STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Ivan Carrillo moved with his family to Vale, Ore., from a small town near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, when he was 6.

Distanced from his native country, he says he was “a little embarrassed” by his culture.

Then, at 16, he learned how to do the Mexican dances, in particular a sword dance done with machetes.

“Now I know we have a very beautiful culture,” he said.

Carrillo, now a paralegal in Nampa, shared his culture with the Wagon Days crowd on Saturday as he, a handful of dancers, three lariat performers and several riders on horseback performed for the first time on the Wagon Days stage.

Escaramuza Charra, the first Idaho group patterned after female adelitas who fought for Mexican independence, trotted through tight maneuvers choreographed to Mexican music and made all the more difficult by the fact they were riding sidesaddle.

Every state in Mexico has its own dancers and food—so distinguishable each seems like a separate country, Carrillo said. And on Saturday those performing in Wagon days performed colorful dances including the “Mexican Hat Dance” from Jalisco, known to have originated mariachi music and tequila.

The trick ropers led by Jose Luis Heredia of Nampa were born of a Mexican bullfighting tradition where men were expected to show roping prowess before they took on a bull. Eventually, it became the stuff of competition at Mexican rodeos, said Carrillo.

Members of the Shoshoni and Bannock bands followed up their performance.

They had made their inaugural appearance at the 2018 Wagon Days as Wagon Days organizers sought to add flavor to the mix.

“Before that the last time we came here was in the 1940s,” Leo Ariwhite told the crowd, which included a tour from New Jersey. “Since, we have been invisible.”

The Native Americans, whose forefathers used to come through the Wood River Valley enroute to salmon fishing in the north, certainly were not invisible Saturday as more than 15,000 people lined the streets of Ketchum to watch the Northwest’s largest non-motorized parade.

Hundreds of children dressed in cowboy hats and boots looked on as a 1910 Troy Tank Wagon used to transport Standard Oil Petro in the days when horses still ruled over automobiles rolled by behind a team of grey Percherons.

Among those taking part in the parade was Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw whose parents Frances and Tony Bradshaw had crossed the big pond from London to check out their son’s Wild West.

Carol Holding and Glenn Janss, present and past owners of Sun Valley Resort, waved at the crowd from an 1880 five-glass landau carriage pulled by a team of gray Percherons.

Wood River Chapel showed off a wagon with a coffin of the era known as a toe pincher because of the way it bends inward below the shoulders creating a diamond-like shape.

And Sun Valley Suns hockey players got plenty of practice for the upcoming season as they skated up and down the streets scooping up road apples with big snow shovels.

Riders atop River Grove Ranch Peruvian Pasos weaved their way down Sun Valley Road, holding flutes full of unspilled, unsloshed champagne as evidence of their horses’ smooth gait.

Their performance earned them the People’s Choice Award.

And the Concord Stage –the taxi of the day—won a Best of Show behind its Percherons driven by Jim Barton of the Carey Bar B Ranch.

OTHER WINNERS:

CARTS: The Get-Away Cart

NEW WAGON—Ace Wrecking Service

OPEN—Mini-pack Trip

RIDING CLUB—River Grove Ranch Peruvian Pasos

FLOAT—The Blaine County Museum’s Heritage Court

ORIGINAL/RESTORED Snake River Stampede Whiskey Wagon

COACH—The Concord Stage