Beverly J. Stoeltje

Indiana University

 

INTRODUCTION

With its multiplicity of events, its license to invert or challenge the status quo and its set of features that foster participation (food, dance, music, costume, parades, ritual and drama), festival is perhaps the most resilient of folklore forms, certainly of those defined as enactments.  These features make it possible for a social group who share common experiences to create new festivals built on their shared aesthetics, familiar patterns of social relations, and unresolved conflicts and contradictions within the social system.  Another route to festival is that of a non-festival form such as drama or spectacle can evolve into a festival, incorporating elements from several sources.  And, finally, festivals change in response to changes in the social system of the participants.

Jane Ellen Harrison said that ritual and festival reflect a people’s preoccupations, and we see this in secular festivals as much as in ones involving religious beliefs.  The rodeo, a festival of the American West, revolves around the occupation of cattle ranching, and displays the preoccupations of cowboys and cowgirls. In this competitive performance they ride horses, demonstrating skills important to the work of the cowboy, but clown acts perform inversions, using various animals to demonstrate forms of play that challenge the social order.

This cowboy festival emerged not only from the work of the cattle ranch, but from the historical period in the United States when the Eastern half of the country claimed the Western half.  Over time the cowboy became the symbol of that period and that space, what we can call the historical space known today as “The West,” within the United States, and the rodeo has become the festival featuring that symbol and telling that story through symbolic action.

          The rodeo I have examined ethnographically in some depth is the featured event in a 4 day festival that occurs annually, with the major day being July 4, the holiday that celebrates American independence as a nation.  In addition to a rodeo performance every night three dances are held for all ages, public outdoor barbeques are offered in two locations, a parade opens the event, and a Memorial Service for Old Time cowboys takes place one afternoon.  Located in the heart of West Texas and surrounded by large ranches and small, it is known as the Texas Cowboy Reunion, of Stamford, Texas.  Not only in this location, but throughout the Western half of the U.S. cities, towns and groups host large rodeos on this day, including an All Indian rodeo held every July 4 in Gallup, New Mexico.

MODEL

In this paper I am proposing a model for studying rodeo as festival that encompasses:

1)     the development of the form over time, emphasizing key moments, called the Evolution of the Festival Form,

2)  the organizational structure that produces the entire event called                      the Organization of the Production,

3)     the discourse employed within and about it that interprets the event in any given year, called Festival Discourse. 

4)     the analysis of the individual acts and their sequence that constitutes the performance of the ritual drama and the story it tells through symbolic acts, called Performance and Narrative.   

In the case of the rodeo, the analysis relates the performance action to relations of power and the ideology that motivated the Claiming of the West and which resurfaces from time to time in U.S. politics. The evolution of the form of rodeo performance known to us today occurred in the historical space between the late 1800’s and the 1920’s. First I will speak briefly about this period and the emergence of the rodeo, and then I will describe and analyze the performance. 

                             Claiming the West: Historical Narrative

Part I.

Let me begin with the concept of “Frontier Ideology,” stating first of all that Kenneth Burke has described ideology as “an aggregate of beliefs sufficiently at odds with one another to justify opposite kinds of conduct.” (1973:220)    Building on Burke’s ideas Clifford Geertz states that “ideology names the structure of situations in such a way that the attitude contained toward them is one of commitment.”  (1973:231)  In the narrative I have labeled “Claiming the West,” Frontier Ideology provides the beliefs that justify the conduct.  Frontier Ideology incorporated the belief that has come to be known as “Manifest Destiny”, the justification for claiming the land to the West all the way to the Pacific, south to Mexico and north to Canada, a belief that claimed it was manifest destiny that the U.S. should extend its boundaries to the Pacific.  Concentrating on acquiring possession of the land, this nationalist ideology justified “conquering” the Native Americans and killing them or forcing them on to reservations, driving the Mexican people off their ranches in what is now Texas and California, and even having a war with another nation, specifically Mexico.  Frontier Ideology concentrated on possession of the land and the establishment of Euro-American culture.  However, the political and financial forces of power generating this ideology remained in the Northeast of the U.S., while the ideology motivated settlers to go West in covered wagons or on horseback and to live on land that was known as “the frontier,” where Euro-American civilization met the regions as yet unsettled by Anglos.

