Cowhands & bucking broncos?
The World Championship Rodeo brought the romance of the Wild West to Chicago
“What time do the cowboys have their rehearsal tomorrow?” a Tribune reporter asked a flummoxed Tex Austin.
The manager and promoter of the 1927 World Championship Rodeo didn’t anticipate having to explain a sport he’d previously presented at Soldier Field. Boxers can train with each other by pulling their punches and not making full contact. But cowboys don’t have sparring partners. A bucking bronco or a lassoed steer is a large, angry and unpredictable animal.
The rodeo originated in the Southwest as a way for ranchers to celebrate the annual cattle roundup. Promoters brought it to Chicago and other Northern cites to capitalize on Americans’ nostalgic fascination with the Wild West.
“Romance and daring and red blood of the old wild west — that west whose demise started when automobiles and wire fences came in — that west will live again this afternoon,” as the Tribune noted in its preview of Austin’s 1925 rodeo.
From 1925 to 1929, he presented rodeos first at Soldier Field and then indoors at the Chicago Stadium — though rodeo competitions didn’t end in Chicago once Austin’s contest packed up and left for good.
A Santa Fe, New Mexico, newspaper described Austin as “a great big chap — considerably over six feet tall, straight as an arrow, and of striking appearance.” He sported a gold stickpin of a steer’s head “the size of a twenty dollar gold piece.”
He was also a teller of tall tales, making his origins murky. But whatever his birth name was, he swapped it for Tex Austin. He claimed he was raised on a Texas ranch and fought in the Mexican Revolution.
By the 1920s, he was operating a dude ranch in New Mexico and launching an impresario career. His success earned him the title: “Daddy of the Rodeo.”
In conjunction with Austin’s rodeos, the Association of Commerce brought noted authors of Western stories to Chicago. To re-create the romantic vision of these stories in Soldier Field, Austin brought 50 Native Americans from the Flathead Reservation in Montana to pitch tepees at the stadium.
“They were led by their 103 year old chief … whose trip to the rodeo constitutes his first visit off the reservation in fifty years,” the Tribune noted.
The sights and thrills of Austin’s rodeos had a wide appeal. Women were half of the 35,000 spectators in Soldier Field on the opening day of the 1925 rodeo, the Tribune’s society columnist reported. “The shouts of approval that hit against the sides of the Field Museum and bounced back again were just as soprano as they were deep bass.”
Rodeo competition also was open to women, as well as Black people and Native Americans, when other professional sports were segregated or off-limits to them.
Rodeo cowboys mirrored their fans’ yearning for a vanished age. Theirs was a labor of love. Most needed an offseason job, and their skills weren’t in demand on the Great Plains. Fenced-in herds require fewer cowhands.
On the rodeo circuit, they made money only by winning. They weren’t paid for their appearances. “On the contrary, they must pay an entry fee of from $5 to $40,” Austin said. “The motto of the cowgirl and cowboy in the rodeo is ‘do or die.’ ”
Austin carried the rodeo far afield. He mounted shows in Madison Square Garden, Hollywood and London. His promotions went belly up in the Great Depression, and he opened a restaurant in Santa Fe. But going blind in 1938, he committed suicide.
He left a note asking his wife’s forgiveness and, on their coach, a stack of photograph of his rodeo days, a time when “he appeared every inch at home.”