Ep. 126 - Echoes of Rodeo: Great Whites, Great Cattle & Great Cowboys
Mahlo Paniolo, A simple thank you to Hawaiian Cowboy Culture
Co-Hosts: Katie Surritt & Katie Schrock
There is a lot of facets that make up the culture of rodeo and we are excited to have all of you with us today to showcase that rodeo and western living shows no bounds and is everywhere. A topic that both hosts have talked about a lot with ties to the Hawaiian Islands, we are excited to finally have it on the show.
“I have probably put close to 40 hours in additional reading, research, checking information, and making sure we bring you accurate history,” says Surritt. “This comes with disclaimers we definitely need to clarify. In history, nothing is perfect, because we rely on the stories from people… we are going to be throwing out dates that we believe to be most accurate .. but there are a lot of conflicting dates. This has to do with the Hawaiian natives who aren’t record keepers outside of oral historians and then there are European explorers…with trade logs… We did our best to keep dates accurate to you so you have a clear understanding how impressive it is that they developed this western living in a short period of time.”
In our Devan Reilly Blazing Trails podcast crossover, we discussed the great logs that people used to keep and how we don’t do that anymore. While we do have a digital version, there is something about these logbooks and more.
Disclaimer: If we mispronounce anything, we definitely stand to be corrected. We know that this is not our strong suit and none were done intentionally.
Dropped Into History
In February 25th of 1793, George Washington would hold first cabinet meeting as President of the United States and later sworn in on March 4th as the first President. In France, the French Revolution is well underway while the Louisiana Parrish was first formed, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 which brought slaver back to the forefront in the south. The US Mint is in production creating the half-penny. Marie-Antoinette is executed in France.
At this time, Hawaii gets its first set of cattle when, at the time, being first accessed as a trade port with European and some American traders. Hawaii is still independent at this time and are working towards unifying their islands as they realized other parts of the world wanted to access Hawaiian resources. Often, they received explorers trying to stay in their good graces.
The cattle came from Captain James Vancouver who had had some good relations with King Kamehameha of Hawaii. The King and the consorts go out to the ship and gave them five black, longhorn cattle that were the origins of what we use today in Bullfighters Only Mexican Fighting Bulls. Originally a steer and a heifer had been attempted to be gifted but had died en route from the ship to the island which was not a great start. There was one bull and one steer in the group given to the islands, but there was a rule: A kapu had to be placed or a royal edict, to keep anyone from hurting or killing any of the cattle so they could populate.
King Kamehameha the I is an icon and, prior to his birth 1758, a prophet had stated that when a light in a sky with feathers like a bird would dictate the birth of a great King - Haley’s Comet went over the islands that year. He was hidden in the Waipao Valley from warring clans and was brought out of training and that’s when he took the name Kamehameha or the Lonely One. He trained as a warrior and, in an effort to show his strength, he picked up the Naha stone which was said to have weighed 2.5 to 3 tons. You can still see it today and there is a National King Kamehameha Day as Hawaii’s greatest king who unified all of the islands.
King Kamehameha I hoisted the steer himself into his canoe to take it to shore. His brother, the emissary sent out to see the cattle at the ship, and was terrified that the cattle were going to bite you (they can’t as they only have teeth on the bottom). The cattle, once they got to shore, they started frolicking and scared the natives so bad that they climbed trees or swam out into the ocean to get away from them.
Not only are they panicked about keeping the cattle alive and honoring the ship captain that has gone out of his way to bring them. They called them pua’a' pipi’s or “beef pigs” as pigs were the closest mammal that they had. Cattle were considered imperialistic tools that irked the Europeans because it’s the time that the Hawaiian Islands were under custody of someone else. This is heavy imperialism and Manifest Destiny era so we are right in this time span of exploration and Hawaii is feeling that pressure, but so are the European powers as they want to get ahold of this Hawaiian tropical resource rich land.
King Kamehameha was so proud of them that they were called the “King’s Cattle” and they come to the point of being noxious pests. The very first calf that was born that they knew about, they were so excited about it, that they carried across the islands and, on the journey, it was reported that it was fed fish, pork and fresh water and it survived. The British were absolutely horrified and they couldn’t believe it survived eating fresh fish but, to the Hawaiians, that was a rich diet. They really wanted to celebrate this first calf from the King’s Cattle.
