THIS IS WHAT Monument Hill, the burial place of Bill Pickett, looks like at the east side of U. S. 156 near Marland.
Bt DAVID MILLER News Sports EditorSClBThe 2018 Class of inductees to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame were officially introduced last week and the names had a little more than the usual amount of interest to this neck of the woods.
The nominees include Joe Castiglione, current OU athletic director; Ken Mendenhall, an OU and NFL football player; Robin Ventura, OSU baseball great and later MLB manager; Alan Trimble, the long-time Jenks High School football coach; and Mat Hoffman, a pioneer in bicycle trick riding. I was familiar with all but Hoffman, of whom I intend to inform myself about later.
But there were two more names in the list, ones that do have local connections. One was Larry Coker, a famous coach who won a national championship at Miami. Why does that have local interest? Coker’s first coaching job was at Fairfax, just down the road in Osage County. Coker’s Fairfax Red Devils teams won some state championships back in the 1980s and he is still warmly remembered by folks in that region.
The other name is that of Bill Pickett, the legendary cowboy who made his home in the Ponca City area for many years. Pickett was world renowned for his rodeo skills and became famous as part of the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Show.
I have written about Pickett and would like to resurrect some of the information from the past.
First of all, I want to clarify some of the information released by the Hall of Fame, which says “Bill Pickett was a pioneering rodeo cowboy in the early part of the 20th century, and created the technique of bulldogging, by grabbing a steer by the horns and wrestling it to the ground.”
That is accurate as far as it goes. But it doesn’t say what Pickett did while he grabbed a steer by the horns. The fact is, and I’ve read several places, that Pickett would bite the lip of the steer.
To explain in a little more detail, Pickett quit school after the fifth grade and took a job on a cattle ranch. There he observed bulldogs being used to subdue unruly steers. The dogs’ method was to bite the steer on the upper lip or nose area and hold on with its teeth. Since that is a very sensitive area of an animal’s face, the steer would become docile and manageable as long as the dog had its teeth sunk in. Pickett reasoned that he could do the same thing and after experimenting, found his assumption to be true. It was after he demonstrated his ability to bring a steer to the ground that the rodeo event formerly known as bulldogging and currently known as steer wrestling was born.
I also read somewhere that most other bulldoggers and steer wrestlers since Pickett’s time developed their techniques minus the practice of biting the steer’s lip. I can’t imagine why.
To honor Mr. Pickett’s selection to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, I will reprint excerpts from a This and That published in Feb. 9, 2011.
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For those who may not know, Pickett was an African-American who has the distinction of being the only member of his race to be inducted in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. He was billed during his performing days as the “Dusky Demon from Texas,” and later the “Dusky Demon from Oklahoma.”
His specialty was bulldogging — or as it is known
BILL PICKETT was a world-renowned cowboy who introduced the world to “bulldogging.” He had few peers in the world of rodeo in his day.
How it was done is a matter of debate. There are some accounts that Pickett would allow his hands to be tied behind his back and would bring the steer to the ground using only the weight of his body and his teeth. Others indicated he may have grabbed the steer’s horns wrestling it to the ground and then keeping it down with a bite. Whatever, the image of me sinking my teeth into the upper lip of a steer is not a pleasant one.
If someone had told me about this part of being a cowboy when I was a child and wanted to be another Roy Rogers, I would have changed my mind and looked for something easier, like being a pro football player.
One report I read said that Pickett’s bulldogging technique was hard on his teeth and eventually he lost all of them, which forced him to adopt the style of steer wrestling used universally today.
Pickett was born in the 1860s in Texas. Eventually he was hired by the Miller Bros. at 101 Ranch, a relationship that was to be maintained most of the rest of his life. He lived in a variety of places in the area including in Ponca City. According to the 1977 book “Bill Pickett, Bulldogger” written by Col. Bailey C. Hanes, the Pickett family, which included his wife, Maggie and their six children, moved into a rental property at 515 Southeast 3rd Street in Ponca City, not long after he started working at the ranch.
