Cowgirl Up! (2 page)

Montana's Greenough sisters, Fannie Sperry Steele, Marie Gibson, Bobby Brooks Kramer, Jane Burnett Smith, the Brander sisters, trick riders Birdie Askin and Trixi McCormick, and pickup rider Ann Secrest Hanson proved that athleticism and femininity are not mutually exclusive.

The
London Evening News
validated these accomplishments in its report of the cowgirls in the Tex Austin Wild West Troupe in 1924: “It is amazing to see these slips of girls take fearful tosses while fighting outlaw horses, and then half an hour later it is still more amazing to see these same girls strolling out to tea in their Parisian frocks.”

The following quote about Lucille Mulhall of Oklahoma in a 1900
New York World
article could also have described most of these Montana women: “. . . only ninety pounds, can break a bronc, lasso and brand a steer, and shoot a coyote at 500 yards. She can also play Chopin, quote Browning, and make mayonnaise.”

In the late 1800s and early 1900s the public image of rodeo cow-girls was as “loose women” because they participated in a tough, dangerous men's occupation; traveled around the country with men; and often wore men's clothing. They were generally not thought of as wives and mothers, and rodeo riding was considered detrimental to women's reproductive organs, but most of them did have children, like Margie Greenough Henson. In fact she told the
Arizona Daily Star
in a 1994 interview, “In the fall of 1930, I was riding bucking broncs and he [her son, Chuck] was born in February of '31.”

Margie's sister, Alice, was quoted in
Physical Culture
magazine in 1937:

A cow-woman takes no coddling, gets no martyr complex just because she is going to have a baby. She rides in the show up until two months before she expects the child—and she is back in the saddle, bronc-riding in contest not later than six weeks afterward. This is the reward of developing strong backs, erect posture, educated muscles.

Women with curved spines and swayed abdomens, with half the muscles in their bodies wasted from lack of exercise and use, who fear childbirth because they have not kept their bodies natural, wonder why their lives are not rich, full, vital—yet they never dream that the violation of natural health law is the cause of everything.

Even Annie Oakley said, “I think sport and healthful exercise makes women better, healthier and happier.”

Marie Gibson of Havre, mother of three children and a world champion bronc rider, also helped disprove the widespread belief that athletic women were incapable of childbearing and unsuitable for marriage.

This idea of the danger of riding to femininity had its roots in feudal times when royal families, in an effort to offset the accidental loss of virginity, prohibited aristocratic girls from riding astride.

The nineteenth-century medical profession also warned that if women “unduly exerted themselves,” they would be more likely than men to suffer nervous exhaustion, known as “neurasthenic disease.” They held the belief that too much exercise could harm female participants, physically and psychologically, and detract from or even diminish their femininity. Physicians counseled young women to curtail their physical and even intellectual activity during their menstrual periods, and gave medical advice such as, “Long walks are to be avoided . . . all severe physical exertion . . . intense mental excitement, such as a fit of anger or grief or even intense joy may be injurious.”

And still in 1912
Harper's Bazaar
, a popular American magazine for women, posed an ominous question about exercise and fertility with its article titled “Are Athletics a Menace to Motherhood?” Nearly seventy-five years later, an article in the same women's magazine continued to wonder, “Can Sports Make You Sterile?”

Even physical education instructors in the late 1890s strongly opposed competition among women, fearing it would make them less feminine. And women rodeo riders faced the same social stigma well into the 1900s.

Montana women knew innately that if they were strong enough and good enough to do men's work, they could certainly compete with them. Ben Greenough of Red Lodge (who earned the first recorded Montana bronc riding title in 1898) gathered wild horses, broke them, and sold them. He would point out several unbroken mounts, saying, “Well, Frank, take this. Alice, you take that. And Marge, take that one.” His mantra to his eight children (including his daughters) was, “If you can't ride 'em, walk.” And they did. “We didn't walk very often,” Alice quipped. It was said Ben knew that by the time those wild horses got tired of trying to dislodge his tenacious daughters, they would be tame enough for the average person to ride.

Alice and Margie began riding in rodeos in 1929 with their brothers Bill and Turk as the “Riding Greenoughs.”

Fannie Sperry (Steele) was practically born on the back of a horse. Her mother rode with her babies perched in front of her on the saddle. Fannie helped her mother and brother take care of their ranch in the Beartooth Mountains when her father became disabled. A consummate horse lover, she began her career at a neighborhood rodeo in 1901 at age fourteen, when she rode a wild bronc she had captured herself.

Fannie went on to become a record holder in the relay race, Montana Lady Bucking Horse Champion in 1907, and Lady Bucking Horse Champion of the World at the first Calgary Stampede in 1912. But she and the other Montana cowgirls heard remarks such as, “Most ladies I know wear dresses.” “If you ask me, they oughtta keep those fool women out of exhibition. A female ain't got no business on a bucking horse.” “Ruins the event for us men.” “Women are built for havin' babies, not riding broncs.”