As reproduction was more and more successful, we start seeing pure chaos and havoc on the islands. What we think of as fencing and managing cattle, that is a very western idea of grazing cattle and moving them around. In the late 1700s, they created rock walls that were really not effective and were not quick to build. The cattle were causing deaths, ruining homes, and, just think, during the beautiful tropical rainforest setting and you have wild, aggressive bulls hiding in the brush.
To explain how aggressive these bulls were, they not only had to be tough enough to get across the ocean, but it’s the same breed of cattle they pit against grizzlies for sport in Alta, California. They were statistically killing people, wrecking farmland, and you can still see the rock wall that they built to keep them out - it’s over 5 miles long. They were truly the monsters of the deep and people avoided the mountains because it was too dangerous.
In 1794, the brought a couple more head of cattle, and it wasn’t until 1828 that they butchered their first bovine. The Kapu had done it’s business and there was 20,000 head of cattle on the main island, running wild. “The Great Cattle Menace” was what people called the era. Truly foreign animals are taking over the islands and is what we would call today an “invasive species.” It’s a fair comparison to pigs in agricultural today.
By 1803, there are records of horses on the islands, but Hawaiians didn’t think about using horses for the cattle. The vast majority of Hawaiians would own at least one horse at this time, but they weren’t working horses and a lot of them weren’t even riding horses. The Hawaiians hadn’t been exposed to how horses could be used because Hawaii was very secluded except for their ports and weren’t receiving a ton of influence in this way. They know that the cattle are half the size of the horses and weren’t putting two and two together.
King Kamehameha II
The song of King Kamehameha I and his highest reigning queen and only reigned from 1819-1824. He was very young and managed by the Queen Consort. He was disreputably known for ai’noa which was the “breaking of traditions” such as allowing women to not only eat forbidden food and eating int he presence of food, priests were no longer allowed to offer human sacrifices, and some other prohibitions.
When he took over, the Queen Consort, had no intuition of letting him rule. She greeted him wearing the red cape that King Kamehameha I had been given from Captain James Cook on his first visit to the island and stated, “We two, shall rule together.” It was the first Hawaiian co-regency, making King Kamemeha II title was mostly ceremoniously, he battled with the priests over the war Gods, and was impulsive and bought a yacht. Went to Europe in 1824 with his Queen Consort and, it is believed, that the entire Hawaiian court got measles because they didn’t have immunity and they all died in Europe.
King Kamehameha III
The brother of King Kamehameha II from the same high ranking queen and would become the longest running ruling Hawaiian monarch in history. He created the first written laws, wrote the first Hawaiian constitution, created land titles, schools and more. One of his very first acts during the Great Cattle Menace era, King Kamemeha III decides we are going to go “bullock hunting” or beef catching. The King’s Cattle had to go because they were destroying food on the islands.
How they first attempted to manage the cattle, it sounds like it could be the premise of a movie, but the most popular way to attempt to catch these wild aggressive cattle that would turn on you would be large trap pits. Essentially, they are making pits in the ground, camouflaging them, chasing the cattle or being chased by the cattle and then they would fall into the pits. At this point, they are just trying to reduce the population and, honestly, attempt to salvage what is left of humanity on the islands.
They weren’t eating the cattle, they’d take the tongue for reward money but wouldn't harvest the cattle. They were doing lethal take on the cattle in an effort to slow it down. They ‘d sit in blinds with black powder rifles they had access to from trading and had dogs that they’d use. All of these men are on foot and called “bullock hunters.”
When you enter the vegetation, you don’t know if you are going to get run over or charged at - it was a gamble and a wild time! It’s a dangerous occupation that wasn’t matching the rate of reproduction because the cattle were learning what was happening which was making it even more difficult to hunt them.
King Kamehameha III learns through trade exchange that California is making big bucks on tallow and jerked beef. He realizes that they have the resource and he needed to move them from being terrors to turning into a resource, but nothing is working. Through trade he sends an invite to the original cowboys or the most of what we know of as a west coast cowboy was, and that was the vaqueros. Several are invited to come and teach his bullock hunters there ways with the main motivation of money and to get the island back.
