[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 144 (Thursday, October 21, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13033-S13035]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO IKUA PURDY

 Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, this past Sunday, eight rodeo stars 
were inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame at

[[Page S13034]]

the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in 
Oklahoma City. Included among the honorees is one of Hawaii's most 
legendary paniolos--paniolo is Hawaiian for cowboy--the late Ikua 
Purdy. Ikua Purdy was born in 1873 at Parker Ranch, one of the largest 
and most famous ranches in the world, on the Big Island of Hawaii. As a 
boy he learned to ride and rope, working as a paniolo in the cattle 
industry, a large and important enterprise in Hawaii at the time.
  Ikua Purdy secured his place as a rodeo legend for his exploits in 
1908 at the World Championship Rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Purdy, along 
with Eben ``Rawhide Ben'' Parker Low, Jack Low, and Archie Ka`aua 
traveled from the Big Island to Cheyenne and borrowed horses to compete 
in the world roping championship. This was their first competition 
outside of Hawaii. At the conclusion of the two-day competition, Jack 
Low placed sixth, Archie Ka`aua finished third, and Ikua Purdy won the 
won roping championship with a record time of 56 seconds--an amazing 
time that is all the more incredible since it came after an arduous 
3,300-mile trek and accomplished with a borrowed horse.
  Mr. President, I ask that two articles from The Honolulu Advertiser 
detailing the remarkable achievements of Ikua Purdy be printed in the 
Record.
  The articles follow:

              [From the Honolulu Advertiser, July 5, 1999]

                    Bid Made To Give Paniolo His Due

                            (By Dan Nakaso)

       In 1908, three Hawaii paniolo set off for Cheyenne, Wyo., 
     where they heard the best ropers and riders in the land were 
     gathering.
       Just to get to the World Championship Rodeo, Ikua Purdy, 
     Jack Low and Archie Ka`aua had to take a boat from the Big 
     Island to Honolulu, catch a steamship to San Francisco, then 
     hop a train to Cheyenne.
       When they arrived 3,300 miles later, the other cowboys 
     didn't know what to make of their dark skin, floppy hats and 
     colorful clothes. And for a while it looked as if Purdy, Low 
     and Ka`aua had made their journey for nothing, because nobody 
     would loan them horses to compete.
       But when the dust of competition settled after two days of 
     roping and riding, Low had finished sixth, Ka`aua third and 
     Purdy stood alone as the world roping champion.
       The story became the stuff of paniolo lore. In the 101 
     years that followed, Purdy's legend has been remembered in 
     Hawaii through paniolo songs, such as ``Hawaiian Rough 
     Riders'' and ``Walomina.'' He was among the first people 
     inducted into Hawaii's sports Hall of Fame.
       What happened in Cheyenne has also inspired a modern-day 
     quest by a pair of California cattle ranchers to give Purdy--
     and Hawaii's paniolo lifestyle--their rightful places in the 
     history of the American West.
       Purdy's name on the Mainland is only now spreading in 
     cowboy circles, mostly through cattlemen Jack Roddy and Cecil 
     Jones. They're trying to get Purdy inducted into the Rodeo 
     Hall of Fame, a wing of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and 
     Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City.
       Later this month, the historical society that runs the 
     Rodeo Hall of Fame will send its 400 members ballots 
     containing Purdy's name.
       If Purdy is voted in when the ballots are counted in 
     September, Roddy and Jones believe it will be just the start 
     toward recognizing Hawaii's place in cowboy and cattle 
     history.
       ``Purdy's just the beginning,'' Roddy said. ``We need to 
     tell the whole story of Hawaii, how cattle showed up in 
     Hawaii first (even before Texas) and what Hawaii did for the 
     rest of the West. The cowboys over there view Hawaii a people 
     wearing hula skirts on beaches. They don't realize it's huge 
     cattle country.''
       If Purdy doesn't make it into the Hall of Fame this summer 
     the historical society might not consider him again for 
     years.
       He missed induction last year by 60 votes, a fact that 
     gnaws at Billy Bergin, a Big Island veterinarian who grew up 
     working as a paniolo.
       Bergin established the Paniolo Preservation Society 18 
     months ago and is pushing people in Hawaii to pay $25 to the 
     historical society so they can become voting members and get 
     Purdy inducted.
       In just the last three months, 87 people from Hawaii have 
     joined, according to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
       Before the Hawaii campaign, ``no one had ever heard of Ikua 
     Purdy,'' said Judy Dearing, who coordinates the rodeo program 
     part of the Hall of Fame.
       ``Now we have such an interest from the Hawaii folks that 
     we have a nice file an inch-and-a-half thick on Ikua.''
       Jones vaguely remembered reading ``about some guy who came 
     to Cheyenne and showed everybody up, set some records that 
     were unbelievable and beat all the hotshots.''
       Last year ``the nominating committee wondered how come his 
     name hadn't come up before. Unfortunately, not enough people 
     were aware of him. I said, `We need to get the word out. He's 
     long overdue.' ''
       Purdy's descendants lean toward the humble side of life, 
     just like Ikua, and the push to elect him into the Hall of 
     Fame makes some of them uncomfortable.
       ``Most of us feel he should be in the Hall of Fame because 
     of his merits and not by buying a vote,'' said Palmer Purdy, 
     one of Ikua's grandsons. ``Don't get me wrong, I want to see 
     him inducted. I just don't want to get him in that way. I 
     want him to be inducted because he was a competitor and he 
     was good at it and he was the best that Hawaii had to 
     offer.''
       Ikua was born on Christmas Eve, 1873, at Mana on the Big 
     Island's Parker Ranch. He died on the Fourth of July, 1945, 
     at Ulupalakua on Maui, where he finished out his paniolo days 
     as foreman of Ulupalakua Ranch. He's buried at Ulupalakua.
       As a boy, Palmer Purdy, now 52, never heard a word from his 
     father, William, about Ikua's victory in Cheyenne or his 
     status as a legend.
       It wasn't until Palmer became a teenager that he got 
     curious about his dead grandfather.
       ``All my uncles and aunties are very humble and didn't 
     openly discuss Ikua's greatness,'' Purdy said. ``They didn't 
     want to brag. But I would overhear other people talking about 
     Ikua Purdy being a famous cowboy.''
       The more he heard how Purdy taught paniolo to train horses 
     in the ocean--not ``break'' them--and about Purdy's victories 
     in Hawaii rodeos, the more Palmer filled in the gaps.
       ``The first thing that came to my mind was, `Wow, I missed 
     a lot growing up.' We sure would have liked to see him in 
     action. When people start writing songs about you, you put a 
     dent in people's minds. So he must have been a great, great 
     individual for that to happen.''


