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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Show

Spain.  September 1932.  Alice Greenough, a seasoned cowgirl, sits astride an angry steer.  In the place of a saddle a surcingle, a sort of plastic girdle has been fashioned around the animal’s back and cinched to his stomach.  He doesn’t like it.  Alice’s attractive face is focused as she secures a good grip on the flat braided rope tied to the steer’s flank.  When she was ready the bucking chute opened, and the angry beast stormed into the arena.  The spectators were on their feet, cheering.  Alice was quickly thrown from the steer’s back, but not off the animal entirely.  He wouldn’t stop kicking and jumping long enough for the rider to drop safely to the ground.  Matadors dressed in traditional garb raced to the scene and threw their capes over the steer’s head to slow him.  Finally, the cowgirl leapt off.

Thirty-year-old Alice was one of only six people in history, and the only woman, to avoid injury riding a steer with a surcingle.  Bullfighting fans erupted with applause at the achievement.  Alice bowed and waved at the enthusiastic onlookers.

Alice was born daring.  Her parents, Benjamin and Myrtle Greenough, were residents of Red Lodge, Montana.  They welcomed their daughter to the world on March 17, 1902.  Benjamin was a rancher, and his seven children helped him work the property.  Alice learned to rope and ride at a young age.  By the time she was fourteen she was delivering the U. S. mail on horseback to friends and neighbors along a thirty-seven-mile route around Billings.  She was still in grammar school when she began riding saddle broncs at local rodeos, and a few years later, she and her sister Marge were hired by the Jack King Wild West Show to be trick riding performers.

Alice won the World’s Championship in women’s bronc riding in Boston in 1933, 35, and 36, and again in 1940 in New York.  Her professional career spanned more than twenty-four years.  She was one of the stars of the Madison Square Garden rodeo for eighteen straight seasons.  She traveled throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada competing for titles in relay racing, trick roping and riding.  Alice toured England and Australia and in 1934 won the women’s bronc riding event in Melbourne.  During her travels, she met with British royalty including King George V and the Duke of Windsor.

Not content with performing solely in Wild West Shows, Alice was eventually hired as a stunt woman for motion pictures and provided riding lessons to the King of the Cowboys and the Queen of the West, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Alice was married twice, to Roy Cabill and then to Joe Orr.  She and Joe created their own show, the Greenough-Orr Rodeo.  Their rodeo featured the first woman’s barrel racing event.  Not only did Alice help produce the various shows, but she also participated in the acts as well.

Alice Greenough-Orr was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1985.  She passed away at the age of ninety-three at her home in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995.

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and the Wild West Shows 

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Cowgirl Mamie Francis sat atop her horse, Babe, waiting for the director of California Frank Hafley’s Wild West show to let her know when the program began.  Mamie and Babe were perched on a wooden platform thirty feet in the air over Coney Island, New York, looking down at the audience in the grandstands.  Directly below the platform was a forty-foot tank filled to overflowing with water.  It was the summer of 1908.

Mamie gently urged Babe to the edge of the platform, both stood like a beautiful statue surveying the landscape before them.  After receiving the signal, Mamie coaxed Babe forward.  The horse pushed away from the boards and lunged outward into space.  Moments later, rider and horse entered the water in the tank with a giant splash.  When they came to the surface, the audience erupted in applause.  Mamie patted Babe’s neck as the horse carried her up the ramp and out the tank.

Born in Nora, Illinois, on September 8, 1885, to Charles and Anna Ghent, and given the name Elba Mae, Mamie was an accomplished equestrienne by the time she turned sixteen.  Her parents moved from Illinois to Wisconsin when she was a baby.  Her mother worked for a farmer who owned several horses, and it was there she learned how to ride and use a gun to hunt.  When Pawnee Bill’s Wild West show stopped in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for a two-night performance, Mamie was in the audience to take in the excitement.  Before the show left town, she had signed on to be one of the entertainers.

As Mamie excelled at riding and shooting, that’s what Pawnee Bill had her do in the show.  In time, she would be billed the greatest horseback and rifle shot in the world.  Mamie met her first husband, trick rider Herbert Skepper, shortly after joining the show.  The pair was married on July 7, 1901.