The Vaqueros brought their own horses and were treated with royalty. Waimai at the time was known as Deadwood or the Riff Raff of the Pacific and the Vaqueros made it quite clear that the lariats and lassos they carried were also a weapon. The fact that they were riding their horses all over was a shock to the native Hawaiians. Everything from their hats to their spurs to their decorative wide horned saddles - everything was an instant starstruck attraction.
There whole lives were transformed! The Hawaiians didn’t say they want to be just like, but saw them as people they could learn from and apply to what Hawaii was.
John Palmer Parker
Born in 1790 in Newton, Massachusetts, his brothers, cousins and father all fought in the Revolutionary War. He was quotes by numerous people to say that he was “famously adaptable personality” and was the kind of person who could acclimate wherever he was. In 1809 he jumped on a whaling ship and stopped in Hawaii once before getting caught in Canton during the Napolean Wars.
In 1815, he stepped off of the ship in Hawaii at the age of 25 and never left and would become one of the greatest legends in ranching in the world and the United States. He got his start as a bullock hunter as an incredible marksmen, killing 1200 head in one year.
He quickly realized that he needed to fit in so he learned Hawaiian language, married the granddaughter of King Kamehameha so he’s in the royal family, and assimilated so well that he simultaneously attained this status of respect and royalty in a new culture as a red-headed Irish man. He would wear a loincloth and dress like a native, but yet, disclosure, he and his wife wouldn’t let their own children learn the Hawaiian language or marry a native Hawaiian.
The Parker Ranch exists today and they offer guided hunting and horseback rides.
The fact that he had to assimilate into Hawaiian culture is a nod to Hawaiian culture and that it doesn’t change but it adapts into Hawaiian culture. It might absorb parts of other cultures, but it never forget who it is and stays pure Hawaiian.
They changed a few things from the vaqueros which were slimmed down saddles with the koa wood tree (the same wood that King Kamemeha I’s canoe was made out of to carry the cattle), a higher saddle horn, smaller spurs that wouldn’t get caught in brush or lava, and a few others as life went along for the paniolo. They were great students of the vaqueros - they watched, they learned the skills, and then they applied it to their own circumstances. It wasn’t about changing the spur length or changing the hat size or the chaps - while unique to paniolo culture, they really did learn how to be horsemen from the vaqueros.
They saw that they roped cattle and didn’t shoot them - the new goal was to catch the cattle so that they could be moved to then be sold, traded, or managed in herds. This was a mindset shift for the paniolo culture to move from straight shooting the cattle to managing them. They learned how to carry ropes and began to braid their own from rawhide and were stronger and longer due to the dense vegetation, if you had a shot within 50 feet you had to take it. Hawaiian lariats became longer to account for not only how they had to throw but also how they had to navigate moving the cattle.
They vaqueros also taught the paniolos how to jerk beef and cure hides and make tallow as an item which become very large exports for the Hawaiians which was definitely a goal for King Kamemeha III. With the crashing of the sandalwood export market in the 1830’s, the cattle moved in very good ways. John Palmer Parker starts to recognize breeding cattle and the benefits of managing a herd but, to do that, you had to have your own land.
In Hawaiian culture, you cared for the land and the land cared for you - there was no land ownership. Potentially using his royal family connections, Parker convinces them to start doing land titles. By 1851, Parker has secured himself nearly 1600 acres. At the time all the land is owned, only 1% of the Hawaiian Islands are owned by native Hawaiians.
By the end of the 1800s, the Parker Ranch was one of the largest at the time with over 3,000 acres and called a “beautiful mix of culture.” They dined and sat on the floor in Hawaiian etiquette, they had bunk beds in huts, and true to their Hawaiian roots while still being a part of the Manifest Destiny that was taking over. When the Parker’s daughter fell in love with a Native Hawaiian they disowned her from the family.
He’s not an outsider at this point, a part of the royal family, there is a small community in Parker but that culture started at the very beginning of having their own community that was entrenched in paniolo culture. It is difficult to talk about the history of cowboys or really even managing cattle or even Hawaiian history without talking about paniolo. Everyone knows the word “aloha” but people should really know the word “paniolo” as well, because you can’t separate Hawaiian history from Hawaiian cowboys.
