Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 85

The Calgary Herald LSiFe Today SATURDAY, JULY 1 0. 1 982 fe This year the Stampede salutes the cowboy, but hats should also be tipped to the cowgirl. Women rode broncs and competed in fancy roping and riding events in the very first Stampede in 1912. Although women subsequently disappeared from the rodeo for 40 years, they returned and now compete in barrel racing and occasionally in some of the other events. Herald staff writer Portia Priegert takes a look at the history of these fiesty women.

Ti i i mm i itlr LJ 1:" Glenbow Archives, Calgary Lucille Mulhall, 1912 champion Cowgirls made history Glenbow Archives, Calgary Flores La Due won the fancy roping title from 1912 to 1919 ni Simpson hooked on racing T. V'- I fv M'A V'-. ll it 1 1 AUUV If 1 A V' 1 urn i 1 7. 1 wr-fr W-f" By Portia Priegert (Herald staff writer) Rodeo is a tough sport, but 70 years ago women proved they were equal to the challenge of raging broncs and they thrilled crowds with daredevil riding and roping stunts. The cowgirls who competed in the first Calgary Stampede in 1912 wore split riding skirts, the hems reaching the ankles of their boots.

They bore grand old names Dolly, Fanny, Vera and Tillie handles that have gathered dust since their heyday then. But these women were every bit as tough as the cowboys. Bucking-horse riding was the most dangerous women's event and it carried a large purse at the 1912 Stampede. The $1,000 prize could buy a lot of oats in those pre-inflation days a city lot then sold for the meagre sum of $200. Although the cowgirls didn't compete against men, they busted the same broncs.

One former cowgirl from Arizona, Bertha Blancett, recalled with pleasure how she rode a notorious bronc called Red Wing that had previously killed a cowboy. She was disdainful of women who tied their stirrups together under the horse's belly, a practice that made it easier to stay aboard. "The other girls all rode with hobbled stirrups and. of course, I didn't call that riding. 1 didn't believe in tying myself on a horse to ride him," she wrote in a letter now preserved in the Glenbow archives.

She placed first in the 1912 women's relay race, picking up a $500 prize. A death-defying ride by Hazel Walker of California, on a horse called Rooster, was definitely something to crow about. "After a three-minute session of lightning-like bucking the horse stampeded, making straight for the fence as the maddened horse plunged into the wire Miss Walker was thrown under the horse," an article in the News Telegram of 1912 reported. The account maintains Walker refused to quit despite injuries to her arm and would have remounted had the horse not run away. Goldie St.

Clair from Kansas also rode the notorious Red Wing during a benefit performance. After the blindfold was removed from the bronc's eyes he headed for the two-metre-high arena wall. The horse almost fell as he hit the wall and caught St. Clair's leg against the rough boards. Her skirt was ripped off her leg and she received severe lacerations as the bronc continued bucking and scraping her against the wall.

After a brief rest, she continued, riding eight more broncs. Many of the women competitors were from the U.S., but there were a few local women courageous enough to enter. One was Flores (also known as Florence) La Due, wife of Stampede founder Guy Weadick. La Due had run away from the Minnesota home of her lawyer father many years earlier to join a travelling circus, according to Josephine Bews. a former neighbor of the Weadicks.

Touring southern U.S., La Due met Weadick, and in 1906 they married and continued to work in a wild west show, says Bews, who lived down the road from Wea-dick's Longview ranch for 13 years. At the 1912 Stampede. La Due picked up the fancy roping title which she held until her retirement in 1919. She was capable of keeping almost 25 metres of rope in motion above her head. Later, the pair toured Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show before settling down on their ranch.

"She was a very loyal person and very honest." recalls Bews. "She loved everything on the ranch." Weadick was "just heartbroken" when she died in 1951. He later married another of the early rodeo stars, Dolly Mullins Only a few contestants from the 1912 rodeo are still alive. One ol-dtimer who had attended it recalled that the cowgirls were not, under any circumstances, to be messed with. "These girls were tough, and I mean tough in the sense they could physically whip most of the guys in town," recalled Jim Ryan, a rancher from Hartell, Alta.

He was 78 years old when he talked to a local reporter in 1972. "They didn't compete directly against the cowboys, but some of them did just as well," said "Ryan. One of the cowgirls who particularly stuck in Ryan's memory was Anne Schaffer of Texas. She wore a rag- leather costume, chewed tobacco, packed a six-shooter and could "out-cuss most men alive." "Just don't get fresh with them. They'll tell you where to go and how to get there," he advised.

"And if you still insist they'll show you." Women also competed in the second "Victory Stampede" held in 1919 after the First World War. Tillie Baldwin amazed crowds by in an exhibit of daring bulldogging. She rode alongside a long-horned steer, leapt from her saddle and wrestled the animal to the ground. Not to be outdone, Nora Wells, from Edmonton, rode a steer. But in the third stampede in 1923, women no longer competed in any of the four events although they did put on exhibitions of trick riding and roping.

In the 40 years that followed, women were only seen when such acts were brought in to tantalize the crowds. It's not clear why they disappeared from the infield, but one reason may have been the loss of the frontier atmosphere "As Calgary became more com-smopolitan after the First World War, I think there was quite a change in attitude," says Stampede historian Tom Hall. "The city by then had grown to 40,000 and the automobile had become pretty popular." But back in the mid-1950s, one girl defied the times and entered the boys' steer riding event. Linda Onespot, a teenager from the Sarcee Reservation, had ridden in a lot of smaller rodeos. Her father figured his daughter was as good as any of the local riders and entered her in the Stampede under a boy's name, after she had tried unsuccessfully to enter under her real name.

