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INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: Bruce Montague
Interviewer: Al Lowman
Date: August 4, 1985
Place: Oral History Office, Instit~ of
Texan Cultures
L: We're going to be talking about trick roping .
How did you happen to get started in this pursuit?
M: I had seen the vaqueros spin the ropes. I even saw
Will Rogers, when I was a kid. And I just picked up a rope
and started practicing. I used to milk cows. And I used to
rope the cal f and pull the calf off and tie the calf. Well,
that calf rope, when I'd finish, and finally turn the calf
l oose, then I'd just practice with the rope.
So I started out with just calf-tying rope. And kept
working at it and practicing at it. And then I had some of
the older men there, cowboys, help me out ; some of the vaqueros
and what have you . And then from watching p i ctures of Will
Rogers and actually seein ' him rope. I admired how smooth
and graceful that looked. Of course, the secret to the thi ng
is smoothness and gracefulness ; timing and rhythm.
We don't always have and we don't always get what we
hope to achieve. But trick roping is supposed to be a beau-tiful
and colorful art . In fact , Anna, my wife was announcing
and she told us that the Spanish term is floriar lariate.
Bruce Montague
M: Fl oriar comes from the Spanish word flores, which is
flowers. And floriar means to make flower s out of the
2.
rope; make it blossom out like a beautiful flower and keep
it out like that and make it look graceful and colorful like
a flower. I fall short a l ot of times of makin' it l ook
graceful and colorful, but that's what we're trying to achieve .
L: Where did you grow up?
M: Bandera ; Bandera, Texas.
L: You've lived there all your life?
M: Right.
L: That's where you first became acquainted with the
M: My Dad had a big ranch. My folks, the Montagues, had a ..
I practiced riding horses and roping on the ranch.
L: Was Will Rogers the first rope artist? It stuck in
your mind. Do you recall something earlier that perhaps
stuck in your memory?
M: It's real hard to remember all of the ... used to go t o
the rodeo and I used t o do that a lot. And the trick roping ,
I've seen people rope four-five horses running abreast,
using a great big loop . I was absolutely fascinated by that.
Put a rope around three or four horses standing up and then
Roman ridin ', spinnin' the rope.
I guess it really got going way back in the days of Tom
Mix or whoever; way back when they were doin' the old silent
Bruce Montague 3 •
M: movies , probably . As Anna told us where we were ropin '
out there a while ago , a lot o f i t probabl y s t arted in Mexico .
I wrote Will Rogers , Jr . and he said t hat he t hought that most
of it started in Mexico . His Dad learned a lot of it from
the Mexican vaqueros . What they call olas del mar, that's
the ocean wave ; waves of the ocean . And that ' s a very beauti­ful
... it ' s not only co l orful, but you can put a lot of
momentum wit h that loop and catch five or six horses runnin '
abreast at one time. So that ' s probably where i t originated.
And then , of course , when they started havin ' rodeos,
the cowboys started competing with each other ; then they
started havi ng t rick roping contests , too , as I understand .
Will Rogers was good . He had tremendous coordination . One
thing I admired about him , he could spin the rope so eas i ly
and answer any question. His mental abi lity to answer questions
that he was asked and answer them in a very humorous way ,
while still keeping the rope going , that ' s what made Will
Rogers. His ability to answer the questions and communicate
while he was simultaneously doin ' the rope, was really what
made h i m. He had tremendous coordination, mentally and
p hysically.
Well, that's where I think , it probably got started .
L: At what age do you remember , really, moving ahead with this
and really getting started?
Bruce Montague 4 .
M: I really don 't know . But it had to be when I was in grade
school. Probably six years old, seven. Probably as old as
Paul and Regina, my children here. I remember a little
sorrel horse, Alazan . I believe that's the Spanish name fmr
sorrel. That's the type . We have the sorrels and the Paints
and the Apaloosas . But this was Alazan . Then I started climbin '
up on top of the horse and doin' trick ropin ' on the horse and
makin' it go on to the neck and what not.
There was a friend of mine that worked on the ranch ,
Jose Diaz, and he had maguey ropes . He always got his down in
Mexico. And he could make that t hing go under the neck and
roll it over the cantle of the saddle and everything . We
worked for hours on that and I finally got to where I could do
that . But that was the first horse, I remember, that little
sorrel.
I got to doin', I must have been ten, eleven , twelve,
somethin ' like that, when I was doin ' almost all those tricks.
L: You're speaking of rope here . There are different kinds
of rope ...
M: Right.
L: Made out of different materials and so forth. What kind
is the most suitable?
Bruce Montague 5.
M: The most suitable, really, is the maguey. And that came
from the maguey, way down in Mexico. Maguey. Now I have
magueys and I use 'em but in the Folklife Festival I don't
bring them because, not only do I rope my own children, but
sometimes other kids like me to rope ' em . And the maguey is
a very tightly woven rope and if you pull it hard it will burn
the skin. So I don't bring it where there's a lot of people.
