The Untold Story of Bulldogging Bill Pickett

How one of America's first Black cowboys fought erasure by being undeniable

Bill Pickett, OSU Special Collections & Archives 

The sun rises high over the arena, glowing gold across dust stirred from boots and hooves. The crowd leans forward on weathered wood bleachers, broad-brimmed hats obscuring the wide eyes of ranchers and ranch hands. Women shade their faces with gloved hands, children weave between constantly shifting denim, cotton and wool clad limbs, searching for a clear view. Suddenly, a crashing sound erupts from the chute. The crowd stills. A steer bolts, hooves thundering in a panicked dash as the animal searches for any open space in which to escape. Behind it, a rider explodes from the gate, lean, coiled with tension and determination. 

The rider is Bill Pickett: a cowboy history tried to forget. He brings his horse to the flank of the steer, moving constantly in jolts determined by the strides of his horse, but always with control and purpose. In a flash, he pulls beside the animal, close enough to smell him. Then, he leaps. Pickett hurls himself from the saddle and into a cloud of dust and flesh, boots skimming the ground before he seizes the steer’s horns. The animal’s head twists. It snorts. Muscles tighten in man and beast alike, two bodies straining against fate. 

And just as it feels there will be a stalemate, or maybe even that the steer is close to getting the upper hand, Pickett brings his face in close to the danger. His head brought just inches from where the steer wants to erupt, where evolution has refined its anger, fear, and instinct at self preservation over thousands of years into horns and reflexes for goring. The already quiet crowd stops moving, except for the few who can’t stand the tension and look away. There are exasperated shouts of “no”, and sighs of distress. Manure and sweat hang in the heat, the stench strengthened by adrenaline and the crowd’s shared gasp. None expect what they’re witnessing.

Pickett’s mouth opens. He closes the last few inches, and sinks his teeth into the steer’s tender lip, jerking its head sideways with a motion both primal and precise. The entirety of the animal rolls beneath him and crashes to the dirt, resigned. 

Pickett stands. The dust settles.

There’s an extended silence and unease as the crowd digests the absurdity and mastery they have just witnessed. 

Then a trickle of applause rises to a roar punctuated by whistles. It’s a show, yes, but also an act of subversion. And it takes the crowd a moment to accept the terms.

The moment is a reckoning. Pickett, a Black man born into the long shadow of slavery, has done more than wrestle a steer. He’s brought the mythology of the West to the ground, and with such courage and tenacity as to make his mastery undeniable. 

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Before he was a legend, Bill Pickett was a boy born in 1870 to formerly enslaved parents in Travis County, Texas. Reportedly also of Cherokee descent, Pickett grew up in a world that told him almost exclusively what he could not be. The Civil War had ended just five years earlier. Reconstruction was already unraveling. Most of Pickett’s life unfolded during the period of intense racial segregation, violence, and legally sanctioned discrimination of the Jim Crow era.

The American West, romanticized as a place of reinvention, must have seemed a beacon of hope to Pickett. But, it had rules of its own, most of them unwritten, formed by the language of race and enforced by violence. The frontier was often less formally segregated than the Jim Crow South, but that didn't mean it was egalitarian. Black cowboys, Native Americans, Mexicans, and Chinese immigrants all played crucial roles in the expansion of the West, but were rarely given equal recognition or rights. The frontier was a place to manifest destiny, so long as the person doing the manifesting was White and male.

Racial hierarchies still shaped access to land, justice, safety, and economic opportunity, though the remoteness of the frontier sometimes allowed for more blurred boundaries in day-to-day interactions. This small window in the culture of the frontier is where Pickett found space to subvert the mythology of race in America. 

Cowboys, as we picture them historically and even today, are mostly White. The truth is different. By some estimates, one in four working cowboys was Black. They broke horses, herded cattle, slept under stars just the same, but rarely got their names in the papers, on the rodeo circuit, or in the dime novels. They were essential to the cattle economy, but expendable in the story America wanted to tell about itself.

