Every September in Pendleton

Sawdust fills the air as a lone bareback rider crosses the stage on a steadfast pinto horse. Freshly cut trees from the Umatilla National Forest rustle around him, bringing the outdoor arena to life. Gary Burke, chief of the Confederated Tribe of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) and chairman of their board of trustees, welcomes the audience in the Cayuse language, and tribal members wearing hundred-year-old regalia showcase life before the arrival of settlers.

It’s the start of Happy Canyon, the night show that has accompanied the Pendleton Round-Up since its early days. In just over an hour, the show depicts the first meetings between the local tribes and European settlers and the clashes that followed, the forced signing of the Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla Treaty of 1855 that created the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the growth of a nearby trading post into the city of Pendleton.

“The tribal members that are greeting Lewis and Clark [in the show] are descendants of the actual tribal members that greeted Lewis and Clark,” says show director Becky Waggoner. “And if you go to the grandstand and look toward the Umatilla River, that’s where the Oregon Trail actually is.”

Happy Canyon was created in 1914 to provide family-friendly entertainment after the Pendleton Round-Up rodeo events. At the time of the first Round-Up in 1910, the city of Pendleton, with a population of 4,460, had little to offer its 7,000 visitors for nighttime entertainment besides street dancing, the movie theater, and bars that didn’t allow women and children.

Roy Raley, the first president of Round-Up, decided that the rodeo needed its own evening show and began to write the Wild West portions of Happy Canyon based on his father’s own experiences crossing the Oregon Trail to Pendleton in 1862. Two years later, he expanded the Indian portion of the show with the help of local tribal member Anna C. Minthorn.

The show continued to evolve over the following hundred years. While efforts have been made to include more Native perspectives, Stuart Harris, a member of the CTUIR, says there’s still a lack of representation in decision-making positions: “Even though we were really involved in the Round-Up and the Happy Canyon, not very many of our learned and wise people were ever asked to be directors.”

Today, the second week of September draws nearly fifty-thousand spectators to the Round-Up stadium. Though the rodeo is the primary draw for most visitors, the Happy Canyon show has become an attraction of its own. In 2013, the Oregon Legislature named Happy Canyon the state’s official outdoor pageant and Wild West show.

For many of the 700 volunteers who make up Happy Canyon’s cast and crew, the intergenerational family aspect is what makes the experience special. Waggoner follows her husband, father, and grandfather in the role of show director. (She is also the first woman to serve on the board of directors.) Her great-grandfather played the sheriff in 1914, when the show opened. The role is now filled by her brother-in-law. Waggoner had her first role in the show at age three, and for the past twenty years she has played the nurse, a role that was passed down from her cousin. Her first grandchild begins the sixth generation of Happy Canyon participants.

“Voluntold, we call it,” Waggoner says.

Many of the local volunteers continue to live the Western life off stage. Waggoner’s family has raised cattle for four generations, and their herds can still be spotted grazing around the Blue Mountains. The volunteers who lead the horseback square dancing in Happy Canyon are also from local ranches.

While the Round-Up draws competitors across the country and beyond, it also features Pendleton locals. Pake Sorey, a steer-roping champion, watched his father win steer wrestling at the Round-Up and participated in Happy Canyon as a young boy. He began riding horses before he can remember, and today works on his family’s dry land wheat farm.

Wedged between the Happy Canyon arena and the Round-Up stadium is Tipi Village, one of the largest annual tipi encampments in the United States. Members of tribes including Yakama, Warm Springs, and Nez Perce travel to Pendleton and join Umatilla, Cayuse, and Walla Walla people from CTUIR in assembling more than 300 tipis for the event.

A coming together of people and cultures—cowboys wearing fringed chaps and Stetson hats, Native Americans wearing buckskin regalia and headdresses, over a hundred years of fighting and friendship, broken trust and trust rebuilt, a story told in all its harshness and its beauty in the evenings and lived out in the village and arena each day—this is the Pendleton Round-Up, and these are some of its people.