She disguised herself by tucking her hair out of sight and managed to make it to the finals, according to Edward Onespot, who has since lost touch with his daughter. He says her cowboy hat flew off and when the judges saw her long hair they realized "he" was a "she" and disqualified her. "She was as rough as a boy," says Onespot, himself a former rodeo star. "She was a tomboy." Women were not to return to the Stampede rodeo in large numbers until the introduction of barrel racing more than 20 years ago. It originated in the United States as a gymkhana event, but began to be seen at an increasing number of local rodeos after the formation of a Canadian Cowgirls' Barrel Racing Association in 1957.

"It was a hard-fought battle to get women back into rodeo," says Isabella Miller, president of the 300-member Canadian Girls' Rodeo Association. "Barrel racing has always been a crowd pleasing event," she says, adding the biggest problem was getting the men to accept female involvement in the rodeo. But recently a number of women David Lazarowvch, Calgary herald David Lazarowvch, Effie Simpson and Tiger take aim at Stampede barrel racing payoff Effie Simpson has been riding in rodeos for 20 years. Every summer weekend she loads her her dun-colored registered quarter horse Tiger into her 'trailer and heads down another country road. "I think going down the road gets into you." says Simpson, who may hits two, three and occasionally four rodeos a weekend.

She's covered a lot of miles in the quest to win enough money to qualify for the finals. One of the 50 rodeos she'll hit this year is the Calgary Stampede. While she's not in top place going into the barrel racing event standing 28th in the local circuit she figures she's got a "fairly good chance" of finishing in the money. What she's doing, she says as she sits in the cab of her truck drinking coffee out of a mud-smeared cup, is gambling the $50 entry fee on her ability to prove she's better than the next gal. Simpson is one of approximately 65 Alberta women who compete in barrel racing.

She's made about a $1,000 this year and admits she probably spent $4,000 to get it but that's one of the risks. The best riders have made $5,000 by now and will probably total $10,000 or $12,000 by fall. Simpson is also gambling on 13-year-old Tiger, an "ornery cuss," whom she has ridden for six years. "He's a funny horse he gets even," she says. But "if I ride him right, I'm in the money." He's speedy on short distances necessary if he's going to spin around the three barrels set in a cloverleaf pattern in the 15 or so seconds required to win.

But if they knock one over they face a five-second penalty. Simpson began barrel racing competively in the early 1960s, but has ridden horses most of her 47 years. She says she isn't the oldest woman on the local circuit, there's at least one in her 50s. That doesn't stop the rodeo announcers from teasing her about her age. But she's a tough competitor who won't stand for any nonsense.

And she's no stranger to the dangers of the sport. When interviewed recently, she sported a swollen thumb probably ripped tendons. It occurred several weeks earlier when her thumb was caught between her lasso and the horn of her saddle. "Something's got to go and it was my thumb," she says. She was lucky not to lose it altogether, but "it's a long way from my heart," she says drily.

"I think I'll live." The injury hasn't stopped her from roping. And she is one of a handful of women who enter team roping events at local rodeos competing against men. At all-girl rodeos she also enters the steer undecorating (ripping a ribbon off a steer's back.) goat tying and calf roping events. She's a two-time Canadian goat-tying champion wining the event in 1966 and 1967. But Simpson doesn't rodeo to the exclusion of everything else.

She works as a recording technician at an oil industry service shop to support herself and her habit so she can head on down the road to the next rodeo. without benefit of disguise have entered events traditionally reserved for the opposite sex. In 1979 two barriers were shattered. That was the first year (in recent memory) that women had entered the chuckwagon and wild horse races. Saskatchewan native May Gorst was an outrider in 1979 for four separate chuckwagon teams.

She returned to the Stampede in 1980 and 1981 and already has two wagons on her plate for this year. Gorst, 20, who began chuckwagon racing with her family six years ago says she doesn't think of the danger when competing. The cowboys she races with, she says, treat her "like any other person. They don't look down on me." The first woman to enter the wild horse race, Leslie Spruyt. formerly of Three Hills, did so on a dare from a friend who had a team in the event.

"I wouldn't do it again." she said recently. 'It is awfully terrifying. I was awful sore after." Only a handful of women have entered such events, although there is no rule preventing them, according to Keith Hyland. general manager of the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association. Most cowgirls simply don't want to compete against men.

preferring all-women rodeos, says Miller. When it comes to wrestling a steer, for instance, there's "no way" a woman will come out the winner because she lacks the strength, she says. Or. as Hyland says: "It's kind of like (professional) football. Not very many women play that either." Barrel racing wasn't going to be held a the Stampede this year, but Glenbow Archives.

Calgary Hazel Walker rode Buttons to victory a last-minute agreement was worked out between the girls' rodeo association and the Stampede board. Thirty-two women will be competing for $11,000 in prizes. It's the first time in five years association members have been at the Stampede and its first step to getting back on a regular basis, says Miller. The event wasn't held for two years and when the Stampede went to the team rodeo format in 1979, the association wouldn't sanction the barrel racing event, she says. The ''women would have raced two at a time around five barrels, meaning both would have had to circle one barrel, something which was felt to be too dangerous.

Riders affiliated with amateur associations rode during those years, but Miller says the competition was "not as tough" as it will be this year when two women will race at the same time, but they will ride through two completely separate three-barrel courses. Miller promises a "super-good" show and doubtless the contemporary competitors will thrill the crowd. as much as cowgirls did 70 years ago..