Where I’m Beginning

I’ve talked quite a bit about Windows into the West, but I haven’t officially introduced where I’m starting.

The first chapter will explore early rodeo and Wild West shows.

I chose this period because it gives me a strong place to begin. Cowboys and horses, competition, performers, saddles and silver, photographers, artists, craftsmen, famous names and people whose stories have nearly disappeared all intersect here.

I’m also starting here because rodeo is already part of the world around me. I have friends and family involved in it, and I love the excitement, the horses, the people and the energy around a rodeo. The more time I spend around current rodeo, the more curious I become about where it came from. What did these events look like before rodeo became the sport we know now? Which skills came directly from ranch work? Who were the people doing it, and what were they riding?

The photograph above is one I'm fascinated by. L.A. Huffman’s Bucked Off was photographed sometime before 1898 and shows a cowboy in midair above a bucking horse on the open range in Montana. It may be the earliest known photograph to capture a bucking horse with a cowboy in midair.¹

What interests me is that this was not taken in a rodeo arena. Huffman was photographing working cowboy life on the range, carrying glass plate camera equipment into the field and sometimes even photographing from horseback.  This one photo gives me the cowboy, the horse, the working West and the photographer who made sure that moment survived. There is a much bigger story there, and I’ll come back to it.

Wild West shows add another part of the story. Real people, horses and Western skills were being presented to large audiences, while photographers, posters, newspapers, artists and promoters helped shape how those people were seen. The surviving photographs were not always simply records. Photographers and other image makers were also making choices about how the West would be presented.

I want to know the people, including the ones we all recognize and the ones we probably should know better. I want to understand what they actually wore, the horses they rode, the tack they used and the objects connected to them. I want to know who built the saddles, who engraved the firearms, who created the leather and silver patterns and where those designs came from.

I’m equally interested in the people behind the images. Who was behind the camera? Who created the posters? Who wrote the stories people read? How much of the person we remember today came from the person themselves, and how much came from the artists, photographers and promoters around them?

This chapter will eventually include portraits, horses, saddles, firearms, silverwork, clothing, flowers, photographs, posters and the people who made them. Some of those connections are already obvious to me. Others I haven’t found yet.

I expect to spend about two years exploring this chapter, so there is no reason to fit the whole story into the beginning. I have time to meet the people, look closely at the objects, travel to the places where it happened and understand more of the history as the paintings develop.

I’m hoping my next stop is Pendleton, where I can start digging into some of that history in person.

This is where Windows into the West begins.

Kim Randleas

Footnotes

¹ The Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center identifies L.A. Huffman’s photograph Bucked Off as the earliest known photograph to capture a bucking horse with a cowboy in midair, taken on the unfenced range. https://montanacowboyfame.org/inductees/2023/3/laton-alton-la-huffman-miles-city

Image Credit

L. A. Huffman, Bucked Off, c. 1898. Via the Montana History Portal, MHS Photo Archives #981-583.