 

Latonia Andy and Cheryl Scott

Latonia Andy

Yellow, blue, white, red—the beads covering the top of Latonia Andy’s buckskin dress shine bright in the evening light. Her grandmother, Cheryl Scott, has spent months cleaning the garment and replacing its neckline. By looks alone, no one would suspect that the dress, which first belonged to Andy’s great-grandmother, is about one hundred years old.

“My great-grandmother won the beauty pageant in 1940 and wore this dress, so it’s an honor to also have won the beauty pageant in the exact same dress,” Andy says.

Andy grew up in White Swan, Washington, on the Yakama reservation, where she continues to live today. (An enrolled Yakama member, she is also of Umatilla, Cayuse Umatilla, Klamath, Muckleshoot, Nimiipuu, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Irish, and Scottish descent.) Andy’s family has participated in Round-Up week since its founding, and Andy since she was in a baby board. Like the other girls in her family, Andy entered in both the junior beauty pageant and the adult pageant, winning the Centennial in 2010, when she was twenty-one. As a child, Andy also had a role in Happy Canyon, which she’s now passed down to her younger cousins.

In 2023, Andy and her grandmother stayed awake all Saturday night in a truck at the parking lot near Tipi Village, waiting for the gates to open at 6:00 a.m. As soon as possible, they claimed their spot and set up six tipis for their thirty family members.

“We’ve been coming to Round-Up since it started, and so we remember our grandmas and our great-grandmas being here in this exact spot,” says Andy. “We just want to be in the same spot and have our family reunion and be closer to them 'cause they’re gone now.”

Scott remembers sleeping “like a piece of pie” in the tipis as a little girl with her family, their feet in the center and their heads around the perimeter.

“It was a lot of fun growing up with all the aunts making sure you sit up straight, shoulders back, use your manners,” says Scott. “We couldn’t go out of the tipi if our hair was messy. We had to be cleaned up.”

Scott shares her tipi with Andy and her other granddaughter. Next to them is the kitchen tipi, where Scott makes coffee early in the morning. Andy’s mother and siblings stay in the third tipi, and her aunts and cousins sleep in the remaining three.

“It’s a huge family reunion,” says Andy.

The kitchen tipi, the same one used when Scott was a baby, is over seventy years old. A rip near the top has been patched with lighter canvas that allows sunlight to pass through. Soon, the tipi will be retired and perhaps repurposed after years of being the center for discussion and the reception area for guests.

“The stories this tipi could tell if it could talk,” says Andy.

As a young adult, Scott relocated from the reservation to Tacoma, where her first husband was attending school. Later, she moved to Portland. Scott maintained a strong connection with her family and community despite the distance. She would take her mother to Wallowa and Kamiah for powwows, and today she brings her grandchildren to the convention center for dancing. If there’s anything she still misses about the reservation, she says, it’s seeing her brothers.

As a member of the Bow and Arrow Club in Portland, Scott helps with Friday culture nights for dancing and drumming, group meals, the Delta Park Powwow, and even the Rose Parade, which the club had a float for. She seems to know just about everybody. When asked what percentage of people in Tipi Village she knows, she replies, “quite a bit of them.”

In 2023, Scott went into the arena twice, rested on the hotter days, and watched her grandchildren participate in Happy Canyon and the beauty pageants. She helps them by braiding their hair and taking photos.

Scott has seen many changes at the Round-Up over the years: People have come and gone, stagecoach racing has been removed and Indian relay racing added, the Happy Canyon script has become more culturally sensitive, the morning drums in Tipi Village have disappeared, and the restrooms have been greatly improved. One thing that hasn’t changed is Andy’s regalia.

“My hope for myself and the future of my family is that we all have new dresses made and new horse regalia made because I think that would be beautiful for us to have a whole other generation of dresses that can live on past us,” says Andy. “And we’re also taller than our grandmas,” she adds, laughing.

 

Toni Minthorn

Toni Minthorn standing in front of the 2024 Round-Up and Happy Canyon court. Photo by Jennifer Fossek.

