EVENTS
Saddle Bronc Rider
Bull Rider
Steer Wrestler
Born in 1933 on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, Joe Chase was a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. With his brother, Emanuel, he started rodeoing as a youth and, at age 16, became the youngest person to win the North Dakota State saddle-bronc-riding title.
During college Chase competed in the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association as a saddle-bronc rider with Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. He captured the NIRA saddle-bronc titles in 1952 and 1953, helping to bring the national titles to Hardin-Simmons in those years. Thereafter, he contested at great venues across the country, including Denver, Fort Worth, Houston, Cheyenne, Calgary, Pendleton, Salinas, San Francisco and Madison Square Garden in New York City. In 1961 Chase took the saddle-bronc championship at Pendleton — the first Native American to do so since Jackson Sundown in 1916.
Though Joe Chase never won a RCA world event title, he was always in contention with the best of his era. He qualified and placed at Madison Square Garden three times and qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in 1960 and 1961. Chase left the arena in 1962 and retired in Loveland, Colorado. In 1999 he was inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame. He died in 2005.
