EDITOR’S
NOTE: In this first full year of recognition of the
U.S. Senate-resolved and Presidentially approved
National Day of the American Cowboy, we begin a three-part
series that will lead into this year’s August
observation of that event. And what better subject
for contemplating cowboys than an in-depth profile
of the most celebrated real cowboy who ever lived?
With this article, Joe Carter, emeritus director
of the Will Rogers Memorial Museum, cracks open the
chute gate for a romp through not just cowboy history,
entertainment history, and Americana, but a glimpse
into the soul of this great nation as well.
Menacing
with five-foot horns, the raging 800-pound steer
thundered across the dirt arena in Madison
Square Garden chased by the “Queen of the Range,” Lucille
Mulhall, riding her horse Governor and twirling her
lariat.
Just
before Mulhall released her loop, the animal leaped
a rail and plunged into the stands, clamoring
up tiers of aisles and stunning 6,000 New Yorkers. “Women
screamed and men shouted,” wrote a newsman.
The Seventh Regiment Band dropped their instruments
and joined the flight.
On
the arena floor, with seasoned cowboy stealth,
lasso-wielding Will Rogers raced past a barehanded
policeman in pursuit, and as he did so the rider
tossed off a taunting, humor-laden question: “What
are you going to do with it when you catch it?”
Bounding
up the tiers afoot, onto a high landing, with the
puzzled cop wisely drifting behind, the
25-year-old Oklahoma cowboy deployed two decades
of range-perfected skill to skim his catch rope
onto the steer’s horns.
One
paper reported that cowboy and beast “tumbled
over seats and down stairs” back into the arena.
Another reported the steer broke loose and leaped
back alone. As for the details of the melee, tabloid
stories conflicted, but the headlines were clear:
Steer
Ran Amuck in Big
Garden
Wild
Stampede of Band and
Scared Spectators
Indian
Cowpuncher’s
Quickness Prevents Harm
The
staid New York Times caption of April 28, 1905,
was “Texas Steer in the Balcony.”
Will
Rogers wrote his hometown Claremore Progress editor
that “I made the biggest hit here I
ever dreamed of in my roping act and finished my
good luck by catching the wild steer that went clear
up in the dress circles of the Garden among the people.”
Almost
prophetically he added that “I will
stay here to do some theatre work for a while.”
In
a world of abrupt passages that he had endured
and had learned to foresee, Will Rogers would funnel
the steer roping publicity and his superb lariat
skills into a new rising career in vaudeville.
Even
at 25, Will Rogers had seen many changes.
At
age 13, after taking a herd of cattle by rail to
Chicago and riding in the caboose, Willie was
mesmerized by Buffalo Bill’s “Congress
of Rough Riders of the World,” the premier
Wild West show.
With
its whooping Indians, marauding cowboys, and a
cast of 400, complete with stampeding cattle, the
show was an amazement to the audience. Will Rogers
was deeply and permanently impressed by a Mexican
trick roper who, at the climax of his act, spelled
his name in the air with fancy lasso finesse. The
boy was hooked.
Back
at the family’s sprawling 60,000-acre
frontier cattle ranch, Willie’s passion for
ropes went wild. When his chores were complete, he
grabbed his ropes and practiced for hours. He looped
goats, calves, pals, wild turkeys, and stumps.
From
age seven, amid protests, the youngster was dispatched
yearly to various boarding schools at
varying distances from the ranch but never close.
He seemed to already know the material being taught,
and so he was bored.
Almost
from infancy, his educated mother taught Willie
to read and cipher. With the lad on her knee she
read aloud the classics and Bible while the boy’s
finger traced the lines. Her renowned sense of humor
that the son inherited made learning a joy.
Although
the post office was a 12-mile ride, his father
subscribed to The New York Times and vital
agricultural magazines that the youngster consumed
around the fireplace. This head start made formal
schooling largely redundant. In a self-demeaning
manner, he later quipped that he had spent “four
years in McGuffey’s Fourth Reader” and
hence he “knew more than McGuffey did.” When
Willie tried, he made good grades. More likely, his
mind centered on cowboying and his lariat, and he
derived more satisfaction from his pals and the dances
than he did from school.
The
log-walled ranch house was remote but not isolated.
If visitors’ horses had no cockleburs in their
tails, travelers were treated to food, bed, and warm
hospitality in exchange for conversation and the
latest news.
Devoid
of electricity and faucet water and with electronic
media absent on the 19th Century frontier, family
and folks would talk, sing, play music, and dance
at the popular “White House on the Verdigris
River,” where painted white clapboard disguised
the log walls. Life was person-to-person and entertainment
self-generated.
This
was the newly-settled, post Civil War Cherokee
Nation that 28 years following Will Rogers’s
birth in 1879 would become the 46th State of Oklahoma.
Clem Rogers, the father, was the unchallenged ranch
boss, but also a judge and then a senator in the
Cherokee Legislature. He was elected as a delegate
to the new state’s constitutional convention. Espousing
a hard work ethic, Clem Rogers at home was astraddle
a horse from dawn until dusk supervising
his ranch, cowboys, and livestock that sometime
included 10,000 Texas Longhorns. He had built an
empire after
four years as a cavalry captain in the “war
between the states,” fighting for the South.... Find
the rest of this exciting article and more by
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to American
Cowboy magazine...
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