“My job is to get in your head, figure out your strengths and weaknesses, pick apart every little thing that you’re doing wrong, and put it back together, so that you can have a fun and safe Grand Entry,” says riding instructor Toni Minthorn, a 2023 inductee to the Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon Hall of Fame. “And so that you can cowboy up and ride through anything that happens once you’re through that gate because there’s a lot about this whole rodeo that we can’t practice.”

Minthorn’s family has participated in the Round-Up since 1910, and Minthorn made her own debut in the Happy Canyon Night Show when she was nine months old. As a child, Minthorn camped in Tipi Village with her family, dressed in regalia for the Westward Ho! and Dress Up parades, and pulled the travois for the Night Show, a role she’s continued throughout the years. She was a Happy Canyon princess and a Round-Up princess—the first person to ever hold both roles.

Although Minthorn is still involved with Happy Canyon and works in the enrollment office for CTUIR, her primary focus is on training horses and teaching the Round-Up queen and princesses to do the Grand Entry, a daily ritual involving jumping and galloping on horseback.

Minthorn grew up riding her family’s horses and competed in rodeo during high school. At the time, barrel racing was the only women’s event. Wanting to develop her skills further, Minthorn moved to the East Coast to study dressage and jumping. She was fascinated by the five-gaited saddle horses and triple combination jumps.

“I’m a horseman, and these days a lot of our Native Americans are not,” says Minthorn. “I wanted to be on the Round-Up court because I could ride.”

A few years later, Minthorn moved to Southern California for almost six years, where she studied cutting, a western event in which a cow is separated from a herd and prevented from rejoining.

“I got an opportunity to ride some of the best cutting horses God put on earth and study with legends of the industry,” says Minthorn. “I craved it.”

However, Southern California did not fit Minthorn’s tastes, so she returned to Pendleton.

“I wanted to head north and not even look back, not even get my stuff,” says Minthorn.

Since coming home, Minthorn has trained both the Happy Canyon and Round-Up princesses. Some Happy Canyon princesses don’t have prior riding experience, so Minthorn teaches them just enough of the basics to ride in parades.

During Round-Up week, Minthorn volunteers as an outrider for the Native American event in the arena. When less-experienced riders need help with their horses, she’s there to guide them. Minthorn also recruits outriders, including a special group that she calls “catchers.” When a horse becomes loose, their job is to ride up beside the wild horse and capture it safely and quickly without inciting other horses. One variable that’s difficult to prepare for is the energy in the stadium.

“Especially on day one,” says Minthorn. “I mean, it’s just in the air—you feel it. It’s like, oh my God, it’s right here, it’s right now. The excitement is over the top, and if a person doesn’t know how to process that correctly, they can transfer it to the horse.”

With all the time and work that goes into Minthorn’s role, it may seem more like a full-time job than a volunteer position, but it’s one that she loves.

“Sometimes it can be hard when there are so many people that all need something from me, but I love what I do,” says Minthorn. “I have my little ways that I’m rewarded. I get to park my trailer down here and have my horse right outside the door. Most people don’t.”

When Minthorn’s not volunteering for Round-Up, she rides, breeds, and raises her own quarter horses. She has a stallion and mares for breeding and horses that are trained for cutting—a total of between thirty and forty horses at any time.

“I don’t know how to live life without them,” she says. “Horses and riding are just part of who I am.”

 

Pake Sorey

Pake Sorey at the 2023 Pendleton Round-Up steer roping competition. Photo courtesy of Pendleton Round-Up.

At 4:00 a.m., Pake Sorey is seeding his family’s dry land wheat farm in Pendleton. Only a few weeks have passed since he won the steer-roping competition at the 2023 Round-Up. Congratulatory texts and phone calls continue to trickle in.

“[I’m] small-town famous,” jokes Sorey. 

A country boy through and through, Sorey’s been riding horses since before he can remember. Roping is the family hobby. Growing up fifteen minutes away from Round-Up stadium, Sorey attended the rodeo every year.

“They’re the top competitors in the world, so that always makes it a blast, especially when you’re a student of the sport, and you’re always watching and learning,” says Sorey. 

