Bullriding, for example, originated with Mexican equestrian contests known as charreadas, where competitors wrestled the steer to the ground by riding up behind it, grabbing its tail, and twisting it to the ground. The term “rodeo” (from the Spanish word rodear) means “to surround” or “go around,” and was first used in American English about 1834 to denote a “round up” of cattle.Įarly rodeo-like affairs of the 1820s and 1830s were informal events in the western United States and northern Mexico with cowboys and vaqueros testing their working skills against one another. While rodeo stresses its western folk hero image as a genuinely American creation, in fact, it grew out of the practices of Spanish ranchers and their Mexican ranch hands known as vaqueros, as a mixture of cattle wrangling and bullfighting that dates back to the sixteenth-century conquistadors of Spain.
And, of course, there’s the “national championship” for every rodeo cowboy and cowgirl, The National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas each December. If fact, the Fort Worth Stockyards hosts a r o deo every weekend evening, while the major rodeos of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the Calgary Stampede, the Pendleton Round-Up, and the Cheyenne Frontier Days draw tens of thousands of fans for each performance.
Head to any small county in Texas, South Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico, or basically anywhere in the West and Northwest, and you will likely have an opportunity to see the local rodeo in town.
0 kommentar(er)