I do have them. And that is probably the best.
And then we have the manila rope with the Manila 33 and
the Manila 36; they call 'em. Manila. And then there's
cotton and hemp and then now recently they've gone to nylon
and polyester. So we've got ... The nylon and the polyester
I really don't like much for rope spinnin'. I understand they're
pretty good for calf roping; roping cattle. I like a rope
a lot of people think, the idea is to keep the loop big.
Well, that's not r eally true. You wan t the l oop exactly the
size that is suitable for the trick you're doin'. If you need
a big l oop, you need a l oop to go big ; if you want it to go
smaller ... you want one ... and that's why you have to have a
very good hond~. And a h on~ that the rope will slip through
so that the loop will get bigger and smaller.
The nylon and the polyester don't have that quality.
They don't let the hondQ slip through the loop very well.
So cotton is good, as I said before, and there's no question
about the maguey. Maguey is by far the best. Maguey, you can
Bruce Montague 6 .
M: throw maguey so far. If you get the olas del mar goin'
real fast , it gets a tremendous momentum. If you've got a
horse comin' real fast and you don ' t have much time, it's a
quick loop. And you can throw it . . . I ' ve seen some peopl e,
they can throw it 30 feet; 50 feet at a tremendous dist ance
even from a spinnin' loop , which is real unusua l. But it
takes momentum to do that.
that momentum. It ' s lazy .
It 's sort of a lazy l oop .
Cotton r ope just doesn ' t have
You can ' t get it goin ' that fast.
It doesn ' t develop the momentum
like the maguey does .
rope with .
Maguey ' s much the bet ter rope to
L : When you started out do i ng this , did you have ... were
there others in your neighborhood among the peopl e , youngsters
you grew up with, also interested in this? Did you have some­body,
in other words , to share it with or to compete with?
M: I did a lot of calf roping , too , and I was the third of
a family of four boys . Of course , my o lder brothers ... one
of my older brothers , was a real good roper. It seemed like
he was probably superior to me i n t hat particuli ar talent .
But I went to rodeos with him ; we went together. Then some
of the f riends up there , Bandera , Ray Wharton and the folk
went on to be world champions . I roped calves with ' em. I
practiced rope spinnin '; practicing a lot . That's the way
I really got into it.
Bruce Montague 7 .
L: Did you have someone t o t each you this art? Were there
people to show you how to do it?
M: Not really. Jose taught me a lot. / Jose taught me the
maguey part. Jos~ Diaz. He was from Mexico. He could do
it all. He could do .... He could catch the horse goin'
either way. The mangana, he did a mangana, that is rope the
horse by the f r ont f eet and tumbled him on the ... they do
that. And then they have the chareadas. He could run up
and bulldog the steers and stuff like that . He probably got
me started as much as anybody , J os{ did.
Then I learned several tricks from Will Rogers. That
stomping out a prairie fire. I had some friends tell me how
to do that. There's a fellow by the name of Earl Elam that
knew all the stunts, from Bandera. He never was really a pro-fessional
but he liked to do it, he watched it. He told me
how to do it but he didn't do it himself.
I finally got a picture of Will Rogers doin' that stompin'
out a prairie fire. I've studied it in detail; made a study
of it.
L: Was this a motion picture?
M: No, unfortunately, it's a still picture, but I l ooked at
exac~l y the length of the loop and how big the loop was; the
'--
two loops/and I kept workin' at it and finally I got it.
M: So that's about the way that ...
Bruce Montague 8 .
L : Were there others in addition to J oseDiaz?
M: Earl Elam .
heard of him .
And another , Monty Montana , you ' ve probably
He was a real famous trick roper . I saw him
a couple of times in rodeos. I don ' t remember whethe r it
was Chester Barrs ; I saw several other ropers and I don ' t
even remember t he names, but I saw them in the rodeos. Bu t
Monty Montana , I kept an eye on him pretty much . I learned
a lot of his trick s just by ...
END OF TAPE I, Side 1 , 18 minut es .
TAPE I , Side 2
M: Monty Montana was qui te an inspiration . He was beautifully
coordinated . I thought he was . He ' d go out and start his
performance , standing up on top of a horse putting a great
big loop around several horses ; five , six horses at one time.
And then he would have riders come by and he ' d rope five or
six horses with various l oops . He c ould rope with little tiny
loops and big loops . He was well dressed . I remember , he
mostly wore white. He had a white cowboy outfi t; rode a
white horse. And he r eally put on some bea utiful shows , when
he was a younger man .
It fasc inated me as a l ittl e boy .
to try to learn .
So I sai d I'm going
Bruce Montawe 9 .
M: Oh yes , one stunt, he could roll; he could just make
beautiful rolls with his whole body and keep the rope going.
