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What are your goals for the season?
Drake London:
“I think we all have the same goal in mind, and that’s just to win. At the end of the day, we all have one goal, and we’re striving towards that exactly.”
Behind the Scenes: Indian Relay
at The Pendleton Round-Up
PHOTOS BY PHOTOGRAPHER NAME/The Players' Tribune
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PHOTOS BY Zach Doleac for The Players’ Tribune
Indian Relay is the most exciting event you will see at a rodeo. Simply put, it’s a bareback relay horse race. Competitors must show proof of tribal enrollment and all of the team's horses must be Indian owned. Teams are made up of four people (one rider, one mugger, two holders) and three horses, and the race consists of three laps around the quarter-mile track. At the end of each lap the rider must leap off their horse and onto a different horse for the next lap. That’s where the pandemonium happens: holders getting knocked over, catchers getting stepped on and horses racing off with no riders. It’s exhilarating, it’s dangerous, it’s technically demanding, and when a transition is executed flawlessly, the roar from the grandstands is deafening.
What makes this team feel different, even from just last year?
Michael Penix Jr.:
The guys in it. I just feel like it’s a lot of guys that are dedicated, and a lot of guys that are pouring into our success coming up this year and I see a lot of belief in the guys as well. Being able to go out there and seeing all the guys getting extra work in each and every day, the locker room talk, making sure that everybody is on point for practice that day in the mornings. And just the camaraderie, the camaraderie of the team. The guys are definitely close in there. I feel like a lot of people are spending more time in the locker room than they did last year, just hanging out, getting to know each other and spending time with each other that way. So I feel like this team is very close, and we’ll be good because of it.
How do you feel heading into the season?
Kaden Elliss:
"I’m just excited. I’m just excited to get to play a kid’s game and have fun doing it with these guys that we got on this team. It’s a special group. Love everything about every guy on this team, and I’m excited to go to battle with them."
You hear about Bijan Robinson, then you get to be in the same room as him. What have you learned from him so far?
Nate Carter:
“Man, his work ethic. I mean, he’s a freak, you know? At the end of the day, he can do some things I’ve never seen anyone be able to do with the ball in his hands. The same thing with Tyler. So being able to learn from these guys, seeing how they work, seeing how they practice, seeing the little things like how they talk about pass protection, their footwork, how they go about things. I try and take notes of all the little things, trying to add that to my game. Because those two guys are amazing running backs, they’re going to make a lot of money playing this game because they’re going to have a very long career. So for me, being a rookie coming in, and being so young, I get to learn from those guys. That’s my mindset. I get to learn from two of the best backs to ever be able to play the game.”
What are your goals for the season?
Drake London:
“I think we all have the same goal in mind, and that’s just to win. At the end of the day, we all have one goal, and we’re striving towards that exactly.”
Photographers:
Brandon Magnus
Emily Hendrix
Jay Bendlin
Taylor McLaughlin
Erin Dickman
You hear about Bijan Robinson, then you get to be in the same room as him. What have you learned from him so far?
Nate Carter:
“Man, his work ethic. I mean, he’s a freak, you know? At the end of the day, he can do some things I’ve never seen anyone be able to do with the ball in his hands. The same thing with Tyler. So being able to learn from these guys, seeing how they work, seeing how they practice, seeing the little things like how they talk about pass protection, their footwork, how they go about things. I try and take notes of all the little things, trying to add that to my game. Because those two guys are amazing running backs, they’re going to make a lot of money playing this game because they’re going to have a very long career. So for me, being a rookie coming in, and being so young, I get to learn from those guys. That’s my mindset. I get to learn from two of the best backs to ever be able to play the game.”
The key to success in Indian Relay is the relationship the athletes have developed with their horses. According to Tiny Williams (a member of Colville Tribe, the owner of Camp Six Relay, and a 43-year Indian Relay veteran), “That’s 90% of your time, training horses.” It’s partly in their blood, but horsemanship is something that every athlete on the track takes pride in. It’s also a way of respecting the culture and heritage of their Tribes. “For us Native American people, not just the Colville Tribe, but every tribe, we are people of the horse, so now we’ve got to go out and prove it, be the best horseman we can be,” says Williams.
At the Pendleton Round-Up, held last month in Eastern Oregon, that connection with the horse was echoed by the youngest rider on the track, 14-year-old Kamiuse Pakootas. “When I’m feeling down, I go jump on my horse, talk to them. They talk to me in a way. And you can’t hear it, but you can feel their feelings too. If you get a connection with the horse, it just makes you feel way better.”
For a handful of the athletes competing at Pendleton, Indian Relay had been passed down in their family, through parents and grandparents who had been part of this Native American tradition. But beyond that, they’re racing for pride, money, glory, and to stay off the streets and out of trouble. “I take care of the youth, that’s what I was taught,” Williams says. “Racing, teaching, keeping them busy, that’s what we do, so they don’t have to rely on alcohol to go have fun. I haven’t had a drink in 24 years and if I can teach them that, then my people are getting better.”
They may be enemies on the track, but you can see and feel the comradery between these fierce competitors off the track. All summer long they find themselves at the same rodeos, pow-wows, county fairs, and other events. In Pendleton, they are sequestered in the back corner of the parking lot, and it feels a bit like circus camp: kids riding around on unicycles and bikes, horses being led around the lot, tents and cots set up under tarps and trailers. There was a costume party, a cornhole tournament, and different teams sharing pizza. “We got eight teams from the Colville Tribe here and any one of them could win it. We run against each other, but really we’re one big family.” Tiny Williams.
As Kamiuse puts it “We compete to see who is the better tribe. Everybody that’s part of Colville, if I'm Colville blood, they’re my family, blood or not. If a Colville member wins it, we all win it. We don’t share no prize, but we share the pride.”
The finals of the 2025 Indian Relay at the Pendleton Round-up consisted of four teams from the Colville Tribe — they all won.