The Tournament of Cowboys

Fleet of foot and a fast thinker to boot, the rodeo clown is the cowboys' safety man, more often than not risking his own neck to insure that accidents between riders and animals don't happen. Jim Tallon

PRESCOTT'S Tournament of Cowboys

The year was 1888. Geronimo had surrendered; Phoenix village was just a horse and buggy stopping place; the silver camps were roaring their last . . . and to the Easterner, Arizona was the rough frontier.

On July 4th of that long-ago yesterday, a bunch of half-wild cowboys, from the hills around Yavapai County, rode into the little mountain town of Prescott to compete against each other to see who was the best rider and roper. Juan Levias took the day's honors, and for his efforts received the “Citizens' Prize” as the best all-around cowboy. The medal was inscribed: “ . . . contested for and won by Juan Levias over all competitors at the Fourth of July Tournament held in Prescott, Arizona Territory, 1888, for roping, and tieing steer. Time: 1.17.1-2; 100 yard start.” As it turned out, that little incident was the first rodeo ever staged in the U.S., and, equally important, it marked the beginning of an event that has since become an institution in Arizona: Prescott's annual Frontier Days Rodeo and Celebration.

Today, the show is still as wild and rough as it was that warm, sunny 4th of July day 89 years ago....

(Left) Leaning into a tight corner, a young lady barrel racer shows concentration just before the straight-away run to the finish line.

(Right) The best seats aren't always the most comfortable. Here buddies, friends and the participants themselves cling to the chutes to be literally on top of the action.

(Below) Dangling like a gas-inflated balloon on a string, a cross-bred bull reaches the apex of a cowboy-dislodging jump. The rodeo clown rushes in to distract the bull from its fallen rider.

The green-painted chute gate is jerked open and a hook-horned, crossbred brahma bull rockets out, daylight showing under every foot. Cowboys, exercising humble respect for the halfton of annoyed bone and muscle, scramble up fences deftly enough to rate a round of applause from chimpanzees. But the bull isn't interested in cowboys collectively, just the one glued to its back, with his pistoning legs, and batwinged chaps flapping like banshees. Fighting for balance, he rakes the animal with dulled, half-dollar-size spurs a frenzied ballet of brain and brawn.

Beneath the bull, slung on a loose rope, a cowbell clangs and again the crazed animal tries to crawl into the sky. Spectator screams become an avalanche of sound. It is a case of support painted in big vocal letters; the kind of audience contestants and performers love and thrive on, and for whom they will, in turn, deliver their best.

Now the raging bull does a forefoot stand, a couple of pirouettes, then tries once more to get into orbit. The rider looks like a flag flying at half-mast in a wind squall.

Then the eight-second buzzer sounds. A pick-up man astride a bay horse swoops in and the bull-rider flings both arms around his rescuer's waist . . .

There are rodeos and then there are rodeos. The Prescott show is just a little bit different, a little bit better than most.

Each year for three or four days, with the Fourth of July as a climax, this city of 19,000, supplemented by 100,000 fun-loving out-of-towners, goes delightfully berserk.

And why not. Prescott's Frontier Days is a celebration of life, a festival. It includes a parade that may draw visitors and marching units from a number of distant lands. Last year Germany participated and so did a softball team from New Zealand. Caborca, Sonora, Mexico, Prescott's below-the-border sister city, also regularly sends its mayor and high school band to pay its respects.

During the Frontier Days hoopla, the whole town is literally sold out. Every spare room inside the city limits is gobbled up. The overflow sleeps in campers, cars, pickup trucks - and even on the courthouse lawn, wrapped in blankets or huddled in sleeping bags. Coffee shops have lines longer thana theater box office on Broadway at the height of a smash hit.

Street vendors and mini-businesses - a sudden collage of chili dog stands and toy monkey booths - blossom like perennials. Street traffic moves bumper to bumper and sidewalk traffic, belly to back.

But don't be fooled. This is all background for just one thing, the real star on center stage; the Frontier Days Rodeo.

