Aloha Rodeo: Three
Hawaiian Cowboys, The World’s Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the
American West, by David Wolman and Julian Smith (HarperCollins, 2019, 242 pages,
$27.99)
A:
What did Hawaii and Wyoming* have in common in 1908?
A:
Cowboys!
Q:
Cowboys?
A: Yup.
Primarily a history book, Aloha Rodeo will tie
many well-known facts together if you have lived in Hawaii or Wyoming (or even
many locations in the West) – from the annexation** of Hawaii to the
near-extinction of the American buffalo to wild cattle (an invasive species) introduction
on the Big Island to the Parker Ranch, a town in itself with 300,00 acres. From
Queen Liliuokalani to Cheyenne’s Frontier Days (according to Wikipedia, the
rodeo is now ten days long!)
Fortunately,
the book is fairly short for other readers. The first couple of chapters can
easily be skipped with no loss of momentum while the crux of the story, about
the three Hawaiian cowboys (paniolo)
who win surprisingly at an early rodeo on the mainland, takes only the final
quarter of the book and sounds much like the re-telling of an athletic
competition, play by play.
Surprising
tidbits of historical culture can be found: having canines for dinner (and not
for company), the history of bulldogging and how real canine bulldogs did their
job, the origin of the name of the Buffalo Soldiers, a wolf-roping event*** that
was such a disaster, it was never held again.
Another
thread running through Aloha Rodeo
educates the reader about the Wild West of America which lasted only a few
decades before the Easterners started idealizing the rapidly disappearing life
and times of the American Cowboy with dime-store novels and not-so-realistic
re-enactments of life such as Custer’s Last Stand and Wild Bill Cody’s Wild
West Show with Annie Oakley. What the Easterners wanted, the Easterners got, in
the way of titillation, much of which ended up in our children’s history books.
This
reviewer believes the subtitle is quite a bit off as well. The reader expects a
story about three Hawaiian cowboys but that only really begins two-thirds of
the way through. Aloha Rodeo is
primarily a history book with a few stories tossed in, followed by a
blow-by-blow description of a rodeo. For those not familiar with rodeos, it may
awaken an interest. The World’s Greatest Rodeo may refer to Cheyenne’s Frontier
Days although the Calgary Stampede was more familiar to this reviewer growing
up in the American West. And finally, this reviewer never really found out what
the hidden history of the American West referred to. Perhaps an Easterner will
understand that, however.
Nevertheless,
there are plenty of topics touched upon to whet the appetite besides rodeos and
the equine history of the Hawaiian Islands and their invasion by Americans: the
near extinction of the buffalo, women’s rights, cowboy life, to name a few
major ones.
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*Wyoming’s
motto: Equal Rights (a story in itself about women in the Wild West). According
to the Denver Post, writing about an
early rodeo in Wyoming, “When a young lady is gritty as well as pretty, she
wins the crowd.” (p. 192)
**Hawaii
surrendered to the US in 1898 and, two years later, held the Big Island’s first
Fourth of July rodeo. The state has historically been a crossroads of people
and cultures: in 1900, the island of Hawaii’s population of 154,000 was
composed of 20% Hawaiians, 40% Japanese, 7% Caucasian (haole), 17% Chinese, 11% Portuguese and 5% part-Hawaiian while the
mainland was 90% white – Hawaii was truly more of a melting pot than the mainland was.
***Wolves
were feared and hated in the West of yesteryear. This event consisted of roping
two wolves, half-grown canines, one of which was petrified and took to ground
in the grass, attempting to hide, trembling, while the other was lassoed after
only 50 yards and then drug behind the galloping equine. Fortunately, the
audience was not impressed with this barbarous cruelty and the event never again was part of Frontier Days.
