Program Featured Bill Pickett, Father of Steer Wrestling

Anna K. Sensel, Learning & Engagement Coordinator at the Brinton Museum, presented a program on Sunday, June 28, about Bill Pickett, the black Texas cowboy who was the father of the rodeo sport, Steer Wrestling. During the early part of the 20^th century, Pickett demonstrated his technique in rodeos and country fairs around the country, including rodeos in Wyoming.

Sensel began her talk with a little background on the Texas Cattle industry, where Pickett’s story began.

She said by 1825, black slaves made up nearly 25% of the Texas population, and by 1850, they made up 30%. As a slave state, Texas joined the confederacy, and several Texans took up arms and fought for the south. They left their slaves in charge of their lands and their cattle ranches while they were gone.

At first, they used slave labor to round up the cattle and work on the ranch. Then, when the emancipation proclamation ended the cheap labor, the ranchers hired the negro ranch hands and trail hands. Historians say that during that time one in four cowboys were black.

That set the background for the Bill Pickett story. Even after the days of the trail drives were over, the public’s fascination with the cowboy lifestyle prevailed, making way for the popularity of wild west shows and rodeos.

Pickett used the opportunity to improve on his roping and riding skills. She talked about how he started bull-dogging longhorn cattle.

Bill worked in the101 Wild West Show, performing his technique. Unfortunately, due to his race, he was banned from several rodeos, so he told the promoters that he was a full-blooded Indian instead of admitting he was black.

Later, this method lost popularity, and was replaced by the modern day steer wrestling, which wasn’t a brutal as biting the steer’s nose.

He toured throughout the west, and made two movies, “The Bull-Dogger,” and “The Crimson Skull,” a movie which had an all-black cast. Sensel had a short clip from “The Bull-Dogger,” showing Pickett’s bull-dogging technique.

In 1932, Pickett retired and purchased a 160 acre ranch. Later that same year, he was kicked in the head by a horse and died.

“Bill Pickett was far too legendary for his story to end there,” Sensel said. In 1971, he became the first African-American honoree to be named to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and in 1989 he was also honored in the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.

There is also the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo which celebrates and honors the contributions of the Black Cowboys and Cowgirls in the building the west.

The program was informative and drew a good crowd to hear about the legendary black cowhand who became famous for his unique technique of catching wild cattle.

Sensel ended with this.

Sensel is a 19th Century American Historian, specializing the slavery, black history, and
abolitionism.