Renee M. Laegreid

Rodeo Queens at the Pendleton Round-Up

The First Go-Round, 1910–1917

In September 2001, seventeen thousand spectators filled the stands as the announcer opened the ninety-first annual Frontier Day Celebration in Pendleton, Oregon. At exactly 1:15 p.m., a cannon fired a parachute patterned after the U.S. flag over the arena, marking the beginning of the Round-Up's spectacular opening. A soloist sang the national anthem, unaccompanied save for the boom of the cannon punctuating the phrase "the bombs bursting in air." As the soloist left the arena, the spectators roared the Round-Up's legendary motto, "Let 'er Buck!" and four flag-bearers, decked in brightly colored western shirts, entered the arena. Holding aloft the American, Canadian, Oregon, and Round-Up flags, they galloped their horses to their assigned posts, then faced the stands to await one of the most anticipated events of the rodeo — the introduction of the Pendleton Round-Up queen and court.

Four princesses, dressed in beige buckskin riding skirts and vests, entered the arena one at a time — first one from the east entrance, then one from the west, back to the east, then the west again. With her horse at a dead run, each princess jumped two fences before bringing her mount to a sliding stop in front of the grandstand. Then Queen Tiah DeGrofft, in dazzling white buckskins, entered the arena from the north entrance. As the announcer called her name, the spectators rose to their feet to give her a standing ovation. "It was amazing," DeGrofft later recalled, "to stop in front of the south grandstand and look at the faces that were so happy for me. Complete strangers were crying. As I made my laps [around the arena] — the people cheering and yelling my name — it gave me chills."¹

Muriel Saling, the queen of the Pendleton Round-Up in 1916, was perched on a huge saddle in the Westward Ho! parade.

courtesy of Howdyshell Photos, Matt Johnson

The athleticism and skill evident in DeGrofft's performance have not always been a part of the rodeo queen's role at the Round-Up, nor have the queen and her court always been given such public recognition. At the turn of the nineteenth century, professional cowgirl athletes such as Prairie Rose Henderson, Ruth Parton Webster, and Ollie Osborn had reigned as queens or sweethearts of the rodeo circuit, and they were among the small number of women who had participated in rodeo since it became a spectator sport.² The first women's event, the Ladies Relay Race, was part of the Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1899; in 1904, again in Cheyenne, Bertha Kaepernick became the first woman bronc rider.³ By 1910, when the Pendleton Round-Up crowned its first queen, the spectacle of women riding broncs and roping steers was still a novelty, one that captured the imagination of townspeople who watched as the cowgirl athletes rode into town in a blaze of fanfare. The women wowed the crowd with their stunts, then galloped off in search of another town, another performance, another chance at to win the prize money.

The queen of the 1910 Round-Up was a completely different kind of woman. Bertha Anger did not belong to the rodeo community, and it is unlikely that she could ride a horse, let alone buck one out. Her title did not rest on her skills as a cowgirl but, rather, on her ability to sell Round-Up tickets. In contrast to the newspaper coverage given to Prairie Rose Henderson and other rodeo-star queens, Anger and her reign were forgettable — so forgettable, in fact, that the lack of attention later created a dispute over the validity of her title.⁴ Nevertheless, An-ger's title and presence at the Round-Up marked the beginning of a new type of rodeo royalty, one that did not gallop in and out of town on a horse but was an integral part of the community. By the early 1930s, the concept of celebrating a local girl as queen, which began in Pendleton, would lead to exalted rodeo queens, princesses, and royal courts throughout the West.

Bertha Anger, shown here in 1910, was Pendleton's first Round-Up queen.

courtesy of Howdyshell Photos, Matt Johnson

The idea of selecting young, local women to represent a town at its own rodeo occurred when boosterism was on the rise in small towns in the West. At the same time, Americans were fascinated with European royalty, and attitudes toward gender were changing across the nation. Those trends combined with local traditions in Pendleton to create the first community-sponsored rodeo queen, a phenomenon that would spread throughout the West.

