Hell’s Half Acre Rodeo

At noon, Napi Natuse, or Creator Sun, shone full force over Blackfeet country, where many faces were swallowed by the deep shadows cast by their wide-brimmed hats. Clouds of dust billowed around creaking trailers, secondary to the unseasonably warm and dry conditions for a Mother’s Day on the Rocky Mountain Front. Roughstock groaned and whinnied as they were shunted into a little labyrinth of patched-up pens behind rust-red chutes.

After a 21-year hiatus, the Indian Cowboys have returned home for a proper rodeo on Hell’s Half Acre. 

The Mad Plume family originally organized a ragtag rodeo on their land in 1939, with events traditionally held annually on the second weekend in May. While most associate rodeo with cowboys of European ancestry, Lynn Mad Plume, 31, highlights Indigenous people’s deep relationship with all forms of horsemanship as it’s evolved over the centuries, and said they are “reclaiming that for ourselves” through the revival of Hell’s Half Acre. 

“A lot of our people don’t know about the cultural significance of the Hell’s Half Acre Rodeo and we want to change that,” Mad Plume said. “Our culture has a history of land-based healing and our family is connected to this land.” 

Situated below a historic buffalo jump with rolling grassy hills and expansive, cobalt skies in all directions, the arena is tucked in a quintessential fold of the Badger-Two Medicine area, a landscape most sacred to the Blackfeet. 

Within the arena, competitors wrestled and wrangled with stock, exactly as they’d done in decades past. On the outside, children roped prairie dogs from their burrows with loops of baling twine, while spectators settled in for a long day in pickup truck beds and cozy folding chairs under shade tents, cold beers in hand. Indeed, things ran a bit behind the official schedule, with the first broncs not bursting out of the chutes until about 2 p.m., leaving the cowboys and girls to rodeo until last light. 

At first blush, some photographs from the 2024 rodeo, were they not rendered in color, would be nigh indistinguishable from the monochromatic images of yore. Hell may never freeze over, but in a way, time just might on this half-acre slice of Indian country.