They lived there for a while before moving to a location nearer the ranch. Pickett became famous worldwide because of his participation in the 101 Ranch Real Wild West Show that toured extensively throughout the United States and other points in the world.
A story that is told in all the accounts I read indicate that one of the Miller Brothers committed Pickett to confront a Mexican fighting bull in a bull ring in Mexico City. That commitment was made as a result of an argument about whether bulldoggers were as fearless and skilled as the matadors of the bull fighting experience. When Pickett was told of the arrangement, he willingly agreed to the challenge.
A bull named Frijole Chiquita (Little Beans) was selected for the contest, which was in the form of a bet. If Pickett could stay in the ring with the bull for a full 15 minutes and be locked in direct combat with the animal for seven and one-half minutes, he would be declared the winner. The Mexicans were betting that Pickett couldn’t last and would be killed by the bull. At stake was 5,000 pesos, the gate receipts and a lot of pride.
There were more than 25,000 bullfighting fans on hand to witness the event, almost all of whom were cheering for Frijole Chiquita. During the event, Pickett’s favorite horse, Spradley was gored in the hindquarters, and Pickett could not get a proper hold on the bull. He spent a lot of time being shaken back and forth by the animal while he was holding onto its horns. Two or three times he narrowly escaped being gored. A bottle thrown by a spectator hit him and broke some ribs. But Pickett survived the ordeal having lasted 38.5 minutes in the ring, 7.5 of which were spent on the bull’s horns. A near riot erupted when a Mexican
THIS INFORMATIONAL plaque stands at the pull out to Monument Hill along U.S. 156 near Marland. It tells about the graves on the hill.
This happened in 1908 and was probably one of the most dramatic events in Pickett’s long and eventful career.
By the way, after being gored by the bull, Spradley’s life was saved by an ancient Mexican, who worked at the bull ring. He thrust a couple of really ripe red, not yellow, bananas into the wound and within 10 minutes the horse was up and walking around. This was mentioned in the Hanes’ book about Pickett’s life.
Pickett retired from working at the 101 Ranch and from bulldogging for a four-year stint during which he moved his family to Oklahoma City. But after working at the stockyards as a drover and then as a mill hand for the Southwestern Oil Mill Co. from 1920 to 1924, he returned to the 101 Ranch.
Bill Pickett would die April 2, 1932, after being kicked in the head by a horse at the 101 Ranch. He was taken to the Ponca City hospital and after being in a coma for two weeks, he passed away. There was a large funeral conducted at the White House on the grounds of the ranch and Pickett was buried near the White Eagle monument, which can be seen from U.S. 156 three miles past the Noble County line. Many, including the renowned Will Rogers, who was a fellow Wild West Show participant, mourned his passing.
Pickett was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1971. A monument in his memory exists at 3rd and Grand in downtown Ponca City. There is not enough room in this space to adequately tell of the impact his career as a showman and a bulldogger had on people all over the world
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The 101 Ranch Old-timers Association has done some work at the Bill Pickett burial site on Monument Hill and this was described in a This and That on March 13, 2013. The article was prompted by information provided by the late Velma Falconer who was very active in the organization. Monument Hill was named that because the Miller Brothers placed a cairn of rocks on their ranch in 1927 to honor Ponca Chief White Eagle. Pickett had requested to be buried on the prairie and Monument Hill was thought to be a good place.
Monument Hill is located on the east side of U. S. 156 just a little bit north of Marland. The monument to White Eagle is visible from the highway, but one has to walk a short distance to the actual grave site. Mrs. Falconer told me that her group created a pull-out area off the highway which would provide some parking and access the area. She also told me that Pickett’s grave isn’t the only one on Monument Hill. One of the podiums at the gate gives the names of the others. One of those is the horse, Spradley.
“A few years ago the Kaw Nation sent Crystal Douglas and son with a ground search machine. They found seven unmarked graves. Some were buried north and south and some were buried east and west. We knew who was buried there, but we didn’t know where they were. They marked each corner of the graves and later put rocks around the graves. All at once Crystal gave out a yell ‘This is a big one.’ We knew it was Spradley’s grave.”
I visited the site and found that it was a worthwhile visit.