Lying at the bottom of a canyon in the plains of northeastern Oregon, Pendleton is situated along the part of the Oregon Trail that ran through Umatilla homelands. The geography and climate of the area are ideal for raising sheep and cattle, and settlers began to establish a town in the early 1860s. In 1893, a wool-cleaning factory opened, and two years later the Pendleton Woolen Mills was making trade blankets based on local Native designs and selling them to settlers, tourists, and Indians. In 1868, Pendleton was selected as the Umatilla County seat, and the town was incorporated in 1880. By 1900, 4,400 people lived in Pendleton, making it the fourth largest city in Oregon. ⁵

It was the Pendleton Round-Up, however, that put the town on the proverbial map, and its story has become part of the town's collective memory. E.N. "Pink" Boylen began his long association with the Round-Up as a young boy in 1911, and he later served on the rodeo board. In 1975, in his history of the event, he wrote: "It is believed and commonly accepted that following a very successful 4th of July celebration in 1909, the potential spark for the Pendleton Round-Up was ignited."⁶ Mildred Searcey, a Pendleton historian, described the 1909 event as an unorganized affair that was so much fun that when "the dust had settled and the cowboys had limped up town, the merchants on Main street decided the 4th of July celebration had been a success and should be repeated."⁷

The Fourth of July had always been a popular excuse for townspeople and ranchers to get together and hold a celebration in Pendleton. In 1877, for example, the town paper, the East Oregonian, announced: "... the coming Fourth of July was to be celebrated in a manner heretofore unexcelled in Eastern Oregon." With the promise of "good speeches," fireworks, and a dance, it was expected that "a general good time would be had."⁸ After the railroad arrived in Pendleton in 1884, bigger and better celebrations were possible, and town boosters moved quickly to capitalize on new opportunities. The 1885 Fourth of July celebration boasted special excursion trains to bring visitors to Pendleton from throughout the region, and the Pendleton celebration committee designed new activities to encourage out-of-town visitors to make the trip.

By 1888, Pendleton's Fourth of July celebration had successfully made the transition from local affair to booster event. Planners anticipated that it would be the biggest celebration ever, and young men, "rustlers in every sense," sold subscriptions to merchants throughout the city. To recognize those who had subscribed (or perhaps to shame those who had not), the East Oregonian listed the names of citizens who had helped fund the event.⁹ A formal committee organized entertainment for the day, including a sack race, a bicycle race, a greased pig chase, a greased pole climb, and a baseball game — something for everyone.¹⁰ The boosters also had a more serious goal in mind:

The benefits to be derived from a good rousing celebration in Pendleton are at last beginning to be seen by our business men and citizens. They know that every visitor to the city on the glorious Fourth comes with the intention of having a good time at whatever expense, and consequently carries with him a large-sized wallet, well filled with coins of the realm.... Therefore a sum of money, aggregating probably several thousand dollars, will be kept at home by this celebration that would have been spent elsewhere.¹¹

In 1910, when the directors of what would become the Pendleton Round-Up decided to hold a frontier-day celebration, it was not based on recollections of spur-of-the-moment good times. The Round-Up was founded on a long-standing local tradition of community celebrations and unself-conscious boosterism. The directors made a deliberate decision to shift the town's major income-generating celebration away from a Fourth of July extravaganza — there were too many towns already competing against Pendleton to expect a profitable celebration every year from that event — and to create a celebration unique to Pendleton and its history. A rodeo, held in conjunction with the upcoming district fair, seemed a perfect match for the town.

Historian Carl Abbott has described boosterism as "the entire process by which business and civic leaders assess the situation they faced, tried to define a coherent economic program to be carried out by public and private actions, and publicized that assessment and program to local and national audiences."¹² The East Oregonian, in a classic example of boosterism, editorialized on July 30, 1910:

Now a word about the frontier celebration and what those behind the move hope to accomplish ... the company [hopes] to pull off an e[x]hibition annually that will be worth coming many miles to see. It will be a thrilling three days, and [make] no mistake.... The holding of the frontier celebration in connection with the district fair will doubtless prove a good move in that it will draw to the fair many who would otherwise remain at home. The district fair is a valuable enterprise. It shows the progress of this section in the fields of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, etc. At the fair are exhibited the products of the irrigation projects and the goods that are manufactured at our mills and factories. Those things represent our industrial activity and needless to say the hope of the future rests in further progress along these lines. We want more irrigation, closer farming and more mills and factories. In an industrial sense we have nothing to hope from the Indian or the cowpuncher. But for entertainment purposes frontier celebrations are certainly good. They are spectacular and full of thrills. People like to attend broncho [sic] riding tournaments and similar events. They will come from far and near to see the big frontier celebration this fall and in doing so they will also aid the fair and be of benefit to the city in general.¹³

This assessment fully embraced Frederick Jackson Turner's view of civilization advancing across the frontier, in which the economic well-being of a community ultimately moved past the agrarian phase and into the industrial. Yet, town leaders also knew there was a market for entertainment that had a nostalgic connection to the not-so-distant frontier past. Indians and cowpunchers had been an important part of the frontier era in Pendleton, but that day was gone. They could now contribute to the town's future as entertainers in the Round-Up.