By 1905, Mamie had left the Pawnee Bill’s Wild West show and divorced Skepper.  Charles Francis Hafley and his wife, trick shooter Lillian Smith, were familiar with Mamie’s talents and sought her out to join Hafley’s Wild West show.  She happily agreed to be a part of the troupe.  During her time with the experienced group, Mamie perfected her own sharpshooting routine, tried her hand at bronc riding, and even mastered a few rope tricks.  In late 1907, she added horse diving to her repertoire.  Known as the Diving Equestrienne, she and Babe made over six hundred jumps between 1907 and 1914.

When Mamie stopped horse diving, she turned her attention solely to sharpshooting, trick riding, and training horses to compete in dressage* events.  Mamie married Charles Hafley in November 1909, a year after he and Lillian Smith divorced.  The two managed the Wild West show for thirty-one years.

Mamie Francis Hafley died on February 15, 1950.  She was sixty-four years old.

*The art of riding and training a horse in a manner that develops obedience, flexibility, and balance.

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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Twenty-three-year-old Marie Gibson straddled a cantankerous bronco waiting inside a chute at the Havre Stampede in Havre, Montana. It was July 1917, and this ride would be the cowgirl’s first as a professional. Long, black curls dangled from the wide sombrero atop her head, and she wore men’s riding breeches and a flamboyant silk shirt to match. When the onery bronc was set free, he bolted into the rodeo arena kicking and bucking. Marie held on, refusing to be thrown. She placed third in the women’s bucking contest but promised to return the following year to beat the riders that finished first and second – Fanny Sperry Steele and Fox Hastings.

Marie Antoinette Massoz Dumont Gibson was born in Holland, Manitoba, Canada on August 18, 1894. Her father operated a stable and trained horses at their family home in North Dakota. Marie learned to break horses at an early age and had a natural talent for trick riding.   When she was sixteen, she married a businessman named Wilford Joseph Dumont and the couple moved to Canada. They had three children and when their marriage ended in 1916, Marie moved to Montana and found work on a ranch in Havre. It was there she honed her riding skills and learned to rope steers.

After her debut at the Havre Stampede, Marie went to Canada where she rode in more than a dozen rodeos. She was the sole supporter for her family and, in an effort to add to her winnings, she often announced that for a collection from the audience she would ride any horse brought into the arena. Marie was hired to perform with several Wild West shows and traveled all over the world demonstrating her trick riding skills.

Marie married professional bronc rider Tom Gibson in 1919. Five years after their wedding, Tom was involved in a car crash that left him crippled.  Marie became the sole supporter for her family. She participated in several rodeos winning titles in steer riding and the money that went along with it. A series of minor accidents while taking part in bronc riding events left her with permanent injuries that required her to use a cane when she walked. But Marie did not let the disability come between her and taking part in various rodeos. She was named Women’s World Bronc Riding Champion at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1925.

In 1931, after winning her third championship, she was badly hurt at a rodeo in Great Falls, Montana, when she was thrown from a horse called Scar Face. As she was coming out of the chute, her foot caught in the fence, tearing her boot almost off her foot.  Marie lost her balance and was thrown violently. The horse then turned and struck her with both feet. The next day she rode with a bandaged head.

The plucky champion didn’t fear injury or death. When a reporter asked her about the many times she had been hurt riding she simply said, “It’s to be expected, but the sport is in one’s blood. It’s also a fine way to earn a living.”

Marie Gibson died on September 23, 1933, when her ride accidentally fell on her at a rodeo in Idaho Falls, Idaho. She was thirty-nine years old.

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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Fashionably dressed bronc rider Bertha Kaepernik picked herself up from the dust and mud of the rodeo arena in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in August 1904, and wiped the dirt out of her eyes. She had just been thrown from a big gray horse, a bucker of the worst type. “Why of course I’m going to ride him again,” she told the rodeo officials. The charming and resilient cowgirl from Sterling, Colorado, was determined to show the crowd that the hard fall she had just received was merely a slight incident in the life of a woman who wanted to make a name for herself busting outlaw horses.

The big gray was brought back after a long chase down the arena, and Bertha once more swung into the saddle.  Spurs were sunk, and the quirt was brought down on the animal’s flanks; however he was tired of the routine and merely stampeded, much to the disgust of the daring rider.

