gathering in preparation for slaughter (matanza). The term was also used to refer to exhibitions of skills used in the working rodeo. It was this latter usage which was adopted into the cowboy tradition of the United States and Canada.
The term rodeo was first used in English in approximately 1834 to refer to a cattle round-up. Today the word is used primarily to refer to a public exhibition of cowboy skills, usually in the form of a competitive event.
History of rodeo
Many rodeo events were based on the tasks required by cattle ranching. The working cowboy developed skills to fit the needs of the terrain and climate of the American west, and there were many regional variations. The skills required to manage cattle and horses date back to the Spanish traditions of the vaquero.
Early rodeo-like affairs of the 1820s and 1830s were informal events in the western United States and northern Mexico with cowboys and vaqueros testing their work skills against one another. Following the American Civil War, rodeo competitions emerged, with the first held in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1872. Prescott, Arizona claimed the distinction of holding the first professional rodeo, as it charged admission and awarded trophies in 1888. Between 1890 and 1910, rodeos became public entertainment, sometimes combined Wild West Shows featuring individuals such as Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley, and other charismatic stars. By 1910, several major rodeos were established in western North America, including the Calgary Stampede, the Pendleton Round-Up, and the Cheyenne Frontier Days.
Rodeo-type events also became popular for a time in the big cities of the Eastern United States, with large venues such as Madison Square Garden playing a part in popularizing them for new crowds. There was no standardization of events for a rodeo competition until 1929, when associations began forming.
In the 1970s, rodeo saw unprecedented growth. Contestants referred to as "the new breed" brought rodeo increasing media attention. These contestants were young, often from an urban background, and chose rodeo for its athletic rewards. By 1985, one third of PRCA members had a college education and one half of the competitors had never worked on a cattle ranch. Today, some professional rodeos are staged in large, air-conditioned arenas; offer large purses, and are often telecast. Many other professional rodeos are held outside, under the same conditions of heat, cold, dust or mud as were the original events.
Women
Historically, women have long participated in rodeo. "Prairie Rose" Henderson debuted at the Cheyenne rodeo in 1901, and, by 1920, women were competing in rough stock events, relay races and trick riding. But after Bonnie McCarrol died in the Pendleton Round-Up in 1929 and Marie Gibson died in a horse wreck in 1933, women's competitive participation was curbed. Rodeo women organized into various associations and staged their own rodeos. Today, women's barrel racing is included as a competitive event in professional rodeo, with breakaway roping and goat tying added at collegiate and lower levels. They compete equally with men in team roping, sometimes in mixed-sex teams. Women also compete in traditional roping and rough stock events at women-only rodeos.
-----------------
A cowboy (Spanish vaquero) tends cattle and horses on cattle ranches in North and South America. The cowboy is normally a ranch hand in charge of the horses and/or cattle, as is the wrangler. In addition to ranch work, some cowboys work in and participate in rodeos, and many cowboys work only in the rodeo.
Antecedents
Originally, the word designated a herdsboy who was employed as a cowherd, often on foot (riding requiring skills and investment in horse and equipment rarely available to or entrusted to a boy). Herdswork was often done - more often with sheep or goats - by minors in Antiquity, and still is in various third world cultures; the teenagers of a South African tribe even maintain a specific traditional form of Nguni stick fighting, to defend themselves and their herds.
But in the western culture, herding cattle was rarely left to boys, except as trainees at least approaching manhood, especially as schooling became generalized, and the term became disassociated from the boyish age, at first retaining the notion of low status often implied by 'boy' in professional designations, later being extended to the whole ranch culture.
North America
During the 16th century, they brought the tradition and their horses, the ancestors of the "wild" mustangs, with them to the New World through New Spain (later Mexico). The mustangs are called wild but in reality these are feral animals as they are descended from domestic horses.
Though popularly considered as an American icon, cowboys are a New Hispanic tradition, which originated in the Central States of Mexico, Jalisco and Michoacán, where the Mexican cowboy would eventually be known as a "charro". Historically, the northern parts of Mexico (New Mexico) originally included most of the territory of the American southwest including Texas. In the early 1600s, the Spanish crown, and later independent Mexico, began offering empresario grants in what would later be Texas to US citizens who agreed to become Mexican citizens and convert to Catholicism. In 1821 Stephen F. Austin and his East Coast comrades became the first yankee community speaking Spanish. Following Texas independence in 1836 even more Americans immigrated into Texas and to the empresario ranching areas. Here they were impressed by the Mexican vaquero culture, borrowing vocabulary and attire from their counterparts.
The buckaroo, also a cowboy of the vaquero tradition, developed in California and bordering territories during the Spanish Colonial period. The word Buckaroo, still a common term in the Great Basin and many areas of California and intermittently in the Pacific Northwest, appeared in 1889 in American English, derived (influenced by 'buck', as folk etymology) from bakhara, itself an anglicized alternate since 1827 of 'vaquero', Spanish for cowherd which only entered English one year earlier and itself originates in the Latin vaca 'cow'.
Following the American Civil War, their culture diffused eastward and northward combining with the earlier cowboy tradition that was following the cattle trails out of Texas northward and westward. Sharing the same base, their traditions became indistinguishable with a few regional differences still remaining.
Over time, the cowboys of the American West developed a culture of their own, a blend of frontier and Victorian values. Such hazardous work in isolated conditions bred a tradition of self-dependence and individualism, exemplified in their songs and poetry.
By the 1890s, the open ranges of the Indian Territory were gone and the large cattle drives from Texas to the railheads in Kansas were over. Smaller cattle drives continued at least into the 1940s, with Arizona cattle driven to the railhead at Magdalena, New Mexico. Meanwhile, ranches multiplied all over the developing West, keeping cowboy employment high, if somewhat more settled.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Western movies popularized the cowboy lifestyle but also formed persistent stereotypes. In pop culture, the cowboy and the gunslinger are often associated with one another.
Much has been written about the racial mix of the cowboys in the West, but cowboys ranked low in the social structure of the period and there are no firm figures. The Cattle on a Thousand Hills by John Ambulo in the March 1887 issue of The Overland Monthly states that cowboys are "... of two classes—those recruited from Texas and other States on the eastern slope; and Mexicans, from the south-western region. ...". Census records bear that out. The cowboy occupation undoubtedly appealed to the freedmen following the Civil War. It is estimated that about 15% of all cowboys were of African ancestry—ranging from about 25% on the trail drives out of Texas, to very few on the northern ranges. Similarly, cowboys of Mexican descent also averaged about 15%, but were more common in Texas and the southwest. American Indians also found employment as cowboys early in the history of the West. Many of the early vaqueros were Indians trained to work for the Spanish missions in caring for the mission herds. Following the dissolution of the reservation system around 1900, many of the Indian trade schools also taught ranching skills to Indian youth.