The Round-Up directors knew that several other towns in the West held major frontier celebrations. They sent Mark Moorehouse — a successful banker in town and the son of Lee Moorehouse, the Umatilla Indian Reservation agent — to the Cheyenne Frontier Days to take notes and to record "defective as well as successful features."¹⁴ They also sent a delegation to Denver to critique the rodeo celebration there. In their final plans, the directors included the most popular events held at the two established rodeos: "exhibitions of broncho [sic] riding, steer riding, fancy roping, wild horse races, relays and pony express races, cavalry and artillery drills, fancy shooting, lady races and other events...."¹⁵

The directors also recognized the importance of Native people to the history of the area and to the town. Roy Bishop, owner of the Pendleton Woolen Mills, who had "personal acquaintance with the Indians through his business as manufacturer of the Pendleton Indian blanket," offered to invite tribal members to participate in the first Round-Up.¹⁶ After considering the invitation, leaders of the three tribes at the Umatilla Indian Reservation — the Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse — wrote Round-Up Director Lee Moorehouse that if "suitable prizes" and arrangements could be made, "they would bring as many friends as possible and include other race horse Indians to bring their animals." They would also "bring their families and will camp at the 'celebration' grounds during the 'round-up', thus insuring an additional attraction of considerable importance."¹⁷ By negotiating their role, the tribes developed what was, and continues to be, a unique feature of the Pendleton Round-Up.

One of the key elements of the Round-Up was that it was a community-based celebration and that local townspeople produced the rodeo. In 1910, this was an unusual arrangement. Although small ranch rodeos still existed throughout the West, the sport of rodeo had become a significant form of public entertainment. Traveling promoters typically approached town officials and offered

to stage a contest for a certain sum of money and promised to assume responsibilities and worries that are connected with this work. The setting for the event was laid by means of a wide advertising campaign which infected the community and the surrounding districts with enthusiasm in anticipation of the contest, and thus, everything would appear in readiness for the occasion.¹⁸

Contract rodeos had some advantages: advertising was taken care of, and the contract producers were familiar with talented regional cowboy and cowgirl athletes who could provide a more diverse field of riders than were available locally. Still, there were drawbacks. By producing the rodeo themselves, Round-Up directors avoided the pitfalls of unscrupulous promoters — legal entanglements over unpaid bills, rodeo cowboys receiving less prize money than promised, and crowds disappointed by top riders who failed to show.¹⁹ Local organizers could set the tone of the rodeo according to the interests and values of their community.

When Bertha Anger became the first rodeo queen of the Pendleton Round-up in 1910, she filled a position that also developed out of existing local traditions. An important element of the town's celebrations was its parade, and another was having a young woman represent the town during the parade. The Round-Up continued both of these traditions but altered them to fit the new frontier theme. The new parade, named "Westward Ho!" was advertised as a "great spectacular frontier pageant." It was designed to showcase the progress of civilization as it advanced across the frontier.²⁰

The parallels between previous Fourth of July parades and Westward Ho! were considerable. In reporting on the 1907 Fourth of July parade, for example, the East Oregonian crowed: "The liberty car carrying the Goddess of Liberty, Miss Pauline Jones and her 50 attendants, representing the different states, was a beautiful sight."²¹ For the first Westward Ho! parade in 1910, the paper proudly announced: "The 'cowgirl' parade with fifty girls in costume on horseback will be one of the big features of the Westward Ho! pageant at the Round-up."²² The float that carried the Round-Up queen and her court — "festooned with red, white, and blue bunting" — looked very much like the goddess of liberty float.²³ The goddess of liberty figure had its beginnings in the rejection of European royalty during the Revolutionary period in America and the effort to establish a new form of government based on ancient Greek and Roman ideals. Rather than trying to connect the politically inspired goddess image with their local rodeo, however, Round-Up directors could join the new practice of featuring royalty in town parades.²⁴ The Round-Up could follow the precedent one of its directors had witnessed at Portland's first Rose Parade in 1909 — they could have a queen.

