Distinctly Montana published my article “Tales of the Belgrade Bull” in its Spring 2016 issue. It’s the boisterous tale about the son of a Holstein dairy cow that nobody could ride. The bull was “discovered” on a ranch north of Belgrade, Montana, where he learned to buck off children who attempted to ride him after Sunday school. When a threshing crew member mounted him as a full-grown bull in the fall of 1892, it set off a series of wild rides.
An enterprising pair of brothers bought the bull, took him to Belgrade and offered a $25 reward to anyone who could stay on him. Soon cowboys were coming for hundred of miles to try try their luck — only to be sent sprawling.
By 1894 the Belgrade Bull’s fame had spread and he went on tour to Anaconda, Butte and Helena where he took on all challengers. A wild west show bought bought him and took him back east. The show went broke in Indiana and sold the bull to a farmer. Apparently, the bull lived out his days as a herd sire.
I became interested in the story of Belgrade Bull when Ann Butterfield showed me a letter she found in the research collections of the Pioneer Museum in Bozeman. Ann, who was then associate director of the museum, thought maybe I could write an article based on it. I love piecing together stories out of the detritus of the past, so I decided to give it a try.
The bull has been legendary around Belgrade for more than a hundred years and soon I was buried under a treasure trove of newspaper clippings, letters and reminiscences. From them, I assembled an article that was published in the Spring 2009 issue of The Pioneer Museum Quarterly (now The Gallatin History Museum Quarterly). You can read the unabridged version that appeared there on this blog. Begin with Part 1 and follow the links.
You can read the Distinctly Montana version on the link above, but I urge to you buy the magazine. It’s easier to read, and the double-page illustration looks much better. You could get a copy of the longer version by buying a copy of Spring 2009 issue of The Pioneer Museum Quarterly at the Gallatin History Museum, 317 West Main, in Bozeman, MT.
Tales of Corbett, the Belgrade Bull, are the stuff of a legend that has lasted more than a hundred years. There are still old timers around who can tell “the true story” just the way their grandfathers told it to them. Of course, “the true story” varies depending on such things as whether grandpa lived in Belgrade or Townsend, or whether his last name was “Teeples” or “Ross.” But community pride and family stories are probably what keep the legend alive.
To read the story beginning with Part 1, click here.
The Belgrade Bull, Part 5, finale.
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In 1949—more then 50 years after Corbett retired to be a herd sire in Indiana—the Townsend Star printed obituary that claimed the old cowboy named Jake Ross had ridden the Belgrade Bull. The Belgrade Journal reprinted the obituary setting off flurry of letters to the editor. Most of them described a midnight ride Ross made in Belgrade. Nobody explained the motives behind the ride, but probably it was for the same reason others had purloined Corbett—to try him out before placing a bet.
Jake and a friend found the bull in Belgrade and took him to a flat near a gravel pit. They saddled him and Jake climbed aboard hanging on to a small rope tied around the bull’s horns. The bull jerked his head down pulling Jake’s head and shoulders forward, and then reared up. Jake fell 10 feet away hitting his head in the gravel. Reports vary as to whether he saw “three or four moons” or “a lot of stars.” Ross’s staunchest advocates don’t say he successfully rode Corbett in Belgrade, but they claim the experience helped him make a successful ride in Helena.
In his reminiscence, Ross said he had a medal that proved he was the only man that “ever rode the Belgrade Bull according to the rules.” An article from the Townsend Star, the editor said he had seen the medal, but it had been stolen.
Pres Johnston said of the medal, “Where he got it, I don’t know. Neither my brother nor I ever signed it for him or anything like it for anyone.’
Frank Collins was more blunt: “I don’t know who Jake got to make that medal, but it was a phony. Jake fooled the people with that medal until I think he got to believe it himself.”
Still, Ross had supporters. An article in the Belgrade Journal quoted a Butte man saying, “I saw Jake Ross ride the Belgrade Bull to a finish in Helena” and another man claiming to be an eyewitness who said Ross managed to ride the bull by jumping aboard after the bull made his first jump
It is difficult to make sense of the jumble of claims. Maybe Jake Ross did get a medal for riding an animal called “The Belgrade Bull,” but not the one owed by the Johnston brothers. A Brahma bull called “Sharkey, The Belgrade Bull” appears in rodeo histories and there may have been others,
But if Ross rode another Belgrade Bull, why didn’t he say so? Surely he could tell the difference between a Brahma and a Holstein. Also, Pres Johnston said Jake’s medal bore the Johnston brothers names. Perhaps Pres was mis-remembering events from decades past.
Information about Corbett is buried in decaying newspaper archives across Montana. There is probably more to be discovered in diaries, reminiscences, and letters. Someday someone may find a document that answers the question: Did anyone ever ride Belgrade Bull with a clean saddle?