Urging her horse back to the judge’s stand, Bertha called for another horse. A little roan containing the combined elevating power of a volcano and a charge of dynamite was brought out and duly saddled after a hard fight in which the animal tried to kill the horse wrangler by striking the man down with iron shod hooves.  The roan’s cantankerous attitude didn’t seem to faze her.  She was ready for whatever was to come.

Grasping the saddle horn with one hand and deftly inserting one foot in the stirrup and then swinging into the saddle with a nicety that left her well balanced for any jump the horse might make, Bertha was away on her rough voyage.  The roan proved to be a better bucker than the big gray that had thrown her.  He pitched and flipped and changed ends, but Bertha was in the saddle to stay.  She rode upright until the horse fairly wore himself out.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1883, Bertha Kaepernik made history in 1904 by becoming the first woman to ride a bucking horse at Cheyenne Frontier Days. She would go on to win the bucking championship at the Pendleton Roundup in Oregon in 1911, 1912, and 1914.

Not only was Bertha an accomplished bronco buster, but she also established the world record for the Roman race, making a quarter mile in eight seconds at Pendleton. She also set a record for a female Roman rider at the Washington Rodeo in Walla Walla.

In 1909 she married Dell Blancett, a trick rider for the Bison Moving Picture Company. He was killed in action during World War I.

In addition to competing in rodeos, she was a stunt woman working on some of the first Western films which starred Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson. She traveled extensively across the United States and Europe while working for Pawnee Bill’s Wild West show and the 101 Ranch Wild West show. When her career in rodeos and motion pictures ended, she became a guide at Yosemite National Park. She died at the age of ninety-five on July 3, 1979.

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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Professional bronc rider Kitty Canutt grabbed a stick of wood lying next to a horse stall at the rodeo grounds in Spokane, Washington, and smacked champion relay racer Donna Card in the mouth with it. The incident occurred in early September 1918 and was the start of a feud between the cowgirls that would continue until their passings.

Kitty, wife of famed Hollywood movie stuntman Yakima Canutt, was upset with Donna over the way she behaved in the women’s relay race at the Spokane Rodeo. She claimed Donna fouled her in the third lap by crowding her into the fence. She complained to the judges, and, after investigating the charge, they determined Donna had run a clean race. Kitty was furious over the ruling and confronted Donna about the perceived indiscretion.  Kitty was disqualified from riding in any other events at the rodeo and was fined $25 for her violent outburst.  Donna went on to win the trophy as top relay racer.

Missoula, Montana, born Donna Card was a horseback riding phenomenon. She was an expert trick roper and fancy rider who won numerous championships, but her expertise was the women’s relay. Often associated with the Drumheller Company, a respected ranching firm that raised thoroughbred horses used in relay races, Donna was considered by rodeo enthusiasts to be one of the best women riders in the field.

The relay race required riders to make three laps around the track, changing horses at the end of the first and second laps. It was compulsory for riders to touch the ground with both feet when making horse changes. Early on, the relay race was considered a man’s game because of the danger and physical effort necessary in changing mounts. Donna was one of a few who proved women could become as good in the ranch sport as the men.

Donna frequently competed against accomplished relay racers Vera McGinnis and Mary Harsh. The women’s relay was considered by most rodeo attendees as the most spectacular of the events. Vera and Donna generally finished first and second in the contest, with Donna beating Vera for the top spot most of the time.

In 1918, Donna’s big win at the Spokane Rodeo made headlines. “Among the most interesting races of the day was the women’s relay, in which three strings were entered,” an article in the September 3, 1918, edition of the Spokesman Review read. “Miss Donna Card, clad in blue and white silk, was the winner, negotiating the two miles in three minutes forty-seven seconds.”

Donna defeated the world’s champion relay racer, Mabel Strickland, at the Spokane fair in September 1922. She took a commanding lead in the first lap and held it throughout the race. So outrode both Mable and Kitty Canutt.

In addition to being recognized for her efforts in relay racing, Donna was also a fashion trendsetter. The blue satin riding skirt, white jersey, and patent leather slippers worn at the Yankee Stadium Rodeo in New York in 1923 was duplicated by clothing designers in attendance and sold to the public.

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows