by David Wolman
Tahiti, 12–13
Tall Bull, 105
Taylor, John, 181
Taylor, Marshall “Major,” 181
Texas, 136, 159
Thurston, Lucy, 86n
Tonquin, 19
trade and industry, 3, 17, 28
fur, 19, 36n, 109n
sandalwood, 18–19, 26, 28
sugar, 82–83, 85
U.S.-Hawaii, 28
whaling, 32–33, 44–46, 109n
Transcontinental Railroad, 52, 173
Trollope, Anthony, 57–58
Twain, Mark, 101–102, 217
Two-Bar ranch, 66
ukulele, 82
Ulupalakua Ranch, 212–13, 215
Under-a-Minute corral, 163
Union Pacific Railroad, 63, 69
United States, 169–70
African Americans in, 144, 149–51, 181
Alien and Sedition Acts in, 21–22
Army of, 69, 97
Chinese immigrants in, 173–74
Civil War in, 52, 53, 56, 65, 98
Fourth of July holiday of, 64–65, 66, 131–32
Hawaii and, 17, 28, 44–45
Hawaii annexed by, 2–3, 46, 101–104, 107–108, 131, 133, 136, 164, 165, 212
imperialism of, 22, 101–102, 104
Louisiana Purchase of, 22
Manifest Destiny concept and, 22, 46, 101, 104
Native Americans in, see Native Americans
in Spanish-American War, 100–101, 104, 169
tourism in, 178
Transcontinental Railroad in, 52, 173
Utah, 174–76
Vancouver, George, 7–9, 13–17, 20, 25
vaqueros, 35–39, 56, 64, 88, 122, 172
wahine manuahi, 85
Waimea, 24, 27, 29–33, 39, 40, 44, 47, 81, 82, 88, 94, 132, 163, 219–20
Waimea Boys, 127, 138, 140, 156, 165, 214
see also Ka‘au‘a, Archie; Low, Jack; Purdy, Ikua
Weddick, Dr., 126–27
whaling, 32–33, 44–46, 109n
Wild West shows, 129–30, 210
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, 50, 99–100, 105–106, 146, 155–56
see also rodeos
Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 109
Winters, Johnny “Cheyenne,” 161
wolf roping, 192
women’s rights, 144–45, 147, 148
Wood, Leonard, 156
World’s Columbian Exposition, 109
Wounded Knee Massacre, 106, 142
Wyoming, 1, 2, 3, 49, 53–54, 57, 58, 66, 68, 73, 107, 144, 176–78
Cheyenne, see Cheyenne, Wyo.
divorce laws in, 145
population growth in, 60
women’s rights in, 144–45
Wyoming State Tribune, 70–71
Wyoming Times, 143, 177, 178–79, 186, 187, 204
Wyoming Tribune, 148, 180
Young, Brigham, 175–76
Photo Section
Kamehameha I (Bishop Museum)
Captain George Vancouver (National Portrait Gallery)
John Palmer Parker, founder of Parker Ranch (Parker Ranch Archives)
On a visit to Hawaii in the late 1950s, photographer Ansel Adams was captivated by the landscapes of Parker Ranch. At its peak, the ranch covered 300,000 acres on Hawaii. (Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust)
Archie Ka‘au‘a about to lead a “treed” wild bullock down the slope of Mauna Kea in 1906 (Sam Low)
Driving cattle into the surf was the final step before loading them onto ships. (Bishop Museum)
(L–R) Paniolo Ikua Purdy, Archie Ka‘au‘a, and Willie Spencer (Bishop Museum)
Eben Low (North Hawai‘i Education and Research Center)
Paniolo were featured on Hawaiian currency printed in 1895.
Lowering the Hawaiian flag over ‘Iolani Palace during the annexation ceremony on August 12, 1898 (Hawaii State Archives / Photograph by Frank Davey)
Rodeo star Bill Pickett was famous for “bulldogging”: taking down a bull using only his teeth. (Wyoming State Archives)
Trailblazing bronco rider Bertha Kaepernick (Wyoming State Archives)
Angus MacPhee, left (Denver Public Library)
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in 1907 (Wyoming State Archives)
Dick Stanley at Frontier Days in 1909, before his true identity was discovered (Wyoming State Archives)
Steer roping was one of the most popular events at Frontier Days. (Wyoming State Archives)
Theodore Roosevelt presided over the opening ceremonies of Frontier Days in 1910. (WyomingTalesandTrails.com)
The Cheyenne Daily Leader’s special 1908 Frontier Days issue
In the wild bronco race, each contestant had to saddle his own mount before riding around the track.
Ikua Purdy tying his first steer at Frontier Days, 1908 (Wyoming State Archives)
The Honolulu Sunday Advertiser carried news of the paniolo’s victory.
