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.