They had a huge impact on forming trade economies and creating its own identity in a time in history when they were fighting for their own place. The cowboys would name their ropes, saddles, horses, and more in Hawaiian, it may have been a part of how they had preserved the Hawaiian language when the native language was banned from being spoken. Hawaii didn’t just take somebody else’s cowboy culture, they made it their own and that includes the paniolo horses.
Paniolo Horses
The vaqueros were obviously very picky about shipping their horses to their islands because what is a cowboy without his horse? The Hawaiians started breeding for their own horses that vaquero horses simply didn’t have and these were very true paniolo horses bred to work in paniolo style with two specific jobs with paniolos.
Ships couldn’t get up to shore because there was no port, so they had to find a way to get the cattle out to the ships. Originally they would rope a feral cow or bullock, if it proved to be unruly they would tie it to a tree to let it fight itself for the day to tire itself out and then collect it later. If it was manageable, they would run it down the hill - the same hills they had not so long ago put pits in the ground so they didn’t want to fall into that - but baiting the bull at full speed down the mountain. They’d take them straight to the beach and, when they got there, they’d hand them off to the shipping horses.
First off, they have to be super broke, but Hawaiians realized that they have an additional skill and additional job to prepare for that someone in the mainland US would need to prepare for the job of shipping. The shipping horses were larger, faster, and stronger, and were kept in holding pens or rest areas and only worked when they needed to ship. They were intentional about when they were used.
The shipping horses are responsible for moving the cattle from the shore to a canoe to take them to the ship, where a Hawaiian would swim under the steer to put a harness on it to hoist it onto the ship. They are all paniolos, sharing the same skillset. Not only do you have to be able to read cattle, handle a rope, actually rope, ride a horse, to swim, and, most importantly, to read tides - because if you misread you could get swept under with your horse and cattle.
Sharks became a huge problem as steak tartare became the go-to diet. The horses had to be confident swimmers to strike a shark in the water. These were big cowboy warmblood horses that were the predecessors to what we think of as pick up men horses.
In addition to shipping horses, we have tail horses, that are shorter and stockier. They don’t have the leg length but they aren’t swimming, they just had to be strong. The tail horses, they would actually dally the tail around the horn and they would lift the steer up so it was no longer touching the ground and walk it into the water until it couldn’t touch the ocean floor anymore and then release it to swim.
By the 1920s, they had invented their own version of a chute that jutted out into the water which made the tail horse obsolete by the 1920s. Necessity breeds innovation that would essentially feed cattle in to where they were already primed to go swimming, so they didn’t have to struggle to get the cattle into the water.
in January 1873, the Queen stepped down in an effort to avoid violence. In January 1895, the Queen abdicated and thousands of Hawaiians in 1897, including Ikua Purdy and much of the Parker Ranch crew, signed a petition to avoid annexation. In 1898, Hawaii was annex and most native Hawaiians stayed home as did the royal family. Those who did go, wore a symbol of the Hawaiian monarchy, they lowered the Hawaiian flag to the Hawaiian National Anthem, changed to the US National Anthem and raised the US Flag.
This sets the stage for an “us versus them” mentality. The mainland and the Hawaiians were not assimilated to each other and vice versa as it remained isolated. At this time, the naming of equivalent becomes prevalent and there are some statements and claims as an attempt to preserve the language.
In 1899, a gentleman as we all know as Buffalo Bill Cody sends recruiters to the islands to recruit paniolos and hula dancers to join his wild west show. The comparing of paniolos to hula dancers was big as they were both signals of Hawaiian culture. In 1893, the World’s Exhibition in Ohio, they had their first hula dancers who performed there and then went on to Europe. One of the female dancers chronicled the hatred and disgust from the native people were that she would do that. It was more entertainment than accurate history.
One of the iconic people is Eben Low, a relative of the Parkers, who ends up losing his hand shipping cattle at the top of the mountain. HIs young cousin, Ikua Purdy, makes this crazy run to save his life but not his hand. He becomes the one-handed cowboy, hooking the reins in his left hand and roping with this right hand.
The first wild west show came to Honolulu in 1905, which no one went to because they called it a sham. Horse racing starts to pick up and other carnivals begin to pick up which includes different islands’ ranches pitting them against each other. Eben tied a steer in 53 seconds with just his one hand. The mark of a talented paniolo was how quick you could be in the steer roping.
