Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West

Abstract

Rebecca Scofield, assistant professor at the University of Idaho, has introduced an important new dimension to the scholarship of sport and the American West. In this engaging book on the sport of rodeo, Scofield examines the social and cultural significance of marginalized people in mainstream sport and society. “Outriders,” the people who do not typify the dominant members of society, who are white, male, and heterosexual-identifying, are categorized in the four thematic chapters of this book: women in rodeo, Prison Rodeo, Black rodeo, and Gay Rodeo. Scofield reveals the history of these marginalized people and demonstrates how rodeo created a sense of cowboy identity and meaning within their community.Outriders examines rodeo from the early twentieth century through the 1990s. The first three chapters detail new research and scholarship on women, prison, and Black rodeo. Chapter 1 analyzes western identity and performance with a case study of Tillie Baldwin, a Norwegian immigrant who arrived in New York as a teenager. Scofield successfully demonstrates how professional cowgirls on the fringes of the American West “understood, appropriated, and changed pre-existing discourses about American identity and western performance” (61). In Chapter 2, “Restorative Brutality,” Scofield chronicles the lifespan of the Texas prison rodeo system, focusing largely on “The Walls” from the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, often called the “Huntsville Unit.” The chapter exposes how prison rodeo was brutal, dangerous, and yet socially acceptable because the participants were “outriders” as well as disproportionately Black. The importance of heritage and historical memory of the Black western past is also brilliantly examined in Chapter 3.However, it is Scofield's fourth chapter on gay rodeo that is of particular interest to historians of sport and society. This fascinating new scholarship of LGBTQ athletes in the West focuses on the final decades of the twentieth century. Gay rodeo originated in Reno, Nevada, in the late 1970s. Although it does not adhere to the usage of the LGBTQ label, this is not done to deny queer identities. Scofield uncovers the history of outliers in a sport who are also outliers within their own LGBTQ community. She recorded hours of interviews with gay rodeo cowboys and cowgirls and archived them on her website voicesofgayrodeo.com. What Scofield has captured here is a history that has long been overlooked, and her documenting of interviews is commendable.Outriders is a well-written and thoroughly researched account of marginalized and, at times, forgotten rodeo cowboys and cowgirls. Through Scofield's analysis, historians of sport and historians of western history and culture will all find something new that will lead them to rethink what they thought they knew about sport and society.