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The band they played the anthem then
The clowns fell down in jest
All the people saw again
The winning of the West….
— Ian Tyson, “Old Cheyenne”

Sisters Rodeo Queen Riann Cornett bore the colors in the grand entry last weekend. Photo by Jerry Baldock
The 79th Sisters Rodeo is history, with the roar of the crowd, the pageantry of the Parade and Grand Entry, the drama of record-breaking rides fading into the warm collective memory of Sisters’ longest-running event. Marilyn and I enjoyed it in the company of Craig and Wendy Rullman — and it was a good un. I’ve never seen the bucking stock so tough. The stands were packed and as enthusiastic as a Saturday night Rodeo crowd oughta be.
Rodeo is a modern sport and entertainment enterprise, but one with roots that wind right down into the foundations of the American psyche. As Ian Tyson suggests, it is, in a sense, a passion play that represents the “winning of the West” — and reflects the virtues and character traits required for that winning. Rodeo is a test of skill and the will to dominate (if only for a handful of seconds). The rodeo way of life demands commitment and phenomenal physical, mental and spiritual toughness — which is usually found alongside tremendous exuberance and an ever-hopeful outlook on the future, where the next go-round will, by golly, put us in the money.

Saddle bronc riding is the classic rodeo event, reflecting the frontier roots of rodeo. Photo by Jerry Baldock
It’s hard to find a more quintessentially American ideal than that.
*
I was served a double-barreled blast of Western history, myth and legend last week. Before going to the Sisters Rodeo, I was in Buffalo, Wyoming, for a newspaper conference. Buffalo, located in north-central Wyoming, is in the heart of country contested between the Lakota (Sioux) and the Absaroka (Crow), then the Lakota and the U.S. military, then between small-holding settlers and cattle barons.
I spent Thursday afternoon on a lonely, windswept ridge 15 miles northwest of Buffalo, where, on December 21, 1866, a massive force of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors lured 81 men away from the protection of Fort Phil Kearney and rubbed them out to a man.
Walking ground where a young Crazy Horse led his party of decoy warriors in a deadly, taunting dance created frisson that felt like a lightning bolt shot down the spine. Other than interpretive signs and a stone cenotaph built where many of the soldiers fell, the site is undeveloped and looks just as it did 153 years ago. It is easy to see the way the short, vicious ambush and running fight developed. The past is very much present there.