Eben goes on to do a lot of promotion for paniolos across the country including going to see Teddy Rooselvet himself. Eben’s wife, was a hana or an informal Hawaiian adopted dad, was Sanford Dole who would be the cousin of the guy who would form Dole Foods. A battle breaks out over the Parker ranch between Eben and the gentleman appointed to manage the ranch, during this period after John Palmer Parker passes away.
When Eben comes back from his first big U.S. tour, he hosts his first big Hawaiian rodeo which may have had a political motif to show his leadership of the paniolo in this custody battle over the Parker ranch which doesn’t actually happen for him. Despite this attempt, his legacy almost became bigger than not having the ranch come to him he does create this rodeo in 1905, The Cowboy Carnival.
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The Cowboy Carnival merged two worlds together and was the largest peace-time crowd in island history. Rodeo did that!
During this time, the premier cowboy was Angus MacPhee who, in 1903, the former Rough Rider won the World Steer Roping title at the Cheyenne Frontier Days and is invited by Eben Low to come to Hawaii to compete. In 1907, even the Queen, who is recognized as such even though she abdicated, MacPhee shows up and, due to unfavorable weather, shows up the day of and definitely still had sea legs. They take him directly to the Cowboy Carnival where he promptly loses.
He goes directly to the papers and states that these are the roughest and meanest cattle he has ever seen! This is our first note that maybe the paniolos, who practiced in the “under a minute” corral at the Parker Ranch. MacPhee loved the islands so much, his wife and children, decide to stay in Hawaiian which gives them their first world champion cowboy resident on the islands.
This shocks the mainland cowboy culture that can’t believe he is coming back. In 1908, the Cheyenne Frontier Days secretary reached out to Eben and asks them to come and bring cowboys. At the time, they didn’t even recognize them as Americans, lines such as “see what the foreigners could do,” and Eben realizes that this a bigger than rodeo moment. Educationally, most of America didn’t even know that the Hawaiian islands had been annexed!
These Paniolos are invited just a few years after they were viewed as pure entertainment which is a huge operation to share talent, culture and change mindsets, while simultaneously introducing people to Hawaii during tensions. Jack Lowe and his new bride, Emily Lowe, took the trip to Wyoming as their honeymoon trip to see the world. With them was Archie Ka’au’u and Ikua Purdy. They showed up in San Francisco and took a train to get to Cheyenne, Wyoming - a place with a lot of pride in their cowboy culture.
In 1908, everything was about to change for Wyoming’s cowboy culture fans, and it became the first time ever that the saddle bronc champion went to someone not from Wyoming and the question of the steer roping world title was in the air due to the Hawaiian cowboys. The steer roping was split over multiple days.
On day one, Jack Lowe is the only Hawaiian to rope and despite a fast start, he has an asthma attack and then finishes his tie. The rest of the world wasn’t super impressed.
During the one-time wolf roping contest on Day 2, it scares the horses loose and enter the Hawaiian cowboys to save the day catching the horses with fancy trick roping to save the crowds from being run over. Like it or not, they not only came to play, but to save the day. Archie ropes first and the crowd goes wild - they’ve started winning them over . With 20,000 pairs of eyes watching, Ikua takes off and pantyhoses the steers and everyone assumes he’s done for - but he becomes the new leader.
The two Hawaiians, Dickerson “America’s Hope” and Irwin the local guy are all in the top. Only the top 8 make it back to the short go the next day which includes terrible weather of rain and wind. Ikua goes first and, in the book Aloha Rodeo, it gives a description of him getting ready to nod and compares him to a statue of Kamehameha the Great. To be compared to that really says a lot about the moment.
Ikua Purdy the 1908 Steer Roping World Champion and the first famous Hawaiians that are not politicians and not royalty. They left Hawaii with mustaches and returned without them because they shaved off their mustaches to hand off hairs to women that wanted a piece of them before they go. Instant fame hits them in Cheyenne and it carries all of the way back to the islands.
Some headlines gave credits to the steers for helping them win but is reminiscent of the tensions of “us vs. them” in regards to Hawaiian vs mainlanders. There was some residual after clean up that Cheyenne tried to do because they coudnt’t believe that these “foreigners” won. But the first thing they said to them after the win was “Come back next year, we will pay your travel.” President Roosevelt was there and did congratulate them, giving national recognition to their accomplishments.