No Boundaries

Italian cowboys are the subjects of a new exhibition at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma.

Photography by Gabrielle Saveri will be featured in the exhibition Italy’s Legendary Cowboys of the Maremma, opening December 8, at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

Her subjects are modern-day butteri, or Italian cowboys, hailing from the lands spanning from the plains of northern Lazio up through the coastal Italian region of Maremma into southern Tuscany.

The butteri have a unique and long-standing connection to the American West, which the museum notes: “In 1890, Buffalo Bill brought his Wild West Show to Naples, Italy, and proceeded to Rome as part of his European tour to offer the world an authentic wild frontier experience and showcase American cowboy skills. During that time, he met a local duke and prince named Onorato Caetani and a bet, or sfida, was made between the two men as to who had the better horsemen. In March 1890, during Cody’s Wild West Show, La Sfida took place on the outskirts of Rome between the Butteri of Cisterna di Latina (located in the Agro Pontino region, where the original butteri came from), and the American cowboys.

“According to Italian lore, the butteri handily defeated the American cowboys thanks to the superior riding skills of a humble, shy and soft-spoken horseman named Augusto Imperiali. To this day, modern-day Italian cowboys claim that they won the event and Buffalo Bill never paid the 1,000 Lire he owed from the original bet. American historians insist it was the Americans who won—the Italian riders failed to tame their horses in a reasonable amount of time, so in the end, Buffalo Bill and his ensemble were the big winners. The story of La Sfida or challenge between Buffalo Bill and his troupe, and the butteri, has become a part of the oral tradition of the modern-day Italian cowboys, who still maintain that their ancestors won the bet.”

The show runs through May 5, 2024. For more information visit the museum’s website, nationalcowboymuseum.org. —