To help explain the relative ease with which Pendleton shifted from a goddess to a queen figure to preside over its new celebration, it is helpful to review the local newspapers at the time and turn the question "Why a queen?" on its head to "Why not a queen?" The East Oregonian was small, but it subscribed to a wire service and kept readers abreast of the latest national and international news, including reports about the world's royal families. At least once a week, readers were updated about who among that elite group was getting married, having an anniversary, or celebrating a birth. One 1910 article, for example, reported on Queen Margherita of Italy and her children, who enjoyed the new roller-skating fad by zipping down the palace halls. Readers also learned about how King Edward's favorite terrier, Caesar, mourned his master's death.²⁵ The royals were obviously important and respected for their status, but they also seemed approachable, connected with their communities, and involved with the concerns of everyday people. Community queens in America were European royalty writ small and democratic. Select young women could be exalted, admired, and honored — not because they were so much better than their community, but precisely because they were of them.

Bertha Anger, the first queen of the Round-Up, probably moved to Pendleton shortly before 1910 with her mother, Alice Anger, and an invalid brother. Mrs. Anger was remembered as "an expert seamstress," and Bertha found employment as a sales clerk at the People's Warehouse. ²⁶ Her name first appeared in the East Oregonian in June 1910, when the town of Stanfield held a Goddess of Liberty contest for its Fourth of July parade. ²⁷ The contest was open to any young woman from the county, and the winner was determined by who sold the most tickets. Along with the coveted title "Goddess of Liberty," the fortunate young woman also received a diamond ring worth one hundred dollars. Bertha Anger did not fare well in that competition, and her name disappeared from the list of competitors. ²⁸ Later that summer, when the Round-Up directors scheduled a queen contest — again with ticket sales to determine the winner — things turned out differently. This time, backed by her employers, Anger won.

Anger's out-and-about attitude is a good example of the "New Woman" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose "salient traits are boldness and radiant vigor."²⁹ The same cultural shift that had allowed cowgirl athletes — "New Women of the Frontier" — to operate outside the restrictions of late Victorian gender assumptions also helped young women like Anger expand their opportunities. Moving beyond roles that advocated passivity, self-sacrifice, and gender separation, young women pursued their own interests, interacted in broader social circles, and began entering the workforce.³⁰ The income these women earned allowed them to negotiate freedoms with their families and to participate in activities and amusements that would have been unthinkable a generation earlier. In larger urban areas, entertainment might include spending evenings or weekend afternoons at amusement parks.³¹ In Pendleton, young women who worked as clerks could engage in goddess or queen contests.

Queen contests, such the Stanfield contest advertised above, encouraged young women from nearby towns to enter the competition as a way to increase out-of-town ticket sales.

East Oregonian, July 25 1910, OHS Research Lilbrary

In 1910, the press paid little attention to Bertha Anger. There is no mention of her as queen until 1916, when her name appeared in a souvenir edition of the Round-Up program. Anger was the first and only queen to win her title through ticket sales, a selection process that would later threaten her status as the first queen of the Round-Up. In 1934, when the Round-Up celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, the East Oregonian reported that Laura McKee Thompson "was the original queen of the Round-Up."³² Years later, in 1979, when a reporter discovered that Bertha Anger had been named the first queen, the debate began. Did selling tickets qualify her to be recorded as the first bona fide rodeo queen, or was she just a crackerjack ticket seller?³³

The controversy over Anger's position as the first Round-Up queen raises the question of whether it was too risky to use ticket sales as the criterion for selecting a queen to represent the community. Anger did not have a long history in Pendleton, and her family was not counted among area merchants, ranchers, or community leaders. Although she must have been an acceptable candidate for the position — after all, her employer backed her bid for the title by selling tickets for her — there may have been concern that not everyone who entered the queen competition would be worthy. With so little time the first year to prepare for the show, it is likely that the directors simply used the same method they had always used to select the goddess of liberty. By the next year, however, new criteria were in place, and Round-Up directors appointed the queen based on the young woman's family position and ties to the Round-Up.

Anger was not the only queen to reign in relative anonymity. In the early years of the Round-Up, the queens were not nearly as important as the bucking horses, who were advertised months in advance of the show, the cowboys who attempted to ride them, the cowgirls who thrilled the crowd, or the Indians who raced horses and displayed regalia.³⁴ The names of the queens were usually announced only days before the rodeo began, and their role was to adorn a float in the Westward Ho! parade. Unlike other town rodeos, which opened with a parade, the Westward Ho! was held on the last day of the Round-Up, further limiting the queen's visibility.

The second queen, Laura McKee, did get her name in the papers. An article describing the Westward Ho! parade reported: "Other floats throughout the course of the parade were the 'Queen of the Round-Up.' Miss Laura McKee, surrounded by her maids, Misses Genevieve Clark, Iva Hill, Norma Alloway, and Muriel Saling."³⁵ It would be the last court for the Round-Up. Between 1912 and 1917, a queen alone presided over the events.

