The author of the best-selling Dancing with Horses returns to further explain the intricate body language of the horse.

In 1964, Patricia MacKay immigrated to Canada from England in search of the wild-open lands and cowboy culture that captivated her as a child. In the 1960s, the Wild West was still alive and kicking in the Cariboo-Chilcotin, although it had been tamed--a little. Old-time hospitality and helping anyone in need was the acknowledged way of life. Pat learned the Cariboo-Chilcotin way of life first hand by spending her summers working on guest ranches and finding other jobs to keep her occupied during the winter. From learning how to cook on the job to kitchen disasters and successes, roundups, branding, square dances and falling in love, she slowly gained acceptance into the tight-knit communities of BC's Interior. Ranching meant long hours, hard work, and a lifestyle all its own. Entertainment was homemade. There were rodeos, dances, and music around campfires in the summer and ice hockey, tobogganing, and parties in the winter. Sadly, that way of life is gradually disappearing, but this book relives the way things were between 1964 and 1976; it tells of a unique brand of people from a variety of backgrounds who made this part of the west their home.

Here, for the first time, is the story of how America's first national resort gave birth to, then nurtured, its first national sport, introducing the country to a parade of champions and their spectacular supporting characters. To experience this adventure is to see why the Saratoga Race Course, America's oldest major sports facility remains one of its most beloved and most successful. They're Off! is as much a social history as it is sports history. Edward Hotaling opens with a little-known visit by the first famous tourist, George Washington, who tried to buy the place he called "the Saratoga Springs". Soon the pursuit of happiness at our original vacationland helped redefine America. Even at the height of the Civil War, the country's first organized sport was launched on a national scale.

After his remarkable eight-second ride at the 1996 Indian National Finals Rodeo, an elated American Indian world champion bullrider from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, threw his cowboy hat in the air. Everyone in the almost exclusively Indian audience erupted in applause. Over the course of the twentieth century, rodeos have joined tribal fairs and powwows as events where American Indians gather to celebrate community and equestrian competition. In Riding Buffaloes and Broncos, Allison Fuss Mellis reveals how northern Plains Indians have used rodeo to strengthen tribal and intertribal ties and Native solidarity.In the late nineteenth century, Indian agents outlawed most traditional Native gatherings but allowed rodeo, which they viewed as a means to assimilate Indians into white culture. Mistakenly, they treated rodeo as nothing more than a demonstration of ranching skills. Yet through selective adaptation, northern Plains horsemen and audiences used rodeo to sidestep federally sanctioned acculturation. Rodeo now enabled Indians to reinforce their commitment to the very Native values--a reverence for horses, family, community, generosity, and competition--that federal agencies sought to destroy. Mellis has mined archival sources and interviewed American Indian rodeo participants and spectators throughout the northern Great Plains, Southwest, and Canada, including Crow, Northern Cheyenne, and Lakota reservations. The book features numerous photographs of Indian rodeos from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and maps illustrating the all-Indian rodeo circuit in the United States and Canada.