The Dusky Demon

by Phil Truman

Willie watched the big dogs work.

Willie M. "Bill" Pickett

The ten-year-old boy was riveted by their prowess. These mixed-breed bulldogs, fifty to sixty pounds of muscle, agility, speed, and fortitude,  would chase down a thundering thousand pound steer, leap fearlessly at the beast's face, and bring it to the ground with a clinching bite to the steers' lips holding it there until a cowboy could rope it.

Willie thought to himself, I bet I could do that. So he started practicing his own "bite 'em on the lip" technique on calves around the central Texas cattle ranch where he and his family lived and worked.

One of thirteen children born to former slave parents, Willie grew up learning the hard, gritty life of being a ranch hand. In spite of the prejudice and bigotry surrounding him, or maybe because of it, Willie developed himself into the hardest working and most skilled hand on the ranch. He could ride and rope with the best of them, better than most. But he went beyond. He came up with a skill no other cowboy had ever tried. He continued to perfect his "bulldogging" method eventually moving up to full grown cows and the longhorn steers which roamed the mesquite bush country. It was an astounding skill no one else could or would master.

Willie married in 1890 and settled in Taylor, Texas located some thirty-five miles northeast of Austin, and twenty miles due east of Round Rock. That's where he and Maggie began their family of nine children, and partnered with some of his brothers in a start-up business called Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Association. Their handbills stated:

"We ride and break all wild horses with much care. Good treatment to all animals. Perfect satisfaction guaranteed.

Catching and taming wild cattle a specialty."

Bill Picket 'bulldogging'

A rancher-client of the Picketts was so amazed with Willie's—now called Bill—steer lip-biting technique that he suggested Bill put on demonstrations at county fairs, and arranged for him to do so at several. The crowds were dumbstruck. The fair circuit and Bill's "act" became a regular part of the Pickett Brothers' business. In 1903 he met a promoter named Dave "Mister Cowboy" McClure, who told Bill he could take him to the next level. 

McClure promptly got Pickett bookings at some of the biggest rodeos in the ranching states. There was only one problem: blacks were barred from entering most rodeo contests. But being a savvy showman, McClure focused on Pickett's mixed-blood heritage (Cherokee, Caucasian, Negro) and billed him as "The Dusky Demon." Apparently it worked, as Bill went on to become a rage in the arenas of rodeo.

In 1905 Joe Miller, the eldest and managing brother of the vast Miller Bros. 101 Ranch in  northern Oklahoma, was putting together the first of his Wild West shows, a spectacle which would feature "five hundred cowboys, a thousand Indians, hundreds of buffalo, fancy riding, roping and shooting, and the Apache chief Geronimo." Joe heard about Bill Pickett, and dispatched little brother Zack to the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show where Pickett was performing.

Zack met up with Bill's new manager, Guy "Cheyenne Bill" Weadick, a trick rope artist from Alberta, Canada, who in 1912 would establish the Calgary Stampede. But in 1905 Zack Miller struck a deal with Weadick and Pickett to perform for the 101 Ranch Wild West Show.

In his Western Heritage and Spur Award winning book, The Real Wild West, Michael Wallis describes Bill Pickett's performance at the inaugural event before a crowd of 65,000:

The audience gasped as a thousand-pound steer charged into the arena, pursued by a mounted hazer whose task was to keep the critter on a straight path in front of the grandstand. From out of nowhere Bill Pickett appeared. Astride his bay horse named Spradley, the bulldogger was later described as being "hard and tough as whalebone."

Pickett coaxed the horse forward. In an instant, they were at full gallop and he was sliding off off Spradley onto the huge steer's back. He grabbed a flashing horn in each hand, dug his boots into the earth, and twisted the steer's neck until its head was turned upward. Pickett's teeth gnashed onto steer's lip. The cowboy lifted his hands in the air and gave his body a twist. The steer fell on its side and lay perfectly quiet as Pickett rendered it helpless. The crowd jumped to its feet, as if one body. The applause was said to be deafening.