The ridge where 81 men under the command of Captain William Judd Fetterman died at the hands of an overwhelming force of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho on December 21, 1866.
The only downside was that Craig wasn’t there to share the experience. He had to put up with a stream of video clips from Massacre Hill. Craig will get his chance, though. We’re already planning a return to the region for this fall, where we can hit not only the Fetterman site, but the Little Big Horn, various Johnson County Cattle War sites and the Hole-in-the-Wall country where the Wild Bunch hid out from the law,
I stayed at the Historic Occidental Hotel, built in 1879 and opened in 1880. Everyone from Calamity Jane to Butch Cassidy, from cattle-detective-turned-killer Tom Horn to Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway stayed there at one time or another. I sat at the bar in the Occidental Saloon listening to Waylon Jennings, where over a century ago the Harvard-educated Easterner Owen Wister soaked up cowboy culture. Wister created many of what we think of as the classic tropes and archetypes of the Western in his 1902 novel The Virginian.
*
The mythic West has lived alongside the historical West right from the git-go, and both myth and history are constantly being revised as we define and re-define who we are and want to be as a people and as a culture.
Some of that revision is healthy and beneficial, deepening and broadening our understanding of the frontier experience and our own identity. Some revision is corrosive.
Since the mid-20th Century, there has been a trend toward a crude and crass revisionism that seeks to leach out every bit of heroism and romance from the story of the West and to downgrade the qualities if stoicism, self-reliance and grit and gumption that are exemplified in the character of the American Cowboy.
There is another kind of revisionism that recognizes the real virtues and values contained in the bedrock mythology, but expands the story of the West to make it deeper and richer than simple Cowboys & Indians or Lawmen & Outlaws melodrama. The story of the West is the story of men and women, of people of great wealth and of hardscrabble poverty, of an ongoing and often violent struggle between capital and labor, and a conflicted and complicated relationship with landscape and environment.
A wild diversity of creed and ethnicity was present in the frontier West from the earliest days: indigenous peoples, Anglo-Saxons, Basques, Chinese, Irish, Scots and Scots-Irish, Japanese, Hispanics, African Americans, Pacific Islanders, Jews, Gentiles, Mormons, Catholics, Protestants and atheists…
The story of the West is a multi-faceted human drama played out across a vast, forbidding, yet beautiful landscape, far more compelling than any game of thrones could ever be. And when we embrace it in all its contradictions, in all its heroism and heartbreak, we can all rise in the bleachers at Sisters Rodeo as the Stars and Stripes stream by, doff our hats in respect and honor for all who have gone before, and be proud to be a part of the pageant — proud to be an American.
Matthew says
There are two narratives about the winning of the west: The triumphalist version of white men bringing civilization to an untamed land and the version of noble savages living in harmony with nature whose land is stolen by evil white men. Both are very simplistic. Humans both as individuals and societies are more complex than that.
Yes, and in the complexity lies the interest.
Traven Torsvan says
Have you checked this book out? I finished it recently and its quite an eye opener.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250179821
Seems right this blogs alley.
Well, that’s funny. I picked it up at the library on Friday.
Saddle Tramp says
No doubt most are familiar with Joseph Campbell’s masterly work THE POWER OF MYTH. Yes, as I intentionally included in my comment “the realities” as a equal partner as it is not mutually exclusive other wise we would all be living in a totally fictional world. Maybe some are. Myth is called myth for a reason but most definitely it is powerful for a reason.
We have now crossed that frontier border line which was mostly a arbitrary feature on a map to what now is becoming a blockade. Nothing new about blockades but this takes on a sense of spiritual blockade. An ugly scar that divides North America even more. We can argue the necessity of it or not all day long no doubt. The same can be said for all the other endless divisive issues.
You can quote me on this:
“Myth should inform us, but never blind us.”
— saddle tramp
June 16, 2019
Joseph Campbell has much more to say on myth that than me, but that is my take in a nutshell.
P.S.
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!!
Saddle Tramp says
A few lines that always speak RODEO to me…
“Make me an angel that flies from
Montgom’ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold onto
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go”
“They took my saddle in Houston
Broke my leg in Santa Fe
Lost my wife and a girlfriend
Somewhere along the way…”
“Stayin’ up all night
In the Driskill Hotel
Ramblin’ Jack and Mahan
Was cowboy’d all to hell
The room smelled like bulls
The words sound like songs
Now there’s a pair to draw to boys
I would not steer you wrong”
Yeah, I cut up through Medicine Bow, Wyoming going out of route just to see Owen Wister’s cabin where he wrote THE VIRGINIAN. Small n’ cozy. I always took the back roads whenever I could. The old west always resonates and is as uniquely American as it gets for me. Carve it up however you will, but both the myth and realities all remain strong. Something to hold onto …
You certainly have gotten the chance to see a lot of it.
Saddle Tramp says
You might also note that Owen Wister was a lifelong friend as well as a Harvard classmate of Theodore Roosevelt. Glad you got out to Wyoming with some leisure time on your hands this time. You can still feel the history under your feet.
Saddle Tramp says
Interesting PBS documentary on the Bozeman Trail:
https://youtu.be/_7YhMJutbQc
Ugly Hombre says
https://springcreekarmory.com/
If your in ** Wyoming, and need your thumb buster fixed- here’s the place to go.
Bill the owner- is also the “Inventor of the Single Action Cylinder Pin Ejector- Hard to believe it took 145 years for the idea of using the guns own hammer to do the work to dislodge a pesky jammed cylinder pin. ”
“* Works on all makes of Single Action revolvers. ” (Colts SAA and Colt patter clones)
A most handy device to have in yer shooting bag.!
** You can ship to him for repairs as well- just give him a call.