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— To see all of the stories about Corbett, The Belgrade Bull, click on “Belgrade Bull” under “Categories” in the column to the right.
—Illustration from the Saturday Evening Post, September 10, 1910.
The true story of how Corbett, The Belgrade Bull, got his start is told in a couple of letters written decades after his bucking career ended. In 1937, Preston Johnston, who owned the bull in his heyday in the 1890s, wrote an old friend who had asked how the legend started. That letter is in the collection of Pioneer Museum of Bozeman and outlines Johnston’s recollections. In 1951, Frank Collins, another old timer who was there at the beginning, published a letter in the Belgrade Journal trying to set the record straight after the newspaper published an obituary of a man who claimed to have ridden Corbett. Johnston and Collins’ versions aren’t as colorful as the tale Emerson Hough told in his 1910 Saturday Evening Post article, but they still make for a great story.
To read the story beginning with Part 1, click here.
“The Belgrade Bull,” Part 3.”
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When Corbett was a calf, according to Pres Johnston, children would come to the Miller farm after Sunday School at the Dry Creek Missionary Baptist Church and try to ride him. Such contests between a half-grown bull and half-grown humans must have been even matches and glorious fun.
The first person to take on Corbett as a mature bull was Frank Collins, who recalled his adventure decades later. Collins and two of Annie Miller’s sons, Sam and Zach, decided to give the bull a try on Easter Sunday, 1892, when they were all in their late teens. The boys drew straws to see who would try first and Collins pulled the short straw. Collins recalled:
“I stayed on him longer than anyone I ever saw try him. But of course I was not down a straddle of him all the time. I was just riding the air up over him and clawing at every thing I could get a hold of, but finally I missed making good connections. I stood on my head out in front of him.”
Collins and the Miller boys must have talked up the bull’s prowess because experienced riders became interested in him. In the Fall when Preston Johnston and his friend, Lou Kennedy, finished setting up a threshing machine at Annie Miller’s place they were surprised to discover that their crew hadn’t arrived. Threshing was a big job back then and there should have been a crew of a dozen or more men there. Johnston asked around and found out that everybody was waiting to watch a local man, Herbert Brady, ride the bull.
By the time Herbert came riding up on his bronco, quite a crowd had assembled including the men of the threshing crew and the women who came to prepare the huge meals needed to fuel the hard-working crew.
Herbert took his saddle off of his horse and went to the corral where the bull stood. Collins put a halter on the bull and used a sack to blindfold him. After the young cowboy climbed aboard, Collins pulled off the blindfold. Then Corbett let out a snort, and Herbert sailed into the air with one of his stirrups clinging to his foot. Brady landed on the bull with the stirrup between him and the saddle. Collins reported, “Herbert walked in wide order for a few days until he got healed up in places where the stirrup pealed him.”
Brady was just an average rider. He knew that Lou Kennedy was better, so he wanted the more experienced man to take a turn on the bull. But Kennedy took riding seriously and said he wouldn’t do it unless there was something in it for him. Since nobody on the crew had money to bet, the men went to work. After the crew finished at Miller’s, they moved the threshing machine to the Howard Brady place.
The next day when Lou Kennedy and his father, Jim, went to make some repairs on the threshing machine, they discovered a man who was willing to bet $10 on the bull. Jim Kennedy had complete confidence that his son was up to the task and said he was willing to bet a hundred dollars.
When Herbert found out Kennedys had money to bet, he cooked up a scheme to get some of it. He knew Jack Flynn, another neighbor, who was excellent rider. Herbert figured if Jack couldn’t ride the bull, then Lou couldn’t either. Herbert convinced Jack to try the bull so they would know if they should place a bet. This plan resulted in the first time that the bull was “borrowed” in the middle of night and taken away for a practice ride.
Herbert and Jack and some friends went out to the Miller place one bright, moonlit night. They found the bull running loose on the range, but he was so tame that they had no trouble catching and saddling him. Jack looked at his watch and said, “Eleven o’clock, boys, just the right time to ride a bull.” Then he climbed into the saddle. Jack rode for two jumps, but on the third he went high into the air.
Pres Johnston said that before Jack hit the ground he yelled, “By God boys, he done it.
Everybody figured that if Jack couldn’t ride the bull, then Lou Kennedy would not be able to either, so they sent word to the Kennedy’s that they were ready to bet. They didn’t mention their little experiment.
On Sunday morning Lou rode up to the Brady place. Sunday School had just let out and a crowd gathered to watch the ride. Lou had to blindfold the bull to saddle him. After he mounted, he told his father to pull off the blind. The bull gave a snort and sent Lou flying. Lou caught his pants on the saddled horn and they were badly torn so Lou had to make for the tall grass to keep out of sight of the Sunday School crowd. Howard Brady went to the house to retrieve a needle and thread to repair the pants.
