Saturday 17 November 2012

“This isn’t my first rodeo. No wait, it is.”

In July, I went to Cheyenne’s Frontier Days (CFD), a celebration of the Western lifestyle, the main attraction of which is its large, award-winning rodeo. Since rodeo is Wyoming’s official state sport, I had to get to Cheyenne to see it for myself.

Attendance at CFD (sometimes referred to as “the Daddy of ‘em All,” or, as the announcer called it on the day we were there, “The Mardi Gras of the Plains" - not so sure about that one) exceeded 200,000 visitors this year. Although the rodeo is a big draw, many people also come for the concerts, fairground rides, “Indian Village” (more on that later), free pancake breakfasts, vendors and parades. There are abundant opportunities to spend your money and – much more interestingly – to see the ways in which people perform various Western identities. I’ve never seen so many cowboy hats in my entire life.

So, to the rodeo. There were many different events on the schedule, including: 
  • Bull riding: probably the most well-known of the events. The competitor sits on a bull, secures himself by holding onto a rope with one hand and must keep his other free. He needs to stay there for eight seconds and then is scored on control and balance. Part of the reason the bull moves around so much is that he has a “bucking strap,” causing a fair amount of discomfort. The strap is released when the ride is over.
  • Steer wrestling (video below): a two-competitor event where a young bull is released into the arena and while one competitor rides alongside it to keep it in a straight line, the other competitor jumps off his horse and works to stop the bull and turn him over onto his shoulders. This one’s frantic and can be quite dangerous.
  • Barrel racing: a timed event where competitors must travel around three barrels in the fastest time possible. The only event at CFD in which women competed.
  • Steer roping: the roper and his horse are released into the arena slightly after the steer, and the roper must throw his rope around the steer’s horns, turn to trip it up and then tie together three of its legs, which must remain tied for six seconds.
  • Bronc riding: like bull riding, except, you know, with horses. There's a guy in my geography class who used to bronc ride competitively.
  • Wild horse racing: teams of three are each given an unbroken horse. They must saddle it and attempt to make one lap of the track. The team with the horse/rider to return first wins. Most of this event consisted of watching teams struggle to saddle up their horses, horses running in every direction and even of those who completed their lap, few did so with their riders still attached. 
 

Many rodeo events developed out of tasks performed by cowboys, but my impression is that today, many of the competitors (plenty of whom spend the season on the rodeo circuit) have never worked on ranches. To my surprise, competitors came from across the country – there were more than a few from the South, the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest. While competition is drawn from a wide geographical area, it is not necessarily otherwise particularly diverse. I only noted one Asian American and one African American competitor and was actually quite surprised not to see more Hispanic competitors. With the exception of barrel racing, the CFD rodeo (and most other rodeos at the same level, by my understanding) was male-dominated.

For obvious reasons, rodeo can be a dangerous sport. If I heard the announcer correctly, one competitor had broken his back shortly before we arrived. One of the ways in which competitors are protected from the bulls is through the use of “rodeo clowns.” If the rider gets bucked off, the rodeo clown’s job is to distract the bull while the rider gets away. It’s a dangerous job and the clowns must be quick and agile. They dress in bright clothing, which is apparently designed to come away easily, should they be attacked.

After watching the rodeo, we spent some time exploring the vendors’ stalls. The range of items available for purchase was certainly varied. In addition to the stuff you'd expect - the carved wooden furniture, spangly horse tackle, candy, cowboy hats and so on, we also saw a Brazilian cooling system, Crocs and fitness machines. Really, though - who buys a cooling system at a rodeo? Probably people who get the rest of their stuff from SkyMall. We also saw this massive dog (not for sale). Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t show quite how massive it was, or how truly heinous the owner’s wig was.
 

If you played one of the fairground games, there was a chance to win this star-spangled rifle.


One of CFD’s longest-running attractions(?) is the Indian Village (“sponsored by Taco Bell”). Native Americans have been invited to perform at Frontier Days since the end of the nineteenth century (one assumes Taco Bell sponsorship came more recently), because, as the CFD website explains, “American Indians have always been an important part of western history.” I don’t know much about what those earlier displays of Native American cultures looked like, but I was interested to see what the 2012 Indian Village looked like. The village features teepees and a range of booths selling trinkets. We arrived just in time to see the afternoon dancing performance. During the show, I was trying to figure out what was at work here and how the audience responded to it. The woman introducing each of the performers made a point of emphasizing their lives outside of their performing – their jobs, where they were attending university and so on. I spoke to one of the drum players afterwards, and asked what the motivation was behind the formation of the group and he said it was primarily to break down stereotypes, but that he often enjoys messing with people who ask him stupid questions. He said he's sometimes asked what his teepee is like, to which he normally responds by talking about its flatscreen TV and solar panels. I don’t really know what the take-away is for many of the visitors to the Indian Village, but it was interesting to see it nonetheless.

In visiting Cheyenne, I was surprised at how big it felt. I don’t mean the crowds at Frontier Park, of course there are thousands of people there. It felt very large as a city. The population is 60,000, a third of the size of anywhere I lived before coming to Wyoming. This state is doing something to me.



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