(Below) A saddle bronc rider bites the dust on all fours, taking much the same stance as his horse, and suggests, "Let's try it one more time and see if we can get our choreography together."

(Below, right) Suspense builds as a steer roper's loop fails to go completely over the animal's head. Can the cowboy flip it around the neck? Sometimes they do. But then there are other times . . .

In Prescott, all streets lead to the fairgrounds where the rodeo is held. Get in any line of vehicles about one o'clock in the afternoon or about six in the evening and you'll wind up at the fairgrounds ticket office.

The people of Prescott and thousands of people who come here during Frontier Days, are devout rodeo fans. “I don't know if I'll qualify for heaven or hell by the time I die,” says one Stetsoned aficionado, “but I ain't going to either one if they don't have rodeos.” The innovators of the Prescott rodeo spawned a sport that now wows spectators in 42 states and Canada, and dolesout more than $6 million in prize money annually. An all-around champion of the year, like 1975s top man, Leo Camarillo, can expect to pick up about $70,000 worth of it. The rest is split, the amount depending upon skill, among about 3700 other rodeo cow-boys.

The prize money at Prescott runs about $20,000 these days, and that makes the Frontier Days event attrac-tive enough to draw such champions as team roper Camarillo, bull-rider Don Gay, and bareback rider Joe Alexander. A young cowboy prodding a bucking horse into the chutes comments that “Big names can make a rodeo a success, but most would never get off the ground if it wasn't for good organizers, stock contractors, announcers, judges, secretaries, pick-up men and even clowns.” It's obvious that the Prescott Frontier Days Rodeo has such skilled people behind it. Look at its long-run success.

And chances are, too, that Prescott fans were just as wild about cowboys in break-neck feats of horsemanship back on July 4, 1888 the day rodeo was born.

Bookshelf

by Donald M. Powell Mineralogy of Arizona. By John W. Anthony, Sidney A. Williams and Richard A. Bideaux. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1977. 254 pp. $22.50, cloth; $9.75, paper.

Some of the most beautiful mineral specimens anywhere have been taken from Arizona mines and are to be found in such nationally famous institutions as the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History, and, of course, Arizona's own museums.

This volume supercedes several earlier bulletins and includes new varieties of minerals discovered in the past 20 years. Knowledgeable friends say it is not too technical for the mineral enthusiast. Specimen locations are described along with chemical formulae and other pertinent information. The outstanding feature, however, is the dozens of sharp color photographs of outstanding specimens. Textual introduction on the mineralized areas, tables of new minerals, bibliography and maps all contribute to usefulness. The price may seem high but rockhounds say it's worth it.

A Dictionary of the Old West, 18501900. By Peter Watts. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1977. 399 pp. $12.95.

The men and women who opened and settled the prairie and mountains west of the Mississippi, in the years between the gold rush and the closing of the frontier, developed a rich and colorful vocabulary that was vividly descriptive of the conditions they encountered. Many were borrowings, corrupted from the Mexicans, the French, or the Indians who preceded them. These are the words that have found their way into the literature of the West and these are the words carefully defined here.

A very high percentage of western words originated in our Southwest from contact with Mexico. Hacienda, the large ranch, ranch itself from the Spanish rancho, riata, remuda, just to cite a few examples fom the letter R. Some have become so common in our language that we have forgotten their origins south of the border.

The author, Peter Watts, is a writer of western fiction a genre not to be despised who may be better known to readers as Matt Chisholm or Cy James, under which pseudonyms he has published dozens of novels. Perhaps it is his facility with words that makes thisdictionary specially appealing, for this is a dictionary to be picked up and read for entertainment as well as for enlightenment, when you are in doubt of the meaning of such expressions as a Blocker Loop or an over-slope or a buscadero.

A great virtue of the dictionary is the wide range of sources Watts has used and cites in his bibliography, and the plentiful illustrations which make clear what words often cannot.

The Central Arizona Project, 19181968. By Rich Johnson. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1977. 242 pp. $11.50, cloth; $5.95, paper.