Lou’s ride convinced Pres Johnston that he could “have plenty of sport” betting on the bull so he talked his brother, Al, into buying the animal. The next day while Al was on the way to Mrs. Miller’s he met the Kennedys who asked where he was going. When Al said he was going to buy the bull, the Kennedys reported that the animal had thrown Lou. Al told them the bull had thrown Jack Flynn the night before. And that’s how the Kennedys learned they had been set up.
Anna Miller sold the bull to the Johnstons for $15. She was a widow with several daughters, so she probably was glad to be rid of an animal that caused young men to sneak around her place in the dead of night.
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— To see the next Installment: “Corbett Throws All Challengers—Maybe,” click here.
— To see all of the stories about Corbett, The Belgrade Bull, click on “Belgrade Bull” under “Categories” in the column to the right.
When writer Emerson Hough visited Montana in 1910, he must have heard tales of Corbett, The Belgrade Bull, in cowboy bars everywhere. The facts don’t matter much in such places, but that didn’t bother Hough. He knew a good story when he heard one. And so did the editors of the Saturday Evening Post. “The Belgrade Bull,” Part 2.
To read the story beginning with Part 1, click here.
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Corbett’s reputation as a bucker went national in 1910 when he became the subject of a feature article in the Saturday Evening Post.
The article was written by then prominent novelist Emerson Hough, who attributed the story to a worn-out cowboy named “Curley.” Here some of Curley’s story:
“You’ve heard of the Belgrade Bull, haven’t you?” Curly asked suddenly. I nodded. What western man hasn’t heard of that historic brute, whose history is one long record of dismantled cowpunchers who thought they could ride anything with hair? …
“There was maybe one or two fakes of that same name,” added Curley reminiscently. …. “But the real old Simon-pure, North American, eighteen-carat, gold-filed Belgrade Bull was owned by a man named Kid Johnson. He didn’t have no mine nor ranch nor nothin’. That one little, ornery, undersized black-and-white bull—a cross between a Jersey and a Galloway—furnished him with all the income he needed, and all the sport besides. He just run the saloon and gamblin’ place a sort of a incidental amusement.
“His real means of livelihood was that same critter that he kept out in the corral. The duty of the saloon porter was to git up every mornin’ about four or five and chase that bull around the corral a couple hours or so. That way he was hard as nails, all the same time, playful as a kitten—though he didn’t look it—and able to jump a ten-foot fence any time he wanted to. Buck! Pitch? No, he didn’t buck. He wouldn’t do anything as low down and commonplace as that there. They ain’t no real name for what he done.
“This here Kid Johnson goes into this little town of Belgrade, up here in Montana, north of here, aleadin’ this cow critter on a string. After he got his red eye joint started up and his corral fixed, he hangs out a notice sayin’ that cowpunchers and others is plumb welcome and can git any kind of game they like. When the word got out that there was a new game, and that this here speckled bull was the king card in Kid Johnson’s layout, the cowpunchers from both sides of the place and five hundred miles up and down the range—why they broke their necks to git in first to take money away Kid Johnson. Now it wasn’t so much money they was after, though the Kid didn’t turn down any sized bets that come, as it was a matter of professional pride; because right soon the news got out on the range that this here Belgrade bull had throwed an average of two to ten cowpunchers every day of the week, not barrin’ Sundays, and some of them was the best riders that ever throwed a rope.
“Businesses all over the upper-range country just come to a stop. There wasn’t no self-respectin’ cow camp that wouldn’t head right for Belgrade as soon as they got their beef cuts done. Ranch owners, foremen, punchers, everybody—they come, I say, five or six hundred miles to go against the game just for sake of the cause. It slow’ded up the cattle business some, but it was fine for Belgrade while it lasted. Every day in Belgrade was circus day.”
Apparently Curley was prone to exaggeration and was not overly concerned with factual detail. The bull was owned by Alva and Preston Johnston (Johnston, with a “T”), and neither one of them was called “Kid.” Judging from his black-and-white markings, the bull almost certainly was Holstein. Doubtless the Johnston brothers made a lot of money betting on Corbett, but he was hardly their sole source of support; they owned a livery stable in Belgrade and ran a lucrative threshing business. They did not own a saloon.
But Curley did capture the mood of the times when Corbett dominated attention in Belgrade. While the Johnston brothers didn’t have Corbett to buck every day, they did schedule rides every time a challenger stepped up, usually on Sunday afternoons. Belgrade did take on a circus atmosphere on those afternoons, and the brothers did make a bundle of money betting.
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— To see the next installment, “Sunday School Girls Meet the Threshing Crew Riders,” The true story of how Corbett the Belgrade Bull got his start, click here.
— To see all of the stories about Corbett, The Belgrade Bull, click on “Belgrade Bull” under “Categories” in the column to the right.
—Illustration from the Saturday Evening Post, September 10, 1910.
M. Mark Miller, Author 