Profile of Bill Pickett on Famous Like Me

Willie M. "Bill" Pickett (December 5, 1870 or 1871 - April 2, 1932) was a cowboy and rodeo performer.

Pickett was born in Travis County, Texas, the second of thirteen children. While predominantly black, Pickett also had white and Cherokee ancestry. He grew up working on ranches, where he invented the technique of bulldogging, the skill of grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground. Pickett's method for bulldogging was biting a cow on the lip and then falling backwards. This method eventually lost popularity as the sport morphed into the steer wrestling that is practiced in rodeos today.

Pickett married Maggie Turner in 1890 and the couple had nine children. Pickett and his brothers started their own company, the Pickett Brothers Broncho Busters and Rough Riders Association, to offer their services as cowboys. Pickett also made a living demonstrating his bulldogging skills and other stunts at county fairs. In 1905, Pickett joined the 101 Ranch Wild West Show that featured the likes of Buffalo Bill, Will Rogers, Tom Mix and Zach and Lucille Mulhall. Pickett was a popular performer who toured around the world and appeared in early motion pictures. Pickett was shown in a movie created by Richard E. Norman. Pickett's ethnicity resulted in him not being able to appear at many rodeos. He often was forced to claim that he was of Comanche heritage in order to perform.

Pickett continued to work his entire life. In 1932, he was kicked in the head by a horse while working horses at the 101 Ranch and died of his injuries a few days later, at the age of 62. Will Rogers announced his funeral on the radio.

Pickett was named to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1971 and was the first black honoree to that organization. He was enshrined in the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1989.

In 1994, the United States Postal Service honored Pickett as one of twenty "Legends of the West" pictured in a series of stamps. Unfortunately, the stamps used a picture which many reference works identified as Bill Pickett but was in fact his brother Ben. The Postal Service recalled the series to correct the error.

Another controversy that still rages is a claim that steer wrestling was independantly developed in Canada by the Canadian Black Cowboy John Ware and possibly predates Pickett. An 1892 Calgary gymkhana lists a demonstration of steer wrestling by John Ware on its program. On the other hand it is claimed that Bill Pickett was steer wrestling as early as 1881.

Reference

• Powell, Lee (Dec. 3-9, 2004). Bill Pickett: an unlikely rodeo pioneer. The Sports Page, p. 3.

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