                             the early days

       Purdy's life is just one chapter in the history of cowboys, 
     horses and cattle in Hawaii, Bergin, Roddy and Jones said.
       It begins in either 1792 or 1793 when British sea Capt. 
     George Vancouver brought cattle to the Big Island as a gift 
     to King Kamehameha I. Some of them died soon after, so 
     Vancouver convinced Kamehameha to impose a kapu on killing 
     cattle to give them a chance to breed.
       The herd grew so successfully over the next three decades 
     that cattle terrorized people and overran crops and forests. 
     Rock walls in parts of urban Honolulu and other islands still 
     stand as testament to the crude efforts to gain control over 
     the bovines.
       In 1830, Kamehameha III turned to Spanish California for 
     help. Three vaqueros came over and showed Hawaiians how to 
     ride horses that had been imported here 30 years before, and 
     how to handle cattle.
       Hawaii had its first working cowboys by 1836--some three or 
     four decades before America. They called themselves paniolo, 
     and Island-ized version of the word Espanol, or Spanish.
       Raising cattle soon grew into a major export industry and 
     helped Hawaiians pay off debts they had racked up by not 
     filling orders for sandalwood.
       Among the big cattle operations was the Parker Ranch on the 
     Big Island, founded in 1848 by John Palmer Parker. Purdy was 
     one of his great-grandsons.
       In 1907, Eben ``Rawhide Ben'' Parker Low went to Cheyenne's 
     Frontier Days and thought Hawaii's paniolo would be able to 
     hold their own in competition there. Rawhide Ben had recently 
     sold Pu`uwa`awa`a Ranch on the Big Island and financed the 
     trip to Cheyenne in 1908 for himself, his half-brother Purdy, 
     his cousin Ka'aua and his brother Jack Low.
       ``He felt they were the top ropers in the Islands,'' said 
     Tila Spielman, Rawhide Ben's granddaughter.
       The horses that Purdy, Low and Ka`aua borrowed were rough. 
     And on the second day of competition, Low downed his calf in 
     record time, but an asthma attack kept him from tying it up.
       His time from the first day was still good enough for sixth 
     place. Ka`aua's time of 1 minute, 28 seconds, got him third 
     place. And Purdy was champion with an astounding 56 seconds. 
     According to some accounts, it might have even been as low as 
     52 seconds.
       Purdy never returned to Cheyenne, or even left Hawaii 
     again.
       He is on the verge of being immortalized in Oklahoma, but 
     the attention he is getting today is exactly the kind that 
     would have made him nervous.
       Whenever he was asked about his accomplishments, Purdy 
     would simply say: ``Other things to talk about besides me.''
                                  ____