Coincidence makes this a timely book, for it appears at the same time as the proposed Carter cutbacks on reclamation projects.

The CAP, as it is commonly abbreviated, would lift Colorado River water from Lake Havasu across the mountains to Phoenix and the Salt River Valley and eventually on to Tucson, as part of the division of water among the states of the lower Colorado River basin. Equitable division of this water, and the CAP, was cause of bitter dispute between Arizona and California, the two major users of lower basin water, even before the Colorado River Compact of 1922 (which Arizona stubbornly refused to ratify for 22 years) and until the Supreme Court decision of 1963 in the case of Arizona vs. California. That decision awarded Arizona 2.8 million acre-feet of mainstream flow annually, and cleared the way for Congressional action on the CAP. Even this took another five years. In September, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill which finally authorized construction. It was probably the longest, most complex, and costly legal and legislative battle for water in the Southwest.

Rich Johnson, the author of the book, is executive director of the Central Arizona Project Association, which helped to carry on the fight. He draws on years of personal experience to tell the story of the tangled web of events.

The Central Arizona Project is not easy reading; the issues are too complex, but the book is essential for an understanding of this major issue in the Southwest water story. To help the reader a chronological outline of the action precedes the main text.

The Chemehuevis. By Carobeth Laird. Malki Museum Press, Morongo Indian Reservation, Banning, California 92220. 349 pp. $15.00 cloth; $8.95, paper.

Two years ago when Carobeth Laird at the age of 80 published that extraordinary book Encounter with an Angry God readers discovered an exceptional literary talent. Encounter was a personal book about her unfortunate marriage to the psychotic linguistic genius John Peabody Harrington and her later lasting marriage with George Laird, who is part Chemehuevi Indian. In that book she mentioned that for many years she had been working on another about the Chemehuevis.

A linguist in her own right, though without formal training except that given her by Harrington, Mrs. Laird benefited further from George Laird's knowledge and recollections of the then rapidly vanishing native culture of the Chemehuevis and of their language. This book, then, is as much George Laird's as his wife's, and it is dedicated to him.

This is the first full length work on the Chemehuevis, a small but vigorous tribe which inhabited the Colorado River Valley and adjacent mountains, roughly between Lake Mead and Blythe, on both sides of the river. And it may be the last of any consequence, for the ancestral ways described by Mrs. Laird have disappeared with cultural assimilation.

The Chemehuevis is no less appealing, though perhaps to a different audience, than Mrs. Laird's first book. The average reader can skip the linguistics of which there is a substantial amount to enjoy Mrs. Laird's vivid account of the Chemehuevi way of life, and the tribal mythology which bound them together and in which she so clearly delights.

Mrs. Laird is now 82. It is to be hoped that she will give us still more from her store of knowledge of an unusual life.

Arizona-California Cook Book. By Glenda McGillis. Golden West Publishers, 4113 North Longview, Phoenix, Arizona 85014, 1976. 86 pp. $2.00.

This is not a cookshelf page, but this book is so regional and enticing that it deserves inclusion here.

Mrs. McGillis lived for years in a citrus grove near Phoenix, where she could not bear to see surplus fruit go to waste. Thus she turned her considerable talents to using lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit in a wide variety of foods from soups to deserts, in ways most of us have never dreamed of. As a lagniappe she provides helpful information on citrus types, cultivation, freezing and drying. Cooks should love it.

Hint not in the book the stock from pan drippings, bones and scraps from the author's recipe for game hens is delicious!