Pickett refused that erasure. At a time when Black men were barred from most formal competitions and denied stages for recognition, he carved his own path in the small space left unguarded by culture, sometimes by his teeth. He developed “bulldogging,” a new rodeo event in which a cowboy would leap from his horse, grab a steer by the horns, and wrestle it to the ground. Pickett’s version was even more daring and intimate, more audacious: inspired by watching bulldogs, he bit a steer’s lip at the peak moment of tension to unbalance it. It was a blend of instinct and performance, skill and spectacle. His bravery too, was undeniable. 

But still, his race was a problem for audiences and show organizers. To be booked in traveling Wild West shows, he was sometimes billed as Mexican or Comanche, because a Black cowboy wasn’t marketable. In rodeo arenas, he was often barred from competition entirely. And yet, wherever he found the space, he spun dust and silence into awe nonetheless, making a lasting impact on western culture.

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Pickett eventually joined the famed 101 Ranch Wild West Show, performing alongside the likes of Will Rogers and Tom Mix, because he was too good to ignore. Colonel Zach Miller, an owner of the show along with his brothers, came to regard Pickett as “the greatest sweat-and-dirt cowhand that ever lived—bar none.” His act, bulldogging: jumping from horseback, grappling a steer to the dirt, and subduing it with force, skill, and teeth, became one of the show’s most talked-about spectacles, often headlining. He even made his way into early silent films, starring in The Bull-Dogger (1921, now largely lost) and The Crimson Skull. But the movies didn’t elevate him to celebrity. They obscured him. Like so many early Black figures in American cinema, Pickett was buried in reels few would ever see, while White cowboy stars and their archetype galloped into cultural myth.

His bulldogging technique evolved into the well-known modern event of steer wrestling common in rodeo events across the country. His contributions shaped the culture of the west and grew to become legend. His name didn’t.

After his death in 1932, his contributions faded from public memory. He was kicked in the head by a bronco, still doing the dangerous work he helped to define. Others took up bulldogging and earned glory in competitions he’d never been allowed to enter. Some rodeo histories didn’t mention him at all. Luckily, the work of his descendants and other historians restored his name to history books and cultural prominence, their advocacy leading to posthumous induction into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1971. He was the first Black cowboy honored there. He was also featured on a U.S. Postage stamp released in 1994, though emblematic of his story, the first image mistakenly featured his brother Ben Pickett instead. That was later corrected. 

What Pickett did, on dirt arenas under open sky, was subversive and mythological in scale. Every time he leapt from his horse and dragged a snorting steer to the ground, he enacted a rebellion. He refused to be overlooked, sidelined, mislabeled, and erased from the very culture he himself was shaping. That culture demanded courage and resiliency to mold the west into promise. Pickett drew closer than most dared, held on longer, and brought his face to the beast. None of it was easy.

It’s easy to call him a master showman. He was. But he was also a strategist, an innovator, a rebel working inside a system that fought giving him credit. Bulldogging was a metaphor made real. He invented something no one had seen before or dared to do and used it to force the culture to look his way, if only for a moment, and no matter how much they didn’t want to. 

That image: not just a man wrestling a steer, but a man wrestling a story, biting down on the myth of the West and refusing to let go, claiming space in an undeniable way. That’s the truest kind of heroism, when someone rides straight into history’s blind spot, and makes it feel their presence, even if they have to use their teeth.

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About the Author

Chad Hamilton is a Colorado-based writer with a deep passion for the outdoors, storytelling, and the everyday adventures of parenting. With a degree in English and a focus on creative writing, Chad began his career in the fast-paced world of marketing, where he honed his ability to craft compelling narratives that cut through the noise. Over time, he evolved from contributor to strategist, eventually founding his own marketing business, where he helps brands find and share their unique voice in competitive landscapes. Beyond his professional work, Chad writes about hiking, nature, and family life, drawing inspiration from the trails and terrain of the Rocky Mountains. His writing has appeared in Business Insider, Like the Wind, Palomino County, and numerous brand publications and campaigns, reflecting a voice that’s both grounded and evocative.