PART II 

In part two of the story, many young men and families went West and became cattle ranchers or cowboys in the 19^th century because the land was free.  The Spanish first brought cattle and horses to North America in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and in the 17^th and 18^th centuries they established the cattle ranch with the position of the cowboy or vaquero and all of the accompanying practices.  Most of these early American cowboys and settlers were living according to that  pre-industrial model of social and economic relations. There were no cities, few towns, few banks, and much of the West had not been organized into states yet.  But violence erupted when the first cowboys and settlers came into conflict with corporate forces who had bought up large amounts of land and invested in ranching, expecting high profits. In the late 19^th century corporate money attempted to impose the industrial model of labor on cowboys and to claim vast amounts of land.  Cowboys organized strikes and engaged in other forms of resistance.  Although the violence eventually subsided, and many of the corporate ranches failed for lack of understanding the social and the economic sides of ranching, the modern capitalist system was established, and the tensions between wealthy landowners and poorly paid wage earning cowboys remained.

EVOLUTION OF THE PERFORMANCE FORM

The Wild West Show was first created in 1882 by Buffalo Bill in an event in North Platte, Nebraska to celebrate July 4, Independence Day.  It soon began to travel the world, as did other similar shows.  They featured cowboys and Indians and stagecoaches and guns and peoples from all over the world who rode horses, including Cossacks, Arabs and others.  Another relevant traveling show was the circus.  Very often circuses would include an event which followed the circus performance called the concert, and often that event was a Wild West show, featuring cowboys riding horses.

From these performances the rodeo emerged as a separate form.  In its new form after World War I, the name changed and the organization changed.  No longer a traveling show with many different kinds of acts, the new form known as rodeo, featured only cowboys competing against each other.

ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION

 These events were organized in the new Western cities and towns by big businessmen.  For at least a decade the new rodeo was marked by conflict between the performing cowboys and the businessmen who were organizing these productions in their cities.  Eventually the conflicts subsided, but tensions continue to exist around topics such as prize money and rules and regulations because businessmen still organize most rodeos, and cowboys perform in them in a competition.  Moreover, some corporate ranches still exist, and cowboys who work on ranches today still make very low wages.  This economic condition parallels that of the larger society in which there is a disparity between the wealthy class and the wage earner.  IN the case of the cowboys, however, they were never organized into a union.  They did hold some strikes, and rodeo cowboys have an organization today, but they do not consider it a union, and they do not strike.

FESTIVAL DISCOURSE

The discourse of the rodeo has changed over the course of its history, depending on who organizes the production of the event, and the discourse of the larger society as well. Rodeo distinguishes between professional and amateur rodeo.  Amateur rodeo is for people who may be working cowboys or who only want to rodeo a few times a year in the region where they live.  A professional is a cowboy who belongs to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association which means that he spends most of his time competing in rodeos and travels all over the United States to ride in rodeos.  Fundamental to the discourse of the Texas Cowboy Reunion, an amateur rodeo based in a small community that does not allow professional cowboys to enter is the discourse of work.  A cowboy is a worker, and what he does in the arena when he rides and ropes is perform the skills of cowboy work on a ranch.  Those events drawn from the circus and Wild West Show are not called play but Special Acts, as they are clearly not about work, and in fact, are symbolic inversions because they use trained animals.  Moreover, the rodeo is coupled with ideas of cultural heritage through the rodeo announcer, the newspaper, radio and television.

 PERFORMANCE AND NARRATIVE:  EVENTS IN RODEO:

1)     Grand Entry  2)  Bareback Bronc Riding 3) Cowgirl Barrel Race

4)     Saddle Bronc Riding 5)  Special Act (Clown) 6)  Calf Roping

7)  Wild Mare Race    8)  Double  Mugging  9) Special Act (Clown)

10) Bull Riding  (Cowboy is riding a bull and a Clown is called a Bullfighter)

PERFORMANCE AND NARRATIVE:  DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS:       1)  Grand Entry:  This is a parade or horses and riders in a serpentine line throughout the arena of all the people who want to ride on their horses.

2)Bareback Bronc Riding:  A cowboy attempts to ride a bucking horse with no saddle for 8 minutes.  The best rider (determined by a judge) wins.

3) Cowgirl Barrel Race:  A cowgirl on her trained horse attempts to ride in a circle around 3 barrels set up in the arena.  The fast time wins.