Most who knew and worked with him agree that Willie M. "Bill" Pickett, the inventor of the rodeo event of Bulldoggin', was one of the greatest American "sweat and dirt" cowboys that ever sat a saddle or looped a reata. His lip-biting technique isn't used in the modern rodeo event of steer wrestling, but Bill Pickett's emulation of the big Texas ranch dogs' method of bringing down beeves gave the event its name.

Phil Truman is the author of the award-winning historical western novel,  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr;  a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football entitled GAME, an American Novel; and Treasure Kills (formerly Legends of Tsalagee), a mystery/adventure in a small town. 

He's currently working on a series of western shorts put together in a volume called West of the Dead Line, the first four stories of which are available at Amazon in e-format only for 99 cents each. Volume I - six stories in all - will be available in print and electronic format in the Fall of 2014.  

Wild West 101 – Part 2

From 1881 until his death in 1903, the patriarch of the Millers’ 101 Ranch, G.W. Miller, put together a cattle empire the likes of which the American West had never seen. It spread over 110,000 acres in the northern part of the Oklahoma Territory on land leased from the Ponca, Otoe, and Cherokee tribes. Pasturing thousands of head of cattle, a remuda of hundreds of horses, and a large herd of American bison, it had its own railroad, its own postal service, several schools and churches. They built their own network of roads for both ranch and public use, and they put in a telephone system to connect ranch headquarters with every foreman in the far reaches. After oil was discovered on the ranch, a refinery and electrical power plant were built. Every machine on the ranch ran on oil produced and refined by The 101 Ranch Oil Company, which eventually evolved into Conoco.

The Hundred and One, as it was called, had its own farming complex growing more than enough food for their own human and livestock consumption. Huge orchards produced bushel upon bushel of apples, cherries, and peaches. Buckets of grapes hung from lush arbors, and they harvested fresh vegetables from acres of gardens, plus wheat and corn and cotton. Of course, they had plenty of beef to eat, but they also raised pork and poultry and had a large dairy herd. They built a cider mill, a cannery, a tannery, an ice plant, a dairy, and a packing plant.

The cowhands and other ranch employees – over 300 of them – were paid in 101 scrip and coinage which they could use at the ranch laundry, café, and store. It’s said the company commissary, an imposing two-story structure, was more department store than trading post where one could buy anything from a shirt button to an automobile. The employees bought their clothes and groceries there, but it developed into a thriving tourist shop, too.

Although impressive, tourists didn’t flock to the 101 just to see the ranch operations. What eventually brought them in droves were productions of the Miller Brothers’ Wild West Shows. Around 1905, after some of the cowboys from the 101 put on roping, riding, and rodeo-ing exhibitions at local county fairs, the owner of a neighboring ranch southeast of The Hundred and One, suggested to the three Miller brothers that they produce their own wild west shows at the ranch. The eldest brother, Joseph, who ran the day-to-day operations of the ranch, thought that might be a good way to get publicity for the 101. He could already see the success the aforementioned neighbor, Gordon William “Pawnee Bill” Lillie, was having with his own shows, plus those of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Zach Mulhall.

Joe came up with a plan. In May, 1904 he accompanied his friend Frank H. Greer, the editor of the Guthrie, Oklahoma newspaper, to the St. Louis World’s Fair where the National Editorial Association was also holding their annual convention. Joe had in mind, with Greer’s influence, to convince the association members – editors and publishers of newspapers from across the country – to hold their next convention in Guthrie and The Hundred and One where he promised a show of cowboy and Indian acts that would “pop the eyes right out of their heads.” The group was intrigued and readily voted the venue for their 1905 convention.