Pendleton's 1911 Round-Up queen, Laura McKee, posed for this studio portrait.

courtesy of Howdyshell Photos, Matt Johnson

The newspaper coverage in 1912 was not much better than it had been a year earlier. The headline for the September 28 East Oregonian screamed, "Second Day Round-Up Feats Entrance 25,000 Spectators," "Cowboys and Cowgirls Make Reckless Bids for Death," and "Increased Attendance, More Lively Show." Two small references to the queen were buried in the coverage of the Westward Ho! parade. The evening edition reported: "A beautiful float bearing Miss Muriel Saling, queen of the Round-Up, was greeted with enthusiastic cheers, as was the Cowboy Band, which followed it."³⁶

It was not until 1913 that an image of the Pendleton queen appeared in the East Oregonian. Although the paper carried numerous photos of cowboy and cowgirl athletes, the queen — Gladys McDonald — was depicted in a cartoon showing a pretty young woman, kerchief at her neck, holding a lariat in her gloved hand. Her hat bore the title "Miss Pendleton." According to Mildred Searcey, McDonald "could ride like the wind" and she set a precedent by actually riding her horse in the Westward Ho! parade rather than standing on a float.³⁷ Nowhere in the newspaper — not with the cartoon image or with the description of the parade — is McDonald's name mentioned as Round-Up queen.

In 1914, the East Oregonian carried a noticeable increase in the number of photographs, especially before the outbreak of World War I. As the annual Round-Up drew closer, more and more photographs appeared of the cowboys and cowgirls who would perform in the annual rodeo. While the 1914 Round-Up queen, Lula Matlock, did not experience quite the same anonymity as her predecessors had — her name appeared twice in the paper — her role as queen still did not warrant a photo or even a cartoon. The first public notice of Matlock in the paper appeared a little more than a week before the Round-Up celebration began, when a booster delegation traveled to Spokane, Washington, to advertise the show. As the delegation "paraded through the streets, their official mascot, Miss Lula Matlock, was one of the notable hits [emphasis added]."³⁸

Gladys McDonald reigned as queen of the Pendleton Round-Up in 1913.

courtesy of Howdyshell Photos, Matt Johnson

In 1915, the Round-Up queen began to draw more attention. That year, Doris Reber was the subject of an article on the front page of the East Oregonian, where she was identified as "Queen of Round-Up." The reporter described the float in which she rode as "a huge replica of the first prize saddle, perfectly designed, perfectly stamped and adorned, and forming a fitting throne for the sovereign of the great frontier festival." ³⁹ To that point, Round-Up queens had been mere appendages of the celebration. Selected only a few days before the big event, they had played a minimal part in the Round-Up itself, primarily waving to the crowds during the parade on the last day of the show. Then, in 1916, when Muriel Saling was crowned for the second time, that tradition was abandoned. Saling was awarded the title early, her picture appeared in the paper three times, and a special coronation ceremony was added to the parade.

A full month before the 1916 Round-Up, a large photo of Saling, accompanied by a lengthy article, appeared on the front page of the East Oregonian. The paper reported that Saling had reigned as queen of the Portland Rose Festival and the Columbia Highway Festival earlier in the year and that she had just been named queen of the Astoria, Oregon, Regatta. One of Pendleton's own daughters, the East Oregonian boasted, had the "unprecedented distinction of reigning over the three largest municipal festivals in the state this year."⁴⁰ Round-Up directors immediately named Saling as queen and arranged for her to receive the Regatta and Round-Up crowns at the same time. A few days later, the East Oregonian carried a photo of Queen Muriel at the Regatta Coronation, swathed in an extravagant white dress and wearing an impressively large crown. Her celebrity continued during the Pendleton Round-Up, and the paper devoted two half-page articles and numerous smaller ones to her reign. The paper also announced that because of her unusual rank as queen a special coronation event would be added to the Westward Ho! parade. No queen had ever received so much attention.