Just after hearing the thrilling words, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Lady Bucking Horse Champion of Montana—Fannieeee . . . Sperry!” and the roar of the crowd, spectators surged onto the field to congratulate her. But Fannie was also painfully aware of a group of women passing by with disdainful looks and she overheard, “What kind of a lady would make such a spectacle of herself?”

One newspaper article reiterated the Victorian belief that “Horseback riding is physically unhygienic for women, except when the sidesaddle is employed.” Fannie and her friends just laughed.

Even Fannie's own mother worried about her daughter's reputation, telling her after her debut bronc ride, “I heard some rude remarks when you climbed onto that bronco. Riding and breaking horses for the ranch is one thing. A public display is another. Besides, it's too risky.”

Later, after Fannie had convinced her mother to allow her to participate in relay races, Mrs. Sperry still had reservations: “I know horses ain't the only fast things at them races.” And when Fannie wanted to attend the Calgary Stampede, her dad was reluctant to let her go, saying, “It isn't proper for a twenty-five-year-old woman to be parading herself like that. You should be thinking about settling down.”

Cowgirls were also criticized for the clothing they wore.
Practical Etiquette
, published in 1899, stated “It is very bad taste, even for a frolic, for a young woman to assume boys' clothes, or get herself up in any way that will tend to make herself look masculine.”

A study published by
The Female Offender
in 1895 posited that “women who looked and acted like males were probably congenital criminals.”

And, according to the
New York Times
in May 1867, “any women who thirst[ed] for trousers was mentally ill, the victim of a curious mental disorder that involved hysteria and hallucinations.”

Even in the early 1940s, bronc rider Jane Burnett Smith encountered criticism when she arrived at Madison Square Garden. Riding in an elevator, one woman remarked to another, “Look at what she's wearing. How can they walk with those things on their feet?”

“And those tight pants,” the other woman added. “Imagine going out in public dressed like that.”

Annie Oakley was the most famous Old West personality and the forerunner of the rodeo cowgirl. She toured with Buffalo Bill for seventeen years as an expert marksman. All this while wearing dresses.

But while working their ranches, women discovered that riding astride—as Native American women had done since the mid-seventeenth century—was much more practical and comfortable, less tiring and dangerous than sidesaddle, and cowgirls who rode astride gained a slow acceptance.

The December 1906
Ladies Home Journal
stated, “Many young girls are now taught to ride cross-saddle, as the old style of sidesaddle is thought to make a girl become crooked.”

Necessity being the mother of invention, and since most women were handy at sewing, they began to remodel their long skirts into the split riding skirt. Even with that adaptation, the skirts were still long, voluminous, and cumbersome. But that didn't seem to cramp the cowgirls' style. They rode bucking broncs and bulls and roped and tied steers, often beating their male counterparts.

Despite these accomplishments, this progressive fashion was frowned upon, as Evelyn Cameron found out in 1895. The English photographer, turned Montana rancher, cantered into Miles City one fine August day, wearing a split riding skirt she had made herself. While doing her shopping, she was suddenly confronted by a group of outraged townswomen, backed by the sheriff, who threatened her with arrest if she didn't leave town.

“After riding into town forty-eight miles from the ranch, I was much amused at the laughing and giggling girls who stood staring at my costume as I walked about,” she wrote later.

Cowgirls were not to be thwarted, however. They had discovered this fashion as a riding tool. The newspaper in Havre, Montana, August 1897, reported:

There were six young women who competed in the bronc riding competition. The broncos chosen were as villainous a crew of ponies as ever got together. The riders wore a combination costume of cowboy and bicycler's wardrobes. There was no pretense about sidesaddles as all the broncos were ridden astraddle. The mix-ups were so lively that it seemed the riders would be reduced to their high heeled boots. Sombreros and whips were lost, the riders' long hair whipped in the wind, and their clothes had the appearance of having been used as street sweepers. But there were no serious rents in garments and not even a scratch on any pretty face.

One of Fannie Sperry's teammates on the relay team sported a new costume on a tour stop in Denver in 1906—full calf-length “bloomers,” gathered above her boots and topped with a matching short top. This style had been introduced by the flamboyant Prairie Rose Henderson of Wyoming, who created quite a stir with this “racy” look.

While Fannie's first response was “Where's your skirt?” she and her friends decided this costume looked very practical, so they had black bloomers made for the team. They created their own stir when they debuted in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They were greeted with gasps and tittering, then whistles and hoots, from the grandstand. But this response did not deter them; they continued to wear their new comfortable, practical outfits.

Other cowgirls found similar comfortable costumes for rodeo riding. Marie Gibson was shown in photos wearing split skirts, jodhpurs, or slacks. Each cowgirl dressed distinctively, many wearing calf-length split skirts made of leather and embellished with fringe, beads, or brass studs. Colorful satin shirts, bright silk scarves, and tall wide-brimmed hats added to the costume.