Canyon Day Rodeo

At the White Mountain Apache rodeo, cash bets are taken by a young woman in the cab of an old Ford pickup. Fives and tens and twenties are exchanged and chit notes given. The cowboys line up beside the pickup three and four deep while their wives and girlfriends wait over on the side.

Young kids in baggy pants and too-big shirts run around the carnival grounds where bored carnies lean against the stairs to the Tilt-A-Whirl or Sizzler, both of which have no riders.

Dogs—blue heelers or Australian herding dogs—yap at the horses and the bulls. One young cowboy, no more than 15 or 16, drives five or six steers out of the gate and into the arena both to make sure the gates are working and to see which way the steers will break when they get inside.

For anyone used to the boisterous nature of a Saturday football game, this is a quiet affair. Almost religious. The loudest sound is the flapping of American and Arizona flags above the arena and the nervous, constant whinnying of the horses.

Things move slowly. The crowd in the stands is lethargic almost to the point of looking like they’re sleeping with their eyes open. There is little reaction to anything that happens and people seldom clap, even when the announcer encourages them to “Give a big hand to that busted-up cowboy.”

Emotions are as flat as the landscape, as brooding as the threatening sky.

The carnival grounds behind the bull pens at the White Mountain Apache Reservation rodeo in Arizona.

The cowboys at the Apache rodeo don’t talk to the women. The women have to go over to the side and huddle amongst themselves but they don’t speak or even look at their husbands or boyfriends while the rodeo is going on. Maybe it’s considered bad luck.

At the foodstand, four ancient Apache women ladle big spoonfuls of lard into frying pans over propane burners and  cook up Indian fry bread which they then fill with refried beans. It’s like a giant fried bean pizza. Obese kids sit in the dusty stands gobbling down the fry bread and beans or an Indian taco while the rodeo announcer encourages everyone to go on up to the snack bar and fill up.

“That Indian fry bread smells so good, I’ll tell you what…if anyone could ever invent a cologne that smelled like it, he’d make a fortune, that’s for sure.”

Little kids are going around the stands during the rodeo selling raffle tickets for a fund raiser for the grade school’s 6^th grade trip to Phoenix. The grand prize for the raffle is “Beef.” They don’t say how much beef; just Beef.

Other prizes include a quilt, case of Coke, and something listed as “Movie Posters.” There’s a sad little carnival going on behind the rodeo and the kids run over there for an hour or so and come back to their parents carrying plastic sandwich bags with goldfish in them and the fish cook in the sun and the hot water in the sandwich bag until they die and the parents make the kids dump the dead fish out on the red dirt. All the kids stand around staring at the dead fish in the dirt and kicking them around with their dusty shoes.

The trophy saddle of a former All-Around Champion Cowboy at the Apache Rodeo. Photo by David Lansing.

Vincent Shorty doesn’t quite last the required eight seconds on Pistol Pete, and when he lands hard on the dusty red earth, it takes him a few minutes to catch his breath and stand up. I hear a few of the other cowboys talking about how Pistol Pete is bad all right, but he’s not nearly as bad as Gizmo, the next bull up.

All the cowboys shake their heads and watch as the gate opens and Gizmo explodes sideways, quickly sending his rider to the ground, where he is stomped on by 2,000 pounds of angry bovine.

The cowboys all chuckle nervously. They’re used to such things. There’s been a rodeo here on the reservation in Whiteriver for more than 80 years now, this one attracting more than 800 Native Americans from the U.S. and Canada hoping to bull-ride, barrel-race, steer-wrestle, and rope their way to the prize of a plate-sized silver buckle and a saddle branded “All Around Champion.”

That and a few bucks seem to be reward enough for getting busted up by a bull named Gizmo.