             [From the Honolulu Advertiser, Oct. 18, 1999]

                  Rodeo Hall of Fame Adds Isle Paniolo

       A Hawaii paniolo who is remembered in song and story was 
     inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame yesterday in Oklahoma 
     City.
       The late Ikua Purdy was one of eight people honored during 
     a ceremony at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western 
     Heritage Center.
       Twenty of Purdy's relatives and friends made the journey 
     from Hawaii for the program. One of the ceremony's highlights 
     was the group performing the hula to a reading of Purdy's 
     life story.
       Purdy, who was born on Christmas Eve 1873 on the Big 
     Island's Parker Ranch, learned to ride and rope on grasslands 
     and upland forests of Waimea and Mauna Kea.
       In the 1908 world roping championship in Cheyenne, Wyo., he 
     snagged a steer in a

[[Page S13035]]

     record 56 seconds. Such songs as ``Hawaiian Rough Riders'' 
     and ``Waiomina'' recounted his victory. Purdy, who never 
     returned to Wyoming to defend his title, worked as a paniolo 
     until his death July 4, 1945.
       Purdy missed induction last year by 60 votes. So Billy 
     Bergin, a Big Island veterinarian who grew up working as a 
     paniolo, established an organization that encouraged people 
     in Hawaii to join the Rodeo Hall of Fame so they could vote 
     for Purdy's induction.

  Mr. AKAKA. Ikua Purdy went home to Hawaii and resumed his work as a 
paniolo until his death in 1945. He did not return to the mainland to 
defend his title, in fact he never left Hawaii's shores again. But his 
victory and legend live on in Hawaii and the annals of rodeo history. 
His achievements are immortalized in song and hula in Hawaii, including 
``Hawaiian Rough Riders'' and ``Waiomina.''
  Yet, during his lifetime, Ikua Purdy avoided drawing attention to his 
roping mastery and world record performance. I am pleased to join Ikua 
Purdy's family and friends in honoring the legacy and talent of one of 
Hawaii's and America's greatest cowboys. This weekend's well-deserved 
induction into the Rodeo Hall of Fame enshrines a sporting feat that 
continues to amaze rodeo fans and highlights the long, proud history of 
Hawaii's paniolos.
  This well-deserved honor for a paniolo whose talents were matched 
only by his humility and quiet dignity follows on the heels of renewed 
interest and appreciation of Hawaii's illustrious paniolo traditions.
  The Hawaiian cowboy played an important role in the economic and 
cultural development of Hawaii and helped to establish the islands as a 
major cattle exporter to California, the Americas, and the Pacific Rim 
for over a century. Paniolo history is frequently overlooked in Hawaii 
and is largely unknown beyond our shores. Yet, this is an important 
part of Hawaii's history and of American history. Indeed, Hawaii's 
working cowboys preceded the emergence of their compatriots in the 
American West.
  Paniolo came from Spain, Portugal, Mexico, California, and throughout 
South America to work Hawaii's ranches. They brought their languages 
and culture, including the guitar and ukulele. As they shared their 
culture, married and raised families, they embraced the Native Hawaiian 
culture and customs. In many ways, this sharing and blending of 
cultures is the foundation for the diverse and rich heritage the people 
of Hawaii enjoy today.
  The paniolo experience is part of the distinct historical narrative 
of our nation's history. It illustrates how differences have developed 
into shared values and community. By illuminating the many currents and 
branches of our history and society, we acquire a better understanding 
and appreciation of our national landscape.
  The rediscovery of paniolo history was further encouraged when 
Governor Ben Cayetano declared 1998 the ``Year of the Paniolo'' in 
Hawaii. An excellent documentary film by Edgy Lee, ``Paniolo O Hawaii--
Cowboys of the Far West,'' that premiered at the Smithsonian captures 
the essence of the Hawaiian cowboy and highlights the economic and 
cultural significance of the paniolo in the islands. I encourage all 
students and enthusiasts of the American West and cowboy lore to learn 
about the Hawaiian paniolo.

                          ____________________