Ikua Purdy later in life (Billy Bergin)
(L–R) Archie Ka‘au‘a, Eben Low, Ikua Purdy (Ka‘au‘a Collection)
A statue in Waimea, Hawaii, commemorates Ikua’s legend. (Julian Smith)
About the Authors
DAVID WOLMAN is a contributing editor at Outside. A longtime contributing editor at Wired, he also has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, Nature, and many other publications, and his work has been anthologized in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. He is the author of The End of Money, Righting the Mother Tongue, and A Left-Hand Turn Around the World. David lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family.
JULIAN SMITH received a Banff Mountain Book Competition Award and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award for Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure. The coauthor of Smokejumper: A Memoir by One of America’s Most Select Airborne Firefighters, he has written for Smithsonian, National Geographic Traveler, Wired, Outside, and the Washington Post, among other publications. Julian lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Copyright
ALOHA RODEO. Copyright © 2019 by David Wolman and Julian Smith. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Stephen Brayda
Cover photograph by L. E. Edgeworth, Bishop Museum; © ShEd Artworks/Shutterstock (border)
Maps by Paul J. Pugliese
Digital Edition MAY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-283602-1
Version 04162019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-283600-7
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* According to Hawaiian oral traditions, Spanish, and possibly Dutch, travelers reached Hawaii before Cook.
* The eastern flank of Mauna Kea was wet and foggy. Yet in the rain shadow just a few miles west, the arid terrain was vulnerable to the impacts of trampling and grazing. In the driest months of the year, it looked like the landscape of the American Southwest, even more so after the introduction of thorny mesquite and cactus.
* Missionaries also learned Hawaiian, but their ultimate purpose was always saving souls.
* Today bullock refers to a castrated bull, aka a steer, or sometimes just a young uncastrated bull. But at the time it referred to wild cattle of either sex.
* When Kamehameha the Great died in 1919, he was succeeded by his sons Liholiho (Kamehameha II) and later Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III).
* Before the first vaqueros traveled to the islands, there were at least a handful of Hawaiians in Spanish California and along the West Coast working aboard fur-trading vessels. An American traveler to San Diego in the 1830s reported “a dozen or twenty” Hawaiians working as “hide-curers, handlers, etc. They were greatly esteemed as hands for the vessels plying up and down the coast of California.” It’s possible that some of them were riding horses and roping cattle before Kamehameha III made his request for vaquero tutors, in which case they may be considered the first Hawaiian cowboys.
* Parker’s open-mindedness had its limits. When his daughter, Mary, fell in love with and married a Hawaiian man, he cast her out of the family.
* Richards would be remembered for a pardon he granted to a convicted horse rustler “so that he may have the chance to become an upstanding citizen and possibly encourage his associates to do the same.” The rustler’s name was Robert Leroy Parker, alias George “Butch” Cassidy.
* Because of Purdy, the pansy became a symbol of paniolo culture, worn to this day by riders during festivals and parades.
* In 1878, the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen moved to Maui at age thirteen to live with his brother, a successful businessman. He attended the ‘Iolani School in Honolulu, then returned to China to lead the 1911 revolution and become the first president of the Republic of China.
* During the twentieth century, the world of the paniolo became a critical reservoir for preserving the language, as it came under assault by missionary and government policies intended to eradicate Hawaiian altogether.
* Lucy Thurston, an American missionary who arrived in Kailua-Kona in the 1820s, rode sidesaddle when she first arrived in the islands. Many years later, a witness to Ms. Thurston’s riding noted that she “rides astride & wears spurs.”
* Kailua-Kona was another major cattle-shipping port, as was Napo‘opo‘o at Kealakekua Bay.
* Peaceful only in the sense of no armed conflict; smallpox and measles brought by outsiders killed as much as 75 percent of Hawaii’s native population.
* In 1959, one final star would be added when Hawaii became the fiftieth state.
* Performers may have been the most visible Hawaiians on the mainland, but by the turn of the century there were others scattered around North America. Hawaiians worked whaling ships and trapped furs for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and herded sheep in Washington’s San Juan Islands.
* His cousin James founded the Hawaii Pineapple Company, the precursor of today’s multinational colossus Dole Food.
* Early contests required tying all four legs, but the rule was later changed to three.
* Some black cowboys had their stories recast with white protagonists. One of the models for the Lone Ranger was Bass Reeves, the first black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi. Reeves made over 3,000 arrests, including bringing in his own son on murder charges. The 1956 John Wayne film The Searchers, and the novel it was based on, was inspired by the story of Britt Johnson, also an African American cowboy, whose wife and two children were captured by Comanches in 1864.
* Sutter also owned the mill where gold was discovered in 1848.
* At its peak, the settlement of Kalaupapa, Molokai, was home to 1,200 men, women, and children. The isolation law lasted until 1969.
* The woman who made the original accusation eventually recanted, saying her attacker had not in fact been black.
* By the 1930s the show had moved to Atlantic City’s Steel Pier, where its new performer was Harriet Keonaonalaulani Purdy Kauaihilo, Ikua’s niece, billed as the “Hawaiian Human Cannonball.”