It was a beautifully coordinated trick. So I practiced that.
And I finally learned to do that. That was a good one that
I learned from Monty Montana .
Of course, some of the horse catches. I did learn that.
/ And Jose told me how to do it. We both picked it . One of
my brothers was pretty good at rope spinnin', too. He liked
to rope calves more than anything. But he could also rope,
the standing rope.
L: What do you think is the most difficult of these
tricks that you ever mastered?
M: I think I had to work harder on probably stomping out that
prairie fire. You remember the prairie fires, when you have
a prairie fire, you got to get it out . Well, Will Rogers
thought it was humorous, like I say, he was very quick to
communicate. You could never ask him a question that he
couldn't come back instantly with a real good answer. And a
humorous answer and make you laugh, regardless of the condition.
Well, somebody said , "How about the prairie fire?" "Oh,
we stomp them out just like this." Then he started doin' the
two loops and he said, "What are you doin'?" And Will said,
"Well , I'm fanning the smoke ." He'd have a loop goin ' in his
left hand ... Says, "I'm fanning the smoke away with my left
Bruce Montague 10.
M: hand and I 'm stompin' the fire out with my right f oot ."
"See?" So then the name of that stomp was "stomping out a
prairie fire". I worked for a long , l ong time on that one 'til
I could get that one . Of course, coordination , to keep both
of 'em going at the same time.
L: And having nothing more than a still picture to work from.
M: To get the dimensions off it of how big the loop ought
to be. From a still picture, you can tell the direction that
he's spinning, see? By the way~ he was holding the hand.
You could tell an awful lot from i t. You can tell the size;
the dimensions; how long the ropes were and in which direction
he was turning the loop. So it was really r evealing. The
picture revealed a whole l ot more than what might look on the
face of it.
So then we got that one and then another rea l hard one
was that roll of Monty Mont ana 's, where he rolled backwards.
It took me a long time to learn that one. And then, of course,
the Texas skip took a l ot of work on that Texas skip, where
you jump back and forth and run with it; run through the loop.
I'd say that stompin ' out the prairie fire probably took me
more time.
Now the ocean wave is a real hard one . It takes a long
time to learn. But it's not a strain. It's easy to practice.
You can be relaxed practicing where something like stomping
out a prairie fire or the rolls and stuff like that , you have
Bruce Montague 11.
M: to exert a lot of muscular coordination while you're
doin' it. You're tired, after say , thirty minutes of
practice , you're tired. I guess it keeps you in pretty good
shape, though .
That's why we always like to have the Texas Folklife
Festival because we have that 105 degree weather and we like
to get out under that beautiful Texas sun right in the middle
of the day and do it.
L: It tempers you. (Laughter)
M: It tempers you.
L: Are you still learning new tricks all the time?
Or do you already know them all?
M: No. The only real trick that I've learned is that I don't
know al l the tricks. That's the only trick that I've l earned
is that I don't know all the tricks there are.
L: A lot of people don't ever master that. What is the last
one that you brought into your repertoire?
M: That's a hard question to answer. You know I really don't
have any new ones in a long while here. Whether the Texas
skip was the last one or stomping out a prairie fire or
the . I guess probably the Texas skip was really one of
the last ones. Really roping doing that mangana ... I've
done that a few times. I guess the Texas skip is probably one
of the latter ones . As a matter of fact, I think I did
learn the Texas skip after I was doin ' stomping out a prairie
fire.
Bruce Montague 12.
M. Then I got a book that I read from Will Rogers. I
have written Will Rogers, Jr. a couple of times. He's pretty
much a cowboy, I understand. I don't know him really that
well. But he's all spirit; he's a cowboy at heart. You can
tell by the way he communicates.
L: He lives out in Tuback, Arizona, doesn't he?
M: I think so. I haven't kept tract of him for quite a
while. I think Monty Montana is still. what our friend
Kevin was tellin' us, that Monty Montana has still appeared
on some of the trick roping exhibitions .
L: I was going to ask you, how long as a general rule, do
trick ropers last? (Laughter )
M: We're going to find that out in me. We have the subject
matter to be tested as available. And it's being tested.
(Laughter) I don't know, but I guess Monty Montana is on
up there but he can still spin a rope.
L: Is there anything at all that you can learn from a book
about this subject, or do you have to do it?
M: Not really . You can't learn from the book. It has to
be practiced. But you can l earn the basic how to set the
thing up. That is, what kind of rope to have and how long
to have it and how big a loop and all that, they can tell you
that in a book, but there's no way you can sit down and read a
book and then walk out and do what we did this afternoon .
Of course, it would take a lot of persuasion in that book to
tell somebody to go out there in 105 degree temperature sun,
Bruce Montague 13.
M: stand right out without any shade and do that for all
afternoon.
