Lecture #20 - Mexican Performers in Buffalo Bill & Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Shows

Mexican performers were a fixture of two touring spectacles:
- Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show
- Pawnee Bill (Gordon Lillie)’s Wild West Show
They shaped U.S. popular culture by exporting secondary skills of Mexican bullfighting—trick-roping, fancy riding—and by popularizing Mexican equestrian dress.
Early participants were part of the first wave of Mexican labor migrants who traversed the border by railroad in the $1880\text{s}$ – $1890\text{s}$ .

Chief of the “Mexicans” in Buffalo Bill’s show during the $1890\text{s}$ .
Background
- Born in Puebla, Mexico; trained as a mounted bullfighter in the style of Ponciano Díaz (see previous lecture).
Contributions
- Carried Mexican trick-roping north; laid groundwork for modern rodeo events.
- Elevated demand for traje de charro: wide bell-bottom trousers (botonadura), short bolero jackets, elaborate embroidery, silver belt buckles.
- Inspired U.S. audiences and future stars (e.g., Will Rogers).
Iconography
- Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill routinely donned Mexican outfits; fashioning themselves “Mexican” onstage.
- Photo evidence: Buffalo Bill (left) & Gordon Lillie (right) wearing bell-bottoms with outside-leg buttons; bullfighter-style jacket fringe suggests date near late $1890\text{s}$ .

Mexican leatherwork and tailoring already prized in the U.S.; performers doubled as walking advertisements.
Costume = identity: anyone in traje de charro (or traje de chara for women) was marketed as Mexican, regardless of ethnicity.
Examples of cross-dressing ethnicity:
- Buffalo Bill, Pawnee Bill, Billy the Kid, Sitting Bull wore such apparel.
- An entire “Mexican” $12$ -piece band in Pawnee Bill’s show was actually Italian.

Rogers: Cherokee entertainer from Oologah, Oklahoma; career arc—Ziegfeld Follies → early cinema → newspaper wit.
Joint photo at St. Louis Annual Fair, $1899$ (group image with a wound lasso under both men).
Rogers’ first published article credited Oropeza for shaping U.S. trick-roping technique.
Rogers’ tragic death: plane crash in Alaska with fellow Oklahoman pilot Wiley Post (experimental aircraft, mid- $1930\text{s}$ ).

Chief of the Mexicans for Pawnee Bill, not Buffalo Bill.
Physical & stylistic contrast to Oropeza
- Taller, younger, “tall dark & handsome.”
- Less intricate roping but enormous power.
Signature feat: ropes $6$ horses in a single throw
- Horses run abreast in a circular track; performer pitches an enormous loop to snare all necks simultaneously.
- Often executed while he casually held a cigar—an image of ease amid danger.
Costuming: heavy gold/silver embroidery on sleeves & pant-legs; photo shows raised horse + cigar.
Pawnee Bill’s narrative was comparatively inclusive, avoiding overt white-supremacist tropes.

Program blurb praises her as a “splendid specimen of Mexican beauty … flashing eyes … rides as all Mexican girls ride.”
Sexualized language; repeated graphics differ only in degree of bustline accentuation.

Non-Mexican woman dressed in green traje de chara
- Long embroidered skirt replaces trousers; retains short bolero and shoulder trim (tassels disappear in $20^{\text{th}}$ c.).
- Rode side-saddle—traditional for Mexican women to avoid perceived sexual impropriety of riding astride.
- Side-saddle demands greater balance; half of rider’s weight hangs off the centerline → inherently riskier.
Historical significance
- Challenges claim that traje de chara was invented in Mexico (by Rosita Lepe in $1930\text{s}$ ); U.S. Wild West posters prove its existence in $1890\text{s}$ .

Performed $1905$ – $1913$ ; eloped with José Barrera $1905$ , had daughter, settled in Oklahoma.
José became foreman at Gordon Lillie’s Blue Hawk Peak ranch (still visitable near Pawnee, OK).

Evidence suggests José Barrera was undocumented
- Claimed Texas birth but spoke limited English; off-season trips to Monterrey.
- Lived in Oklahoma during resurgence of KKK, Greenwood (Tulsa) violence → incentive to mask Mexican origins.
Shows highlight fluid racial identities: costume, language, and skin tone could shift one’s perceived ethnicity on and off stage.

Lesser-known Mexican roper; recent details from great-great-grandson Bill McDowell (contacted researcher in $2021$ ).
Love story: Pawnee Bill parade through Gloucester City, NJ, $1888$ ; Irish immigrant Mary McVeigh falls for him.
Marriage at local Catholic church before show left town.
Reinvention
- Adopted name Joseph Roderick; claimed Irish ancestry → effectively passed as white.
- Implies light skin & strong English fluency; likely grew up near Texas side of border.
Family aftermath
- Two surviving children; Mary dies $1896$ .
- Joseph leaves kids with Mary’s aunt; vanishes from documentary record—common for lower-class itinerants.

Mexican performers left few writings (especially in English); historians reconstruct lives via:
- Press accounts, show programs, costume imagery, personal photos.
- Testimonies and memorabilia preserved by descendants.
Current narrative largely unpublished—drawn from dissertation research, archives (e.g., Pawnee Bill Ranch & Museum), and oral family histories.
Illustrates:
- Early cross-border labor and cultural exchange preceding contemporary rodeo.
- How U.S. popular culture commodified—and sometimes created—"Mexican" traditions.
- Ongoing issues of immigration status, racial passing, and representation.