
Glory Days Restored: Ceremonial Rodeo Features Fun for Everyone

The rodeo was nearly cancelled last year. Byerley said he received a call from McKinley County Commissioner Carol Bowman-Muskett and New Mexico State Rep. Patty Lundstrom, D-Gallup.
They asked him if he could take charge and make a rodeo happen. And he did. With only about six weeks to organize it, Byerley put together a decent rodeo that made money.
The rodeo budget was increased this year and Byerley reports that with support from the community...
Rodeo was a family affair

In the late 1800s some cowboys in either Arizona or West Texas, or both, decided to hold a contest to see which cattle outfit had the best group of hands. It is said that the events were patterned after actual cowboy activities, but what ranch actually made their men ride bucking steers? Every small town in the West soon had its own rodeo.
The contestants in these contests were not professionals who did nothing but rodeo, but working men who got together once...
Dust, sweat and bruises: ceremonial rodeo revives old time events

When the Gallup Ceremonial was started in 1922, it was seen as a program of traditional Indian dances as well as a showcase for Native arts and crafts. But the Fourth of July celebrations held in town since Mr. Gallup went on down the tracks, had also featured a variety of races and a few rodeo events.
The sport of rodeo was just getting national attention at the time and few towns had arenas with permanent bucking chutes, regular rules, and profession riders and ropers. In fact, they didn’t have ropers at all. Who wanted to chase a frightened calf through the sagebrush?
For the most part the horses and steers—they hadn’t discovered the...
The Navajo People’s ‘AKALII’ Legendary Cowboy Clarence Peterson

Clarence Begay was born in the month of the “Great Wind” on December 20, 1937 and blessed to Rose Myers-Peterson and Bigboy Begay of Steamboat, Ariz. In time, he changed his namesake to Clarence Peterson, is a rodeo performance name.
Clarence was always a wrangler. He broke and tamed wild horses and roped cattle in his adolescence years near the coal mine where his father had mined coal within...
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