Beginning with Doris Reber's reign in 1915, announcement of the new Round-Up queen became front-page news.

courtesy of Howdyshell Photos, Matt Johnson

The attention that Saling received was "a natural consequence of her other regal honors," according to the August 25, 1916, East Oregonian. Members of the Astoria Commercial Organization had talked with Pendleton boosters and suggested that Sailing's multiple crowns would "strengthen the bonds between the Inland empire and Astoria. It was also suggested that such an arrangement would serve to exploit the Round-Up."⁴¹ In true boosterism spirit, Round-Up directors negotiated her celebrity to promote their own celebration. The East Oregonian made the most of it:

Shakespeare in making his historic observation about "the head that wears a crown" took cognizance only of those European kings and queens whose right to rule rests upon the fact that their father or mother ruled before them. Had he lived to note the institution of queenship in America, he might have modified his poetic utterances to the extent of excluding those sovereigns who are enthroned by popular choice to symbolize the spirit of an occasion.... With no claim to royal lineage, she [Saling] has nevertheless in this democratic commonwealth of Oregon been crowned four times within the past year.... Can any other Oregon girl claim such a manifold right to the title of queen?⁴²

American queens were different than European royalty. They reigned, as the paper made clear, for a specific occasion, and the selection of the queen depended on the type of occasion being celebrated. What the article ignored was the promotional aspects of the queen's role. In 1916, Portland opened the Rose Festival queen competition to women from outside the city to advertise the celebration, and Muriel Saling's crown was secured by some shrewd ticket-buying strategies among Pendleton's town leaders. In order to make sure a Pendletonian won the prestigious Portland title, Pendleton boosters kept close tabs on the race. One minute before midnight, just before the contest closed, they turned in enough tickets to win the Rose Festival crown for Saling.⁴³

The East Oregonian article also sidestepped the fact that Muriel Saling and other queens had prominence based on family history and standing in Pendleton. In 1917, the newspaper described the history of the former queens:

Miss Laura McKee, now Mrs. Herbert Thompson, reigned over the second Round-Up ... [and] became the bride of a very conspicuous figure at every Round-Up. Her husband until he married and quit the dangerous pastimes, was one of the best bucking broncho [sic] riders in the country. He has been an assistant in the arena and paddocks at every show and is counted as one of those who have contributed notably to the success of the Round-Up.... Queen Gladys of the fourth Round-Up ... [was the] pretty daughter of a well-known stockman. She too, has been tied with the wedding knot since the last Round-Up, having become the bride of Richard Thompson, brother of the husband of Queen Laura, and another prominent arena assistant of the Round-Up.... Miss Lulu Matlock was chosen as queen of the 1914 Round-Up [and] is a granddaughter of former Mayor Matlock, one of the best known pioneers of eastern Oregon.⁴⁴

The Round-Up had created its own dynasty. In selecting the queens, the directors emphasized the pioneer heritage that connected the women to their community, their family involvement with the Round-Up, and the meritocracy of their frontier skills and spirit. This attention to lineage is in large part the reason for the importance of the controversy over whether Bertha Anger or Laura McKee was the first queen of the Round-Up. Anger's family was not from Pendleton, and she left the community shortly after she reigned as queen. The Thompsons, one of the earliest families in town, were active in creating and perpetuating the Round-Up.

In September 1917, Lulu Matlock — a member of a prominent local family that had supported the Round-Up — was introduced by the East Oregonian as "Miss Lulu Matlock, selected as queen of the Eighth Round-Up." The photo that appeared with the announcement showed Matlock dressed in a cowgirl costume. There was no queenly rhetoric in the article, although the readers were made aware of Matlock's status as a member of the royal class. During the Westward Ho! parade, she would be "attended by [Oregon] Governor [James] Withycombe and [Round-Up] President Taylor, while Chief Tall Pine will ride behind her as a body guard."⁴⁵

Queen Lula's reign signaled the end of Pendleton's first go-round with rodeo royalty. A terse announcement appeared in the 1918 East Oregonian: "The Pendleton Round-Up Board has gone on record as being opposed to royalty and this year the big show will be conducted as an institution of the common people. This will be the first time the Round-Up has been without its queen." ⁴⁶ An indication that all was not well had appeared a year earlier when the paper reported: "There will be a queen of the 1917 Round-Up, all statements to the contrary notwithstanding." ⁴⁷ The paper was filled with reports of the war in Europe and anti-German slogans, so it might appear that the decision to eliminate the Round-Up queen was a protest against European aristocracy. Despite World War I, however, there were still positive human-interest stories about European royalty. In fact, immediately above the announcement that there would be no Round-Up queen was a rather exuberant article on a countess coming to watch the rodeo. ⁴⁸ It is most likely that the reasons for the repudiation of Round-Up aristocracy had its roots closer to home.