When the date came around in June of 1905 Joe Miller and his brothers had put together a wild west

show that more than lived up to its year-long hyperbolic promotions. In addition to the National Editorial Association and the National Cattlemen’s Association, more than sixty thousand people from New York to Los Angeles flocked to witness the spectacle. The Millers had enclosed a thirty acre arena with grandstands that stretched for more than a mile, all filled to capacity. The elite, including those citified editors and publishers, stayed in the scores of Pullman cars the trains had brought them in; but most, the common folk, camped out. On those warm summer nights the lights of hundreds of campfires and glowing tents spread out for miles along the banks of the Salt Fork River.

P.T. Barnum had nothing as a promoter over Joe Miller. Most times he had a direct hand in the advancements, but Joe didn’t discourage rumors of the event’s grandiosity, either. In fact, he probably planted a few. One brochure stated that 500 cowboys and cowgirls would perform along with a thousand Indians, hundreds of buffalo, and that the great Apache chief Geronimo would be brought in to “shoot his last buffalo.”

Nobody really counted, but many, many mounted cowboys and cowgirls came into the arena at the Grand Entrance along with hundreds of Indians representing seven different tribes. Several marching bands were interspersed, and at the end a dozen Conestoga wagons trundled into the arena, driven by “pioneers.” 

Geronimo

The parade stretched out for a mile, and the old Chiricahua warrior was there as promised. Seven

troopers had escorted him up from Fort Sill where he’d been imprisoned. He was driven into the arena seated in a car, smiling and waving. Michael Wallis, in his definitive book on the 101, The Real Wild West, suggested Geronimo may have been amused at the idea of “shooting his last buffalo.” Fact was, the Apaches had quit hunting buffalo long before he was born. Actually, the targeted buffalo would be Geronimo’s first. And he did shoot it, or at least at it. He stepped from the automobile and fired the rifle handed to him. The first shot missed, so they chased the buffalo closer to the old chief. It took several shots to bring the animal down, some from the attending wranglers, but when it was all said and done, Geronimo was credited with the kill and received a standing O from the raucous crowd.

That first show at the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch was a rousing success and, as Joe hoped, it put the 101 on the map, not only for Americans, but Europeans as well. The 1905 show launched a run of Wild West shows that lasted for nearly three decades performing before boisterous adoring crowds, including kings and queens and presidents. They billed performers such as Tom Mix, Will Rogers, and an aging "Buffalo Bill" Cody. The sensational teenager Lucille Mulhall performed her astounding trick-riding and roping. The black cowboy, Bill Pickett, the inventor of the rodeo event of bulldogging, brought audiences to their feet with his courage and

Bulldoggin' Bill Pickett

daring when he leapt from his horse onto the neck of a running steer and brought it to the ground with a bite to the animal's upper lip.

At the onset of the Great Depression economic bad times hit the 101, and the shows had to close. Joe and the youngest brother George Jr. had died, leaving Zack to run the business, but in 1931 the ranch went into receivership. The land was divided and leased and all the personal property auctioned. The once great cattle empire and site of the greatest wild west shows on earth were scattered to the winds. Today all that’s left of the magnificent Hundred and One is a National Historic Marker off Highway 156 just west of Ponca City, Oklahoma.

To learn more about the 101, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Michael Wallis's Western Heritage and Spur award-winning book The Real Wild West, The 101 Ranch and the Creation of the American West (St. Martin's Griffin, New York).

Phil Truman has authored three of what he calls, “Oklahoma-centric” novels.  Red Lands Outlaw, the Ballad of Henry Starr,  a historical novel about the life and times of an Oklahoma outlaw, was a 2013 Peacemaker Award nominee and finalist for the 2013 Will Rogers Medallion for Western Fiction. His novel GAME, an American Novel is a sports inspirational about small town schoolboy football. Legends of Tsalagee weaves a tale of mystery and adventure in a small town. His western short story “Last Will for an Outlaw” appears in LaFrontera Publishing’s anthology, Dead or Alive, released June 2013. 
Phil’s website is: http://philtrumanink.com/