4) Saddle Bronc Riding:  A cowboy attempts to ride a bucking horse with a saddle on for 8 minutes.  The best rider (determined by a judge) wins.

5) Special Act (Clown) or Trick Riders:  A Clown performs an act with a trained animal that shows how smart the animal is, and often makes the clown look foolish, reversing the roles of human and animal.

6)Calf roping: A cowboy attempts to rope a calf and tie 3 legs together. The fastest time wins.

7)     Wild Mare Race:  Three teams of 3 cowboys each attempt to catch a wild horse, put a saddle on it, and then ride it across a line on the ground.  Few succeed.  It is very funny.

8)     Double Mugging:  Two riders come out of the chute to rope a large calf.  Either one can catch the calf, and the two of them must then tie its 3 legs together.  Fastest time wins.

9)     Special Act (Clown) or Trick Riders:  Trick Riders are people who can ride their horses upside down, and do other amazing tricks while the horse is running.

10)Bull Riding:  A cowboy attempts to ride a bull while a clown dances around in front of the bull to keep him excited, and then the clown distracts the bull from the cowboy once the cowboy has been thrown off the bull to the ground.  This is not part of a cowboy’s work.  It is a challenge to the cowman’s authority.

 

                                                      ANALYSIS

Using acts of work and turning them into competition, the driving force of capitalism, the rodeo organizes competitive cowboy events with cowboys or cowgirls riding horses.  Each one becomes just a bit more complex and difficult.  At first the cowboy rides a bucking horse with no saddle.  In the next event a saddle is added.  Then one cowboy ropes one calf.  In the next roping event, two cowboys rope a very large calf.  That is sometimes called team roping.  The two cowboys make a team.  Then a team approach is added and multiplied into 3 teams performing simultaneously in the wild mare race.  All the time the clown acts are inserted to invert the relationship between the animal and the human, in an act of play, challenging the entire basis of the relationship between human and animal on the ranch.

Finally in the bull riding all of the relationships are inverted.  The bull represents the cowman – a sexually mature, 2 ton animal with horns that costs a lot of money.  When the cowboy climbs on the bull, he is not working.  No cowboy needs to ride a bull to work; in fact it is an act of Deep Play, something so dangerous as to be a risk to life and limb.  (Bull riders do get killed occasionally).  The clown is there to fight the bull – to keep the bull excited and then to protect the cowboy.  The clown, too, is engaging in very dangerous behavior, but appears to be playing, to be very foolish.

Thus through an act of play the cowboy challenges the authority of the cowman in the bull riding.  It is not a ritual and no transformation takes place.  The cowboy never becomes a cowman.  At one level the cowboys display their skills, representing the wage earning cowboys of the ranches.  At another level, the performance symbolically enacts a narrative of tension in the relationship between workers and owners, cowboys and cowmen, challenging them in a dangerous act of Play.  It always proves to be dangerous to challenge the cowman, but a cowboy can engage with danger.

Bull riders are thought by girls to be sexy and wild, and other young men try to disguise themselves as bull riders sometimes to attract girls.

 

This performance can best be described as a ritual drama, the central feature of the festival of cowboys and cowgirls and cowmen and women and visitors and strangers that occurs many hundreds of times throughout the United States, but especially in the West, the home of the North American cowboy. A ritual drama enacts oppositions and contradictions, but unlike a ritual, it need not resolve the contradictions.  They remain in everyday socioeconomic life and they remain enacted in the rodeo. 

The link to July 4, Independence Day, links the rodeo to Nationalism. The national and state flags fly in the Grand Entry, and the National Anthem is sung and sometimes prayers are said.  Through the national holiday, the rodeo is linked to the nation state, celebrating the nation with the cowboy festival, matching two major symbols of the United States together – the Cowboy Rodeo of the West with the Independence Day patriotism of the Early American East.  In some decades, this link is perfunctory, a symbolic statement that simply becomes a part of the ritual, whereas in other decades, the rodeo announcer may add editorial, political comments, and people may take the link to nationalism much more seriously.

Both the cowboy and the cowboy performance are symbols of the United States, though Mexico and all of South American also have their own version of the cowboy.  As a symbol the particular meaning and uses of the cowboy and the rodeo are modified and changed to fit with the larger national discourse of every decade, but the tensions between the individual worker and the larger forces of power and wealth remain, even as the discourse may shift to the right or the left.