L: Among the people today who are doing what you are doing,
who impresses you?
M: Well, the young man that was just with us, Kevin, I
think he's got a tremendous career ahead of him. I've tried
to teach him. I've not taught him all the -tricks that he
knows, but I've tried to encourage him; keep him going.
One thing that he has, he's got the heart to do it. And he
wants to do it. And that's what it really takes. It takes
really the desire to do it and get out there and do it. I
think we're going to hear a lot of Kevin.
going to be a real good trick roper.
I think he's
L: Do you have any idea what drives a person to devote
himself to this kind of pursuit?
M: If I knew the answer to that, I could make millions by
just counselling people.
L: What is the satisfaction that you derive from it?
M: Well, I think that you can see a beautiful thing being
done. I guess it's like any other artist. It is artistry;
rope artistry. I guess an artist likes to paint a picture
and portray some type of an idealistic thing or beauty or
sunset. If a person can do a real pretty stunt and say, here
it is, and make the rope look pretty, well he's done his
stunt. I think there 's a tremendous satisfaction in that.
And what I really get a kick out of is watching the smiles
on the kids' faces. Like a while ago after I did that Texas
Bruce Montague 14 .
M: skip , there was the biggest smiles on the kids' faces
and I enjoy that. To see "isn't that fun". Then I guess I
feel I'm a kid; I 'm one of the kids. I don't know , there's a
real good feeling in gettin ' out there and min' it , r egard­less
of how hot it gets. The Texas Folklife people insist in
gettin' you out there without any shade , right in the sun but
that ' s part of it. (Laughter).
L: It builds character.
M: But I 'd say that the real p l easure is seein' those kids
smile and gettin' some fun out of it.
L: Do you do a l ot of rodeo work?
M: Strangely enough, not a whole lot . When I was younger,
I roped calves . I liked t o rope calves and some steers;
steer ropin ' and team roping. But now it's been a long time
since I have cons i stently . because I haven't contracted
out for anything. I do it just for entertainment.
L: Other than the Folklife Festival, what is your stage?
M: I do it like in Medina County Fair; I've been doin'
that every year. I' ve going to do that again this year . The
Floresville Peanut Festival; I'm goin ' to do it there. And
just recently, Austin is going to have a festival. They had
their first one back in July . And they ' re going to try to
have a festival up at Au s tin so I performed there and I 'm
goin ' to be doin' it there so, mostly things like this is
mostly what I've been doin'.
Bruce Montague 15.
L: How much practice does it take a day or a week to stay
in shape?
M: Actually, what you really should do is practice each
and every day. To keep in shape. But I don't. We're neg­ligent,
like everybody . As I understand , the people I' ve
talked to, that 's the hardest thing to do is to get out there
and practice each and every day. The real correct answer
is each and every day. But nobody practices every day.
Everybody's got an excuse .
L: How often do you wind up practicing? Or do you l et it
got for quite a while?
M: Well, unfortunately, I get tied up with other things. I
let some time go by and then when I do get it, then, of
course, I try to get into it; try t o work it out , the kinks out .
L: Then you double up on your practicing at this time?
M: Really, once you learn, you don't really have to practice .
It's the idea of keepin' in shape rather than the practicing
and keepin' the coordinat ion up. That' s what it really takes.
L: Mrs. Montague1, has he told us everything that he needs
to? Has he left out anything?
MM: I don't think so. Bruce really uses his roping a lot
more. I think he forgets all the birthday parties and a ll
the church event s , just locally . Like school events. Bruce
i s always asked to go do these things. He forgets about
this . He really gets all his practice in.
Bruce Montague 16.
L: The cost of performance.
MM: I always volunteer . Of course , now Bruce is going into
his next stage, taking the kids to the rodeo since Regina is
over there . She's really the born horse woman. He runs
around a lot with the kids, so I think that keeps him in
shape. He's really going to a lot more rodeos now because of
the children . We usually average a rodeo a week . We missed
out on a rodeo on Friday night because we came to the Festival.
M: But she has another one Friday and she 'll be doing the
barrels. The first time she went out , she won a third and
just Friday before last, she won a second. So she's coming
along on that barrel race. And handling the horse. And
that takes ... we've been trying to get her to sit with
real good posture; really get with it. She has much better
posture than I do. It's obvious . Youth . That's what we're
trying to work on is get her to sit on it and handle the horse
real pretty. And she's been makin' beautiful runs. We
thing she's got quite a barrel racin'
L : What's your specialty?
(talent?)
M: He~~ probably will try to spin the rope, won't you,
later on, Paul?
Regina can spin the little flat rope.
L: Well, thank you for coming.
The other voices heard on this tape toward the end of
it, were Mrs. Montague and the Montague ' s daughter, Regina;
son Paul was present in the room.
END OF TAPE I, Side 2 - about 17 mintues.