Ep. 19: Cowboy Christmas: Rodeo in Texas
Wise About Texas
Ken Wise
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2016
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Merry Christmas…that’s Cowboy Christmas of course. July 4 is called Cowboy Christmas because of all the great rodeos held around the 4th of July holiday. In this episode we take a look at the history of rodeo going all the way back to the 16th century. Learn how the modern sport of rodeo evolved from old Mexico to modern day Texas. It all seemed to happen on and around July 4! Saddle up and hang on for a great ride through Texas history and learn about the surprise 1843 rodeo that led to an indian peace treaty!
Striking rodeo cowboys at Boston Garden
Florear de la reata
Jack Hays in 1844, when he organized the comanche rodeo in San Antonio
Jaripeo gone very wrong!
Prescott rodeo bronc ride
Charro pulling a bull’s tail
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the Texas History Podcast. I hope everyone's |
| 0:19.7 | having a nice summer. It sure is hot down here in in Texas but of course that's no surprise. |
| 0:24.8 | I still marvel at how our forefather settled this state without air conditioning but |
| 0:29.3 | as we know they were tough. |
| 0:31.3 | Well we crossed another threshold with the show last week when the |
| 0:34.3 | show reached over 20,000 downloads. I'm very excited that this podcast is |
| 0:39.0 | reaching so many people. I started this thing to preserve and promote Texas history and it's certainly working. |
| 0:44.8 | I hope you'll tell your friends about the show and help preserve the stories of Texas. |
| 0:49.6 | And I'm releasing this episode on July 4th, 2016, so I want to say happy birthday to the USA |
| 0:56.1 | But as the title of this show references |
| 0:58.3 | July 4th is also known as cowboy Christmas the reason for that is so many rodeos take place around July 4th. |
| 1:05.7 | Rodeo is the official state sport for the state of Texas, so on this cowboy Christmas, |
| 1:10.3 | I'm going to fill you in on how rodeo came to be a sport and a few more tidbits about the official sport of Texas. |
| 1:17.0 | Now as I'll talk about toward the end of this episode, Rodeo is near and dear to my heart so over the hopefully years of this show |
| 1:24.8 | I'll have a lot to say about the sport of rodeo and the great cowboys and cowgirls |
| 1:29.1 | involved in the sport. For this first episode though I want to go back to the beginning and tell you how |
| 1:34.6 | rodeo came to be as we know it today because you might be surprised to learn that |
| 1:39.7 | it's been around a lot longer than you think. So let's go back to the 1500s. That's right, the |
| 1:45.1 | 1500s and get wise about Texas. And we're going to start with the Spaniards. |
| 1:51.1 | To celebrate special occasions, or really any occasion, the Spanish held a |
| 1:54.5 | fiesta or a festival. In about 1526 there's a record of something called |
| 2:00.1 | the Fiesta de Taurus or a festival of bulls in Mexico. |
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