The decision to eliminate the queen's position probably rested on the sudden resignation of one of the old directors and his replacement with a new one. There was no recorded debate on the issue, just a simple statement that the directors had ceased to support the role of a Round-Up queen. A clue to why the queen was eliminated from the Round-Up can be found in Ken Kesey's semi-fictionalized account of the 1911 Round-Up, Last Go-Round, where he describes one of the princesses as "the pampered daughter of a small-town merchant."⁴⁹ The book is too fictionalized to use as evidence — Kesey also wrote that royalty was won by a town-wide popularity contest and that Prairie Rose Henderson was queen of the 1911 Round-Up, both untrue — but his insight on the princess may have hit the mark. In the eight years that the Round-Up had been in existence, only six young women had been selected as queen, and it appears that creating a royal elite from daughters of powerful local families made some townspeople uncomfortable.

The East Oregonian gave no hint of the debates behind the directors' decision and concluded that the lack of a queen "will be no appreciable loss, as there will be any number of candidates to prove themselves entitled to proclaiming themselves queen of relay riders, bucking bronchoes [sic], or other stunts that come in the life of the range."⁵⁰ It was unthinkable to have a rodeo without cowboys and cowgirls, but one could easily do away with the queen. And so the directors did. The fascination with royalty was over for a time.

Lula Matlock, a skilled horsewoman and member of a prominent Pendleton family, reigned as queen over the 1914 and 1917 Round-Ups.

courtesy of Howdyshell Photos, Matt Johnson

In 1921, Pendleton once again selected a queen for the Round-Up, and the tradition of community-sponsored royalty continued to develop. Bertha Anger and the other early Pendleton queens had played an important role in the early history of rodeo queens — in Oregon and throughout the West. They had helped establish the idea of a town selecting virtuous young women to represent a local rodeo. From 1921 onward, Round-Up queens were much more visible than they had been in the early years of the celebration, appearing before the crowds in the rodeo arena as well as in the Westward Ho! parade and traveling greater distances to promote the celebration. As the success of local royalty caught the attention of rodeo directors around the West, Pendleton became a model for other communities that wanted to establish the rodeo-queen role. Over time, promotional responsibilities for the Round-Up queens led to even greater community involvement and recognition. Eventually, the young women gained celebrity status, becoming — like 2001 Miss Pendleton Round-Up Tiah DeGrofft — a celebrated and integral part of the Round-Up tradition.

Notes

^1.�Tiah DeGrofft, interview with author, December 1, 2001.

^2.�See Theresa Jordan, Cowgirls: Women of the American West (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1982); Dorothy Sloan, Women in Cattle Country (Austin, Tex.: Author, 1986); Joyce Gibson Roach, The Cowgirls (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1990); Judy Crandall, Cowgirls: Early Images and Collectibles (Atglen, Penn.: Schiffer Publishing, 1994); Kathy Lynn Wills and Virginia Artho, Cowgirl Legends from the Cowgirl Hall of Fame (Salt Lake City, Utah: Gibbs-Smith Publishers, 1995); Candace Savage, Cowgirls (London: Bloomsbury, 1996).
For the history of rodeo, see Michael Allen, Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1999); Kristine Fredriksson, American Rodeo: From Buffalo Bill to Big Business (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985); Mary Lou LeCompte, "The Hispanic Influence of the History of Rodeo" Journal of Sports History 12 (Spring 1985): 21-38; Clifford P. Westermeier, Man, Beast, Dust: The Story of Rodeo (1947; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987); Wayne S. Wooden and Gavin Ehringer, Rodeo in America: Wranglers, Roughstock, and Paydirt (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1996).

^3.�Mary L. Remley, "From Sidesaddle to Rodeo," Journal of the West 17:3 (1978): 44–52.

^4.�"Who Was Really the First Round-Up Queen?" Pendleton East Oregonian, September 14, 1979.

^5.�"Enter Into the Past: A Self-Guided Walking Tour of Pendleton's Historic Downtown District," pamphlet published by Pendleton Chamber of Commerce, n.d., Umatilla Historical Society, Pendleton, Oregon; U.S. Census information courtesy of Mary Finney, Pendleton Public Library.

^6.�E.N. "Pink" Boylen, Episode of the West: The Pendleton Round-Up 1910–1950 (Pendleton, Ore.: Author, 1975), 1.

^7.�Mildred Searcey, "History of Pendleton Round-Up Association Queens," Pioneer Trails 6:1 (September 1981): 3.

^8.�"Fourth of July," East Oregonian, June 16, 1877.

^9.�"Pendleton Will Celebrate: A List of Those Who Have Already Subscribed," East Oregonian, June 22, 1888.

