Rodeo Roots

If you are from the Midwest you know about riding horses, roping, ranching and such. You may have even participated in the 4H club in your school. As you grew older you may have competed in the Junior Rodeo and then graduated to high school and maybe even went to the professional arena. But did you ever stop to think about who really started it. The origins may surprise you.

The modern gold-and-rhinestone, big-money televised sport of rodeo owes just about everything—its traditions, its attitudes, its fashions—to rough-and-tumble Mexican cowboys of the early 1800s. The ranch hands, known as va...