His father, Tom Sorey, was among those top competitors, and in 1996 he won the steer roping title at Pendleton. Pake, only two years old at the time, joined his father for his victory lap around the arena. Three years later, Tom won the event for a second time.

In 2017, Pake entered the Round-Up for the first time after completing his college rodeo career. Though Pake says his father doesn’t pressure him to win, the expectations of him as the son of a two-time champion still weigh heavily. Pake remembers that first year as “difficult, hard to get over the nerves.”

Though many who enter Pendleton are professionals who compete year-round, Pake plans his training around his farming schedule. This can mean weeks without practice during a busy summer.

“I wheat farm full time and rope when we have time open,” says Pake. “It’s just a hobby for me, and that makes it a little more fun, I think.”

In 2023, Sorey entered the steer roping competition as one of ninety-three participants. Also competing were his father and his younger brother, Trent. If there’s any rivalry, it’s all in good spirit.

“It’s a blast. They’re a huge support system,” says Pake. “Whenever we get to practice together, we’re all pulling for each other 100 percent all the time.”

In steer roping, each contestant chases a steer on horseback and ropes its horns. The contestant throws the rope over the right side of the steer’s body, and the horse turns left, hard enough to bring the 450–600-pound animal to the ground. The contestant then dismounts and ties three of the steer’s legs together, which must hold for at least six seconds.

“It takes a really well-minded horse to do this event, and that’s probably a lot of the reason they don’t have this event everywhere,” says Pake. “It’s hard to get into just because of the training factor.”

Both Sorey brothers rode Pake’s bay quarter horse, Elvis, in the competition. He’s a seasoned veteran of the Round-Up and handles the crowd with composure. Quarter horses are the breed of choice for many rodeo competitors due to their ability to accelerate rapidly for short time periods. In order to increase traction on the grass at Pendleton, the horses typically wear ice nails on their shoes that act like cleats.

The grass is one of Pendleton Round-Up’s unique features, dirt being the norm at most rodeos. The immense size of the arena and the fifty-foot chute that both the livestock and the cowboy must race down before emerging onto the field add to its reputation as one of the most exciting and difficult arenas to compete in. Pake calls it the “great equalizer.”

“In a normal environment, it’s hard to compete against a lot of the guys that do this for a living,” he says. “But even the best in the world struggle with Pendleton because there’s so many different variables.”

In the final round, Trent finished fourth at 15.2 seconds, winning $672. His combined time of 43.4 seconds placed him in second place overall and earned him an additional $6,292. Pake finished the final round at 13.9 seconds, winning $1,152. His combined overall time of 40.2 seconds placed him just in front of his brother, winning him the championship title and an extra $7,236. He shared his victory lap with Tom and Trent.

All three Soreys qualified for the Columbia River Circuit Finals, but until then they’re taking it easy and focusing on their work. With Tom getting older, and Trent debating where he wants to live in the future, Pake is just happy to spend whatever time they have left training together.

“I’m pretty content,” says Sorey. “To win that is pretty huge for me—takes a lot of pressure off competition for me now, and I can just keep doing what we’re doing and roping and having fun and getting to enjoy it while we can.”

 

Loralee McKoen

Loralee McKoen roping her calf in the breakaway roping event at Pendleton Round-Up in 2023. Photo by Jackie Jensen.

In the sport of breakaway roping, just tenths of a second can make a difference in the standings.

To begin, the calf is allowed a head start after which the contestant rides behind it and ropes its neck. The contestant then halts her horse, which breaks the string attaching the rope to the saddle horn and stops the timer.

“As much as you have a plan, you have to react in an instant because you’re going so fast and things can change,” says breakaway contestant Loralee McKoen.

McKoen’s been riding horses since the age of two and roping dummy calves since she was a young child. She grew up in a rodeo family; her father and two older brothers were all competitive ropers in the Pacific Northwest.

McKoen lives on a cattle ranch in Southern Oregon with her husband and three children, who all ride horses. A few times a month, McKoen runs through their hundred head of cattle in the pasture and ropes those that need veterinary care. The technique is the same as that used in the rodeo, except instead of being as fast as possible, she must be slow and controlled so as not to stress the sick animal.

