Warkworth Western Weekend Rodeo Competitors

Cowboys and Cow Girls
Warkworth Western Weekend Rodeo presents the finest Rodeo talent in North America. Cowboys and Cow Girls display their courage competing in "activities of necessity" since the dawn of time when man first domesticated the horse and raised bovine in Europe.

Activities of Necessity

The rough and brutal conditions of the wild western frontier of Canada and the United States did not deter these brave and rugged men and women facing harsh conditions and unseen dangers.

There was a time before roads and fences divided the countryside into squares, a time when when the only means of travel was the horse. Cattle were raised on expansive plains to feed the hungry populations of the eastern seaboard. Long and dusty cattle drives were the only way to market.

When the horses disappeared
During the late Pleistocene in Western Canada, there is clear evidence of horses until 12,000 years ago. All Equidae in North America ultimately became extinct approximately 11,000 years ago.

The American Bison and the European Wisent are the largest terrestrial animals in North America and Europe. The Bison is one of a few remaining ancient animals from the Pleistocene Era.

When you consider the ancestor of modern Bison (Bison Bison) "Bison Antiquus" is known to have stood upwards of 7.5 feet (2.27 meters) tall, as much as 15 feet (4.6 meters) long and weighed approximately 3500 pounds (1588 kilograms) with a 6.5 feet (2 meter) horn span from tip to tip according to skeletal remains dating 7000 years ago. The Bison species predates modern man, living in the time of Neanderthal. This diagram is representative of the size differences between ancient Pleistocene and modern Bison.

The misty early dawn of time
The rodeo as we know it today began in a primal form at the dawn of time as man moved from the status of a hunter-gather to agricultural based societies.

Humans began to domesticate horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE.

Ancient European Petrography drawn by antediluvian artists depict the wild horse, cattle, boar, bear, deer, and fish seen in every day life.

The ancestor of domestic cattle drawn on cave walls was a type of huge wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa. Now extinct, the 'Aurochs' or 'Urus' (Bos Primigeniu) survived in Europe until 1627.

The arrival of the horse
When Columbus arrived in 1492, equidae had been absent from the Western Hemisphere for millennia and the indigenous peoples of the Americas had no word for “horse” in their language. The horse had become extinct in North America at the end of the last Ice Age approximately 11,000 years ago and were not seen again until the second Columbus sailing when the Spanish introduced the Iberian horse to the new world (Caribbean) a year later in 1493. The Spanish missions continued breeding programs and were established on the mainland (Mexico) in the 1500's by the Conquistadors.

Mustang of the Great Plains
The Spanish horses would eventually be lost or stolen and eventually reproduced into large feral herds, which became known as the "Mustang" of the Great Plains. The horse had returned. As a side note, the wheel did not exist in the Western Hemisphere until introduced by the Europeans.

Real Life Tasks
The origins of Rodeo began from the real life tasks of the vaqueros (Spanish version of the cowboy) and cowboys of the Americas as they herded cattle for various purposes such as branding, counting, having their health checked, rounded up for the move to new pastures, or for cattle drives to market often hundreds of miles away.

The term Rodeo was also used to refer to the sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle ranching, and it is this latter usage was adopted into the cowboy tradition of the United States and Canada.

The word rodeo first appeared in the English language circa 1825–1834 to describe “cattle round-up” or "cattle ring". Rodeo is derived from the Spanish word 'rodear', meaning to go around or surround. It often referred to 'a pen for cattle at a market or fair.'

Rodeo activities trace back to the Spanish ranches of the 1700’s. During the opening of the west in the early 1800’s American cowboys became exposed to vaqueros from Mexico, Texas and California and began to learn about their ranching techniques. The way of the west was born as ranchers began holding informal competitions after a long days work or in celebration after the long cattle drives of the dusty Wild West. The earliest recorded rodeo was reported in 1864.

The west has been romanticized and the Warkworth Western Weekend Rodeo brings the cowboy’s legend to you.

You will see the finest horsemen continuing the legend that made the Old West.