Buffalo Bill 's Wild West Show:Try-Out Hopefuls at Cinnabar, Montana 1887

[Shotgun Steve]

Excerpts from the book "Imprints on Pioneer Trails"
by Ida McPherren, Hugo Hoppe's great niece.

Sherman Canfield was born on a ranch in Nebraska, near what is now West Point in 1865, was a frequent visitor to Cinnabar. His father, George Canfield and his mother (nee: Rhodes) were pioneers of Nebraska, and it was while operating a small boarding house close to the stockyards in Omaha that George Canfield met Buffalo Bill.
When Buffalo Bill formed the Wild West Show in 1887 and took it to England, he took George Canfield's son, Sherman, with him as his private secretary. Sherman followed the show until 1892 when his father was manager of the newly constructed Sheridan Inn, and Sherman quit the show to assist his father in its management.
It was while he was with Buffalo Bill that Sherman got to know the crowned heads of Europe by their first names and often entertained them in the royal box at the show.......
..........in Cinnabar, Sherman telephoned to Cooke City, Gardiner, Horr, Aldridge, Red Lodge, and sent a cowboy riding to outfits to give notice that there would be a tryout for riders for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show the coming Sunday.
The next morning, I came home and that night every man in Cinnabar and the cowboys, who had arrived for the tryouts, got gloriously, hilariously, drunk.............
That night Cinnabar celebrated in a mild form of the previous night's carousal but the lights were out and everyone between suggans before midnight for the next day was the day of the tryouts for the coveted position of rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
The bucking contest was held on the arena in front of Cinnabar's grandstand at noon as the last stage had rolled Parkward. A few tourists laid over for the show and were part of a crowd of approximately five hundred spectators who witnessed what was one of the greatest exhibitions of bronco busting I have ever witnessed through all the years that followed. Sherman was the sole judge.
It was a clean exhibition of horses that had never been ridden trying to get the objectionable weight on their backs off and the weight sticking. Along in mid-afternoon a funny incident occurred. A young man, about twenty-three years of age, came riding up the road leading a wild horse. The man was wearing cowboy boots and spurs, but no chaps, sombrero or the customary vest. He asked to ride in the tryouts.
Stares, sneers and sniggers were openly directed in his direction but Sherman said to let him ride. A cowboy held the wild horse while the stranger uncinched his flimsy old saddle; transferred it to the bronc and climbed aboard.
With that the fun was on. With his head to the ground and back arched like an angry cat's the wild cayuse bucked and pitched sunfished; jumped straight up and came down a twisting and then shook himself in an effort to get rid of the man on his back........
Unable to unseat his rider, the horse broke into a run down the road........... Sherman stood waving his hat and cheering one of the finest rides he had ever seen.
The cowboy who had practiced every spare moment for a year for the event but who did not have enough money to purchase a cowboy outfit got the job............

[Stillwater]

Sounds like primer for the song, "OH, that Strawberry Roan."

Bill

[Dr. Bob]

Great story!  Steve, thanks so much for posting this one!!

[kflach]

That's very cool. Thanks Steve!