“They’re flight animals, so definitely there are times when they take off, and we have to run them down,” says McKoen.

In 2023, McKoen’s husband won the wild cow milking contest at Pendleton. He and McKoen also celebrated their anniversary at Round-Up, which has become their usual tradition. Though McKoen has participated in local amateur rodeos for a long time, last year was her first time competing at the Round-Up.

“There’s no other arena like Pendleton,” says McKoen. “You’re riding down a long alley, so you’re riding your horse for a lot longer than you would at a normal rodeo, and there’s the uncertainty of how your horse is going to handle the grass. A lot of horses can stop in the dirt with no problem, but some don’t handle themselves well on the grass and can slip.”

In 2017, Pendleton was one of the first professional rodeos to add breakaway roping to its lineup. Breakaway and barrel racing are the only two events specifically for women, overseen by the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association instead of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

To qualify for Pendleton, contestants must be in the top thirty in the regional Columbia River circuit or top seventy in the world. As a full-time nurse and mother, McKoen only had time to compete in four rodeos this year, but she was accepted from the waitlist.

In the first round, McKoen finished with a time of 2.9 seconds, placing her fifth (tie) out of 98 contestants and earning her $1,312. She was a mere 0.4 seconds away from first place. Though McKoen missed her calf in the second round, her combined time was still fast enough for an overall tenth place finish, earning her an additional $1,087.

“I was happy to make it back to the short go,” says McKoen of her results. “I wish I would’ve used my head a little better in the short go and rode my horse a little better, but that’s part of it.”

On the day of the event, McKoen rode Nikki, a 15-year-old quarter horse in her rodeo prime. McKoen favors quarter horses for their versatility and ability to handle pressure.

“Having my body in time with hers and asking her to respond in that split second is key,” says McKoen. “There are a lot of great ropers that might not have the greatest horsemanship, but I’d say that’s the biggest plus here.”

For McKoen, rodeo is not just a competition, it’s a lifestyle. In the local rodeos, where women tend to enter more events, McKoen enjoys competing in team roping and wild cow milking.

In the future, McKoen would like to enter Pendleton again and possibly some of the other iconic rodeos like Cheyenne. However, her main focus right now is on raising her children and encouraging their ambitions.

“My oldest daughter’s eight, and at Pendleton she wanted to tie a handkerchief on the end of her rope and start roping the dummy,” says McKoen. “As a little girl you always want to make it to the NFR, the big Superbowl rodeo, but I think that’s probably more of a dream for my kids now. So that’s pretty cool to be a role model for them.”

 

Stuart and Deborah Harris

Stuart Harris and Thunder

Daylight breaks over the empty field. At 6:00 a.m. the gates open, and before long the Harris family is hauling their five tipis from a trailer, “looking pretty rez,” into what’s rapidly becoming Tipi Village. Among the abundance of white canvas, their camouflage tipis draw the eye.

“It’s the most stressful day of the year,” says Stuart. “When I get down there, I’m all amped up on coffee and ready to go to battle for my spot.”

Stuart’s family has been involved in Round-Up since 1910, and his mother was even born in Tipi Village. Over the past century, their spot has shifted to the current area handed down from Stuart’s uncle.

The tipis at camp were made from twill by Deborah, Stuart’s wife. For their wedding, Stuart’s mother had gifted them with a family tipi. Using its dimensions, Deborah later constructed three tipis to give away for Stuart’s Indian name ceremony, earning her a reputation in town as a tipi maker. Today, a number of tipis in the village were made by Deborah.

Stuart likens the event to “a big camping party,” albeit one with horses, war bonnets, and tipis with university flags waving at the top. 

Beside the camo tipis is a striking Appaloosa horse with long spotted hair.

“That’s Thunder,” says Deborah. “He’s the one we traded one of the camo tipis for.”

