Cowgirl Up! (5 page)

According to the article “The Stampede” in the Thursday, January 31, 1929, edition of the
New York Times
:

Rearing, bucking, fighting, a frenzied bronco tears at the burden on its back. Claimed by a thousand devils, he kicks and plunges with the fury of the damned. The rider, a woman, wears a bandage about her jaw. She is buffeted and tossed like dust in a storm. Suddenly she shoots from the saddle as though ripped by a mighty, invisible hand. As she plunges into the dirt, the bronco wheels about. There is fire in his eyes. “Marie!” a scream shrills through the arena, but it dies away in a sigh of relief. The woman had jerked her head in the nick of time. The hoofs missed and the bronco is boxed by the other horses.

Marie Gibson . . . is a rodeo veteran and one of the most colorful cowgirls who ever slapped a quirt across a bronco's flank. . . . You'd swear she was Tom Mix, Buffalo Bill, Davey Crockett and Billy the Kid in female garb.

Her sons, Lucien and Andre, confirmed the description later when looking over bucking stock with other contestants. After discussing their own ability when they would spot a really rank bronc, the boys would say, “Well, if we can't ride him, our mother can!”

One of Marie's specialties early in her career was to ride any horse no one had been able to stay on during the rodeo. She would pass a hat around, and the crowds began to pay more attention as she rode the worst outlaw broncs.

The rules for women riders were the same as for men, and each cowgirl drew from the same bucking stock as the cowboys. In the original informal ranch rodeos, riders rode until they were bucked off or the animal quit bucking, whichever came first. In the organized rodeos, the time to the whistle was ten seconds for men and eight seconds for women. (Today's times are eight for men and six for women.)

Once mounted, the horse was controlled with one rein, which had to be held six inches above the horse's neck with either hand, the other held high in the air. The rider was disqualified if she or he grasped the horse's mane or “pulled leather,” changed hands on the reins, wrapped the reins around a hand, or lost a stirrup. Some rodeos allowed women to use two reins and to ride hobbled.

The road was long and the life was not all glamour. Alice Greenough wrote, “We slept in tents most of the time. There were no motels. So we had our own bedrolls and our own washpan or water bucket and coffeepot. . . . We lived off our winnings. Lots of times it was just day money—twenty or thirty dollars if you won first place. . . .”

Cowboys and cowgirls not only had travel expenses in following the circuit, but they also had to pay their own entry fees, usually ten dollars but sometimes up to twenty-five dollars, a substantial sum in those days. Many rodeos, such as Madison Square Garden, required a fee for each event entered.

Some rodeo promoters took advantage of the traveling cowgirls and cowboys. Nicknamed “bloomers,” these men traveled to smaller communities, advertising heavily for contestants, and they often charged higher entry fees. But then, just before the end of the rodeo, they would take the entry fees and gate receipts and skip town.

Marie Gibson wrote about such an incident in 1927, where she'd ridden in a show in Lexington, Kentucky. “I won 340 dollars and it did not pay up. It sure hit me hard . . . I may have to go to work here for a few weeks. . . .” Marie was trying to support her husband and children back home in Havre, after their crops had failed and they were unable to get a loan for spring planting.

At another rodeo in Los Angeles, Marie rode seven horses in one day and seventeen over the nine-day event. Her prize checks bounced, not an uncommon incident in the rodeo world. Another time, a Nelson, British Columbia, promoter left town owing her $325—a big sum for her in those days. She chased him halfway across Alberta but wasn't able to catch up with him.

On a more positive note, Marie was one of the only persons to make money from the ill-fated Dempsey-Gibbons boxing match in Shelby, Montana, on July 4, 1923. She rode in a rodeo held in conjunction with the fight and won a prize. Unfortunately, when she went to the bank to cash her check, the bank had run out of money. Marie received her pay anyway, from the bank's gold reserve.

Rodeo riders were a close-knit group and helped each other when they could. “If one fellow had ten dollars, you had five of it,” Alice Greenough said, “[or] if you were out of money and needed a tire for your car . . . some old boy [who] had fifteen or twenty dollars, he'd come and say . . . ‘You'd better use this to get yourself a tire.'”

Marie Gibson typified the type of life for the early twentieth-century cowgirl. From her first rodeo in Havre in 1917, she plunged into the North American rodeo circuit and began the long, hard, bruising climb to the title of World Champion Cowgirl Bronc Rider. After Havre, Marie participated in Canadian rodeos in British Columbia, Medicine Hat, Calgary, Moose Jaw, Regina, and all stops in between. Later she would travel all over the United States, competing in every major show in the country.

Women in rodeo and Wild West shows were a novelty. People in the cities were enamored with Westerners and came out in throngs, especially to watch the women ride.

After her recognition by royalty at the 1919 Saskatoon rodeo, Marie Gibson's next major highlight was being invited to participate in Tex Austin's nine-day New York City rodeo at Madison Square Garden in 1923. The following spring Austin made arrangements to take his performers to London for the thirty-day British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium.

Marie joined 165 men and women performers, including Vera McGinnis, Bonnie McCarroll, Tad Barnes, and Florence Fenton.