^10.�"Fourth of July Celebration," East Oregonian, June 22, 1888.

^11.�"Pendleton Will Celebrate."

^12.�Carl Abbott, Boosters and Businessmen: Popular Economic Thought and Urban Growth in the Antebellum Middle West (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), 4. See also Abbott, Greater Portland: Urban Life and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Katherine G. Morrissey, Mental Territories: Mapping the Inland Empire (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); and Walter Nugent, Into the West: The Story of Its People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).

^13.�"The Frontier Celebration," East Oregonian, July 30, 1910.

^14.�"Mark Moorehouse Will Take Notes on Cheyenne Show," East Oregonian, August 22, 1910.

^15.�"Frontier Show for Pendleton," East Oregonian, July 29, 1910.

^16.�"How the Round-Up Grew from Modest Beginning to Show of World Proportions," East Oregonian, Round-Up souvenir edition, September 11, 1913.

^17.�"Round-Up Taking Shape," East Oregonian, September 7, 1910.

^18.�Westermeier, Man, Beast, Dust, 297–8.

^19.�Ibid., 298-9.

^20.�"Westward Ho! to Be Great Spectacular Frontier Pageant," East Oregonian, August 20, 1910.

^21.�"Celebration at Pendleton Pronounced a Big Success," East Oregonian, July 5, 1907.

^22.�"Pendleton Girls Will Ride in Westward Ho!" East Oregonian, September 16, 1910.

^23.�Jayne Frink, "Pendleton Round-Up Royalty of 1910," Pioneer Trails 6:1 (September 1981): 11.

^24.�Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1983), 251.

^25.�"Italian Royalty on Roller Skates," East Oregonian, April 25, 1910; "King's Dog Misses Him," East Oregonian, June 6, 1910.

^26.�Frink, "Pendleton Round-Up Royalty of 1910,"11.

^27.�"Contest Is on for Stanfield's Queen," East Oregonian, June 24, 1910.

^28.�"Contest for Stanfield Queen Grows Exciting," East Oregonian, June 29, 1910.

^29.�John Higham, Writing American History: Essays on Modern Scholarship (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1970), 82.

^30.�Shelley Armitage, "Rawhide Heroines: The Evolution of the Cowgirl and the Myth of America," in The American Self: Myth, Ideology, and Popular Culture, ed. Sam Girgus (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), 179.

^31.�See especially Olivier Zunz, Making America Corporate, 1870–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); and Lois Banner, American Beauty (New York: Knopf, 1983).

^32.�"Daughter Repeats 25 Years Later," East Oregonian, September 14, 1934.

^33.�"Who Was Really the First Round-Up Queen?" East Oregonian, September 14, 1979.

^34.�See, for example, "Famous Riders with String of Bad Horses Is Coming!" East Oregonian, September 9, 1910; "Black Diamond to Be at the Round-Up," East Oregonian, September 10, 1910.

^35.�"Westward Ho! Parade Barbaric in Splendor, Witnessed by Thousands," East Oregonian, September 16, 1911.

^36.�"Westward Ho! Seen by 30,000," East Oregonian, September 28, 1912.

^37.�Searcey, "History of Pendleton Round-Up Association Queens," 3

^38.�"Boosters Show Spokane What May Be Expected at Round-Up," East Oregonian, September 16, 1914.

^39.�"Annual Pageant Brings to Mind the Olden Days," East Oregonian, September 25, 1915.

^40.�"Muriel to Reign over Regatta and Round-Up," East Oregonian, August 25, 1916.

^41.�Ibid.

^42.�"Queens Who Have Reigned over the Round-Up," East Oregonian, September 22, 1916.

^43.�"Betty Bond of Pendleton Is Ruler of the Western this Year; Many Others," East Oregonian, September 29, 1931.

^44.�"Queen Lula Rules this Year over Round-Up; Former Queens Married," East Oregonian, September 20,1917.

^45.�Miss Matlock to Be Queen of Round-Up," East Oregonian, September 18, 1917.

^46.�"Round-Up Board Opposed to Royalty and Says No Queen," East Oregonian, September 13, 1918.

^47.�"Miss Matlock to Be Queen."

^48.�"Countess among Round-Up Visitors," East Oregonian, September 13, 1918.

^49.�Ken Kesey, Last Go-Round (New York: Viking Penguin, 1995), 85.

^50.�"Round-Up Board Opposed to Royalty and Says No Queen," East Oregonian, September 13, 1918.

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