Yours Sincerely GOATS, NOT SHEEP

Editor: In your March, 1977, issue of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS you featured Canyon de Chelly National Monument. On your back cover you captioned: "Navajo sheep in a Canyon del Muerto corral." Now coming from a family (Hidalgo) that has raised Angora goats for the last 200 or 300 years in Texas and Arizona, I could not let this go by. In the '40s my dad, Juan Hidalgo, owned one of the smallest herds, or bands of Angora goats in this state... he had 4500 head! Then the U.S. started importing mohair from New Zealand and the market here went down the proverbial tube. All the mohair growers sold out. As of this date the mohair industry has died in Arizona, but please give our last surviving Angora goats and mohair growers their just dues. Like our Arizona Indians and my dad, who still has a few goats, they just can't let them go! But they are Angora goats not sheep! Mrs. Josie Griffith Phoenix O.K., Josie, I know better than to argue with a goat lover! I think you're right. We got our information from the photographer, the renowned David Muench, and we are not about to question David's photography. However, we may chide him a bit about his photo captions. For Angora goat aficionados the world over, we thank you.

- The Editor

A BOUQUET

Editor: May I congratulate both you and Cynthia Nasta on the fine article "Vulture Mine Revisited," in the April issue OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. My wife and I have spent much time "Out Wickenburg Way," and read as many stories and articles on the Vulture Mine and Henry Wickenburg, as we are able. This article was, I believe the very best and most accurate, without the extra frills usually adorning the well-publicized life of Mr. Wickenburg and the famed "Vulture." We truly enjoyed it, and am glad it was not written for the "tourist trade," but for those of us who have wanted down-to-earth facts about this man, his mine, and the area. Thank you for the opportunity of reading such an article, and being able to "Revisit Vulture," in our very favorite magazine!

Albert W. Shontz Sedona

THE YAQUI CHURCH

Editor: I am an avid reader of your fine publication, ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, and want to call to your attention our participation with the Yaqui Indians. In your April, 1977, issue "The Yaqui Today: A People In Transition," you state: ". . . And, most important to many people, there is at last a comfortable church, with a floor that can be removed for ceremonial dancing, and a wide door that rolls up, leaving a side of the structure open to the plaza." However, your article does not state that this church Cristo Rey was built and donated to the Yaqui Indians by Tucson Council #1200 of the Knights of Columbus, at a cost of approximately $150,000 (including donated labor). A picture of the Cristo Rey Church is in the background of the lower right picture on page 5.

Frank J. Perri, Jr. State Deputy Tucson We are glad to add the information, and to recognize the KC's for their efforts.

GOOD SUGGESTION

Editor: May I compliment your treatment of Canyon de Chelly, except perhaps for two or three items. You must know the vital importance of elevation in understanding any area in your state. The elevation of Chinle, the Monument headquarters, and probably several other points should be shown. The proper pronunciation of Canyon de Chelly should be given. Also the meaning in English of Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, and pos-Spanish. Why omit these very important items so much needed by the outsider? Your magazine has a wide circulation, and Arizona has many new residents who do not really well understand the Southwest.

Spanish. Why omit these very important items so much needed by the outsider? Your magazine has a wide circulation, and Arizona has many new residents who do not really well understand the Southwest.

Jehiel S. Davis Van Nuys, CA Your suggestion is well taken. We as Arizonans often take it for granted that our out-of-state readers know the pronunciation of names and other details associated with our state. So let's start right now with some facts that might help you: the elevation at Chinle is 5058, but the canyon walls rise 600 to 800 feet higher in many areas of the canyon. Canyon de Chelly is pronounced deshay, and means rock canyon. Canyon del Muerto means canyon of the dead. And while we are at it, perhaps many of you out-of-state readers could inform your local weather man that Gila Bend (a frequent hot spot on the nation's weather chart) is pronounced he-la, and Ajo is pronounced ah-ho. We could go on and on, but then that would be giving away some of the mysteries of future issues. We will, however, do a better job with names. - The Editor (Inside back cover) Wild flowers, like daubs of artists' colors, mingle with stately pines, on the northern flank of Escudilla Mountain, near Nutrioso, in the White Mountains.

Wayne Davis

35mm COLOR SLIDES

This issue: 35mm slides in 2" mounts; 1 to 15 slides, 40¢ each, 16 to 49 slides, 35 each; 50 or more, 3 for $1.00. Allow three weeks for delivery. Address: Slide Department, Arizona Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona 85009.