The Houma courier. (Houma, La.) 1878-1939, 1896-07-04
THE CUB CREEK BULLFIaHT.
81 5 KEmR.

Greek valley This district was at arsf
the scene OF a brief mining excitement.
After that there was a blaze Of disorder
Is glory. This subsidized into a tame
esreer of cattle ranching, which finally
developed an unexpected It
was found that the light and powdery
soil of the valley, when properly irri-
gated, produced potatoes in great guam
tity and of excellent quality.
From this moment the prosperity of
the Cub Creek valley was assured. Pc
tato ranches were opened In every di-
Teetion. Irrigating enterprises were
undertaken on a large scale, and land
rose rapidly IN value. Cub Creek City
soon had a population of 5000 souls,
win an opera house, a daily paper and a
mayor and city council.
My father was the first mayor of the
city. He is a very enterprising man,
and had contributed many schemes to
boom Cub Creek. One of his schemes
was the great potato picnic-a kind of
grand potato barbecue" which was
advertised far and wide, which attract
ed many thousands of people, and which
served to increase the fame and an
nounce the resources of the district.
Committees were appointed to de-
Wise attractive features for the occa-
sion. l was put on the committee on
sports, of which my friend, Tom Mar
cross, was chairman. We were told by
my father that no ordinary programme
of sports would do, and that we must
get up something picturesque, novel
pnd Startling"
"If it is to be picturesque" 1 said in
one of the committee meetings, "itmust
be borrowed from one of the bygone
times in this valley"
We all remained silent and reflected a
moment, and then Tom Narcross
jumped up in Eome excitement.
81 have it'll" he exclaimed. wei
give them a bull-fght!" We were
struck almost dumb by the brilliancy
of the suggestion, Gnd adopted it by a
unanimous vote.
Butitwas one thing to decide to have u
bull1ight and another to get one up.
My father told us that we must putt
through ourselves;" he had no time to
superintend it. But we mustguarantee
that no one should be hurt in it. and
that the animals should neither be
killed nor cruelty treated.
We gave the guarantee, and set about
organizing the fight" Of course we
knew absolutely nothing about bull
fights. We had come to the valley dur
ngthepotato period, and knew nothing,
except from books and hearsay, Of the
wild life in the mountains and the
plains.
Nor could we fDd anyone who had
had experience in buIlsfghts. So much
time passed while we were yainly cor
responding with various people in the
territory, hoping to find some n who
could direct a bull-flght, thatwhenweat
last gave up searching and resolved to
trust to our own resources, we had but
three weeks left in which to prepare for
the event
We read all we could find in the books
in the Cub Creek public library about
bull-fghting, and then / went down to
Cheyenne and studied up the subject
in the public library there.
My first proceeding on reaching home
was to organize all the boys 1 knew
into a corps Of toreadores, picadores,
chuloE, banderillos and matadores.
Most of the boys wanted to be torea-
dores or matadores, but Tom and I ex-
ercised our authority, seconded by that
of my father, to such an extent that we
finally filed up the ranks.
Then we appointed a subcommittee
on costumes, and called IN the assist
ance Of my sister Blanche and of Toms
mother, who had a gift for getting up
all sorts of fancy dresses. Igave them
my notes on the subject of bull-hghters'
costumes, and they set at work.
Everything seemed 10 be going on
swimming now. One further i'm
portant requirement. in a bull-fight
had yet, however, to be met. We must
have some bullsi This was the most
difficult task Of the whole enterprise.
But at last we borrowed five handsome
Texas steers belonging to a ranchman
ut the head of the creek.
For our arena, we proposed to have
an inclosure of barbed wire at one side
of the grounds where the potato picnic
was to be held, in such a situation that
the grandstand, put up for other spec
tacles, would command an excellent
view of it. An entrance way from out
side the grounds, through a gate at one
side OF the grandstand, and fanked on
one side by that structure and ON the
other by an ordinary board fence, was
to be constructed.
It seemed to us that a barbed wire:in-
closure was much better than the
ordinary arena of the Spanish and
Mexican bu1l-ights, because it would
enable every one to see plainly what
was going on, at the same time it pro.
vided security for the audience. : W.
brought the Texas steers to the town
md put them on short rations to make
them ferocious. We did not intend tx
hurt them. Neither did we mean they
should hurt us.
The costumes were to be the principai
part Of our Corrida de Toros; we wers
to have q sort Of dress parade around
the corral Of handsome boys on hand
some horses and on foot The steer.
we're to be driven about actively fol
some time. and a good deal of dusi
kicked up; and finally the attention o
the people was to be diverted by a bal