It’s been a hundred years since Ikua Purdy and two Paniolo pals entered the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. Folks in Wyoming laughed and said “Hawaiian cowboys?”
Purdy’s answer was in deeds, not words. He got on his borrowed horse and won the steer roping.
Little did those Wyoming folks know that the Paniolo’s stock-in-trade was roping wild bulls – on lava-strewn mountains – in the dead of night.
When it comes to roping or doing anything else from the back of a horse, the Paniolo takes a back seat to nobody. These Island cowboys learned the basics from the Californio Vaqueros in 1833. But they added something of their own that nobody could teach them – their indomitable spirit and unmatched bravery.
Approx. 98 minutes