London news writers, many of whom had just learned what a rodeo was, described the shows in exaggerated detail, informing the public about the feats and antics of the “queer and romantic men and women from the west.” An advance story declared “‘Hell-on-Hind-Legs' will soon be accepted in London as meaning rodeo. It's the cowboys' name for it.”

Another wrote: “When the big bunch of cowpunchers arrives from America it will not be only at Wembley that their weird and picturesque personalities will make themselves felt. They are expected to make shopping raids on Bond Street and other West End centers. With their broad brimmed hats, chaps and spurs, they should create not a little interest.”

Intense excitement created unheard of sales for “Wild West” periodicals and novels, and enormous crowds attended the opening performance.

Tex Austin, the consummate showman, had his performers decked out in their Western gear as they walked or rode down the gangplank.

Marie wrote in letters home during this trip: “Every afternoon and night there was the Grand Entry in which they introduced the judges . . . and Mr. Tex Austin, the world's greatest promoter, then the cowboys and cowgirls who had come to Wembley at their own expense. . . .”

She described the events:

[First on the program was] bareback bronc riding . . . 11 entries. [This] is when a cow boy comes out of the chute with a loose rope or a surcingle around the horse's belly. Next was fancy roping by the trick ropers, such as roping 4-5 horses at one time (while the roper was) standing on [his or her] head, or spinning two and three ropes at one time, one with their teeth and one in each hand.

Next was the cowgirl bronc riding [by six or seven contestants] who are the [most] fearless . . . riding wild horses just like the men do.

No. 4 was the breakaway steer roping contest . . . 9 steer ropers each performance. Breakaway steer roping is when a cowboy ropes a wild steer or horse and the end of his or her rope is tied with a small string. When the animal hits the end it breaks.

Last came the girls' trick and fancy riding [with nine trick riders].

Marie described some of the tricks: “standing up on the saddle, going under [the horse's] belly at full speed, going under his neck, laying across his neck with hands and feet free. . . . The Russian drag, hanging with one foot, your head and hair dragging while at full speed . . .”

Marie performed her trick and bronc riding skills every day despite several injuries, which should have put her in the hospital. One stunt she performed consisted of standing upright in the saddle while the horse ran at full gallop. Then she swung under its belly, around the horse's neck, and back up into the saddle. The first week the horse fell and rolled on her, and she dislocated her knee. She had it wrapped, and a friend helped her on her horse for the grand entry the next day. “I could sit in my saddle and ride without it hurting me too much, so I decided I could ride my bucking horse when the lady bronc event was called.”

The men told her she was being foolish, but “when my name was called I was Johnny-on-the-spot.”

Marie was able to climb up on the chute and drop down on the horse with help from “the boys.” The bronc came sailing out of the chute, one of the worst horses she'd ever ridden, and all she could hear was “Ride 'im, Marie!” in the cheers from her fellow riders. When the whistle blew, she was helped off the horse by the pickup men and escorted out of the arena, where she could watch the rest of the rides. Even though her knee hurt terribly, she was glad she had done it, because she ended up winning “day money” with that ride.

“I really didn't want to ride anymore,” she confessed later, “but there I was, all alone in a foreign country and no money to get home until I earned it.”

So Marie came back later for more trick riding. “That was the toughest for me. Every once in awhile my knee would slip out of joint,” and when she stepped off her horse afterward, she felt it go again.

“I went to a doctor to have it reset. He told me to lay off, but I had two days to rest, so I rode again. I had to have help saddling and mounting and they had to carry me from the stadium, but any prize money I might be able to get looked powerfully good to me,” she wrote. “And for just a shilling a day I got transported to and from the arena in a wheelchair. Felt like a celebrity. That beat walking any day.”

Because of that dislocation, she suffered further falls and injuries. The pain became so bad that sleeping was nearly impossible. Marie said, “I laid awake at night feverish in my hotel and for hours stared at the reflection of the street lamps that shone on the wall. And I wondered if I would be all right by the next afternoon's performance.”

Without the help of her landlady, she was unable to dress herself. When the pain became too severe, she soaked in the bathtub, and one morning she awakened still in the tub.

Other cowgirls were injured too, Marie wrote, but after being treated they would get right back on and ride again. A newspaper article told of an injury to Anita Studnick, “a cowgirl who specialized in encounters with bucking horses, was carried the length of the arena by her vicious mount and thrown over his head. The injury was a broken collar bone.”

Another rider, who had a horse fall on her and wrenched her neck in a relay race, received a letter from a woman who wrote she was sorry it had not broken her neck and killed her. The woman lambasted the cowgirl and all her “barbarian friends” who were so cruel to the animals.

In the course of events, a couple of steers broke legs and had to be shot. The Animal Protective League put out a pamphlet denouncing rodeo as “too dangerous.” Tex Austin and the riders responsible for the injuries were arrested.

There was a trial, the courtroom was packed, and it was front-page news every day. The case was dismissed, with the judge ruling that rodeo was not a form of cruelty to animals but all a part of working Western life, and if an animal was injured, it was quickly and humanely put out of pain.

“Of course, fox hunting did not look cruel to the Lords,” Marie commented.

One of the London newspapers wrote, “When asked if rodeos were cruel, American trick rider Tad Lucas answered, ‘Yes! But only for the cowboys and cowgirls.'”