Deborah and Stuart were visiting Thunder’s owner in Wallowa County the day he was born. Stuart is a descendent of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce tribe, and Thunder’s lineage traces back to the Nez Perce horses, a link that makes him even more special to the family. This year, both Thunder and the camouflage tipis are nineteen years old.

Each day of the Round-Up, Stuart rides Thunder into the arena for what could be described as the Native American halftime show. Dressed in regalia, Stuart and Thunder walk through the freshly manicured dirt on the perimeter. In the middle of the arena, families dance on the grass to the beat of handheld drums. Some are vying to win best-dressed or best dancer. A few elders ride in golf carts.

“Horses are prey animals, and it’s loud and scary,” says Stuart.

Inexperienced riders and horses unaccustomed to the commotion create a prime opportunity for accidents.

“I’ve seen three, four, five horse crashes in there,” says Stuart. “People get thrown into the ground, people get broken arms and legs.”

The same goes for the Westward Ho! Parade held on Friday morning. The parade celebrates the Old West and prohibits motorized vehicles. All participants are on stagecoaches, wagons, horses, or on foot. With Longhorn cattle and mules in the mix, events can be unpredictable.

As a child, Stuart remembers the crowd tossing coins at the Native Americans during the parade.

“As little kids it was really fun because you could pick them up and earn some pocket money,” says Stuart. “But when we were teenagers, we started noticing that people were throwing coins in the horse poop—and they were doing it on purpose.” Stuart’s generation decided to change the situation, and today no coins are thrown during the parade.

Deborah recalls her first year at Round-Up, when she was twenty-one. She and Stuart had met earlier that year as college students in La Grande. As a newcomer, Deborah felt overwhelmed by the crowds and chaos. Nonetheless, she competed in the Indian beauty pageant, riding her country horse into the arena with the assistance of an outrider and wearing regalia borrowed from a friend’s mother.

“I had on this old, long necklace, and I remember I was so terrified it was going to break—that was mostly what I was concerned about,” Deborah recalls.

When Deborah and Stuart moved to a rural area on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Deborah was a stay-at-home mother. For her, Round-Up and Happy Canyon became a way to socialize and integrate into the community. All three of their daughters have been Happy Canyon princesses. Katie, the oldest daughter, was also chosen to be a Round-Up princess, making her one of the few to hold both positions.

Stuart says the intergenerational transfer of knowledge is a highlight of Round-Up.

“It’s a real thing that happens, where the old folks teach the young folks,” he says. “A lot of people come and go over the years, and then to watch all of our kids and grandkids grow up, I mean, when you say ‘Round-Up’ here in Pendleton, it means something special for the people who participate in it.”

Stuart is an avid hunter. Before winter, he heads into the wilderness for about two weeks to hunt elk, just “long enough to keep the skills alive,” according to Stuart. He’s mastered the skill to stay warm and dry in any kind of condition.

Because Stuart and Deborah have maintained these traditional skills, they are sometimes asked to verify the accuracy of scenes in Happy Canyon that involve acts like hide tanning or using a mortar and pestle.

And when families in Tipi Village needed poles this year, the directors knew to ask the Harrises if they had extras. 

“I did, because we live the life,” says Stuart. “We actually do have the tipis, we do have the poles, and we do use them. So I loaned a bunch of them.”

If there’s one drawback to the festivities, it’s being too busy to enjoy everything. Between fixing regalia or attending to a horse, Deborah ends up watching most of the rodeo on the big screen visible from her tipi. Although it’s exhausting, the fun is well worth it.

“It truly is a wonderful, one-of-a-kind, best outdoor rodeo there is, and Happy Canyon’s the best night show,” says Deborah. “I mean, livestock, running cavalry, running Indians—it’s pretty cool.”

Despite the rocky history between the settler and Native populations portrayed in the show, Stuart says the community today has healed and grown stronger together.

“We got friends on both sides, and I think it’s the best of both worlds myself,” says Stuart. “It’s such a mix-mash of cultures at Round-Up. That’s one of the reasons we like it so much because people do seem to get along, and traditionally you don’t think we would, but we do.”

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Culture, History, Place