A Very OK Podcast
Episode 16: “Pawnee Bill and May Lillie’s Wild West”
June 21, 2022
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson, and as always, I’m here with Dr. Bob Blackburn. And Bob, it’s great to see you on a little bit of a rainy day here in Oklahoma City.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Well, thanks, Trait, and it’s always good to be with you again. I’m getting lots of good comments about our podcast. In fact, a lady at Belle Isle restaurant stopped me the other day and said, Bob, I love those podcasts. He said the only problem is that they’re not long enough, so we wanted to hear more.
Thompson: Well, I’ve heard that too. But also in show business, which we’re going to be talking about today, I think you need to keep them wanting. So I think that’s a good thing. I also want to mention that we’re talking to Oklahoma Hall of Fame inductee Bob Blackburn now, and I wanted to congratulate you on this big honor.
Blackburn: Well, thank you. And as I’ll say in my remarks, I’m going to talk about those who have been inducted before, how proud I am to be, you know, shoulder-to-shoulder with some of those pioneers who have built Oklahoma, but also people have asked me, how do I feel about it? And it’s funny, I’m almost happier that Leon Russell is being inducted with me, because Leon has deserved it and one of the greatest talents in all of musical history not just Oklahoma, but the country. And the fact that Leon’s going in with me makes me very, very happy. So, and then too, I think it reflects on the Historical Society, because I would not even have been considered if it was not for what we’ve done here. And that’s a team effort, with mentors, and colleagues, and partners, and people willing to help from the outside, and like Anna and Ronny that you’ll introduce here in a minute. You know, we have accomplished a lot. And to me, this honor belongs to all of us.
Thompson: Well, we’re certainly very proud of you and proud to have a Hall of Famer co-hosting the podcast. So it’s exciting stuff. Now, today our topic is we’re going to be talking about a man named Gordon Lillie and his wife, May Lillie. But you may know them more by the nickname Pawnee Bill. And so we want to talk about who was Pawnee Bill, who was May Lillie, what were these things called Wild West shows, and why were they important. And so we brought in the experts to be with us today. And I’m so happy I’ve had a chance to get to know these folks over the past, you know, my past year and a half of being director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. They do such an incredible job for us out at Pawnee Bill Ranch in Pawnee, Oklahoma. I want to bring in, first of all, Ronny Brown is the director of Pawnee Bill Ranch. Ronny, tell us a little bit about yourself and how long have you been director out at Pawnee Bill Ranch?
Ronny Brown: Trait, I really appreciate this opportunity. And, Dr. Bob, I’m so happy for your induction. Congratulations. Well-deserved. And I’ve been at the ranch for, I’m working on my 41st year.
Thompson: Wow.
Brown: That I’ve been at the ranch. I’ve been, I became the director in 2002 and since that time. But I started, you know, I’m one of those people. I think, Kathy Dickson, you know, the director of museums and sites can relate to this. Worked, like in high school, had a high school job at the ranch. Went off to college for a couple of years. Came back, of course, I got married, you know. But then was offered a position, and of course, fell in love with the history of Pawnee Bill and the ranch, and I’ve been there ever since.
Blackburn: And Trait, if I might add a little bit. Ronny’s pretty modest, but we have not always had a good balance, and at all of our museums and sites, it’s really a balance of funding. And you’re dealing with that here. Congratulations on this legislative session. But it also requires support from the local community. The State of Oklahoma does not have the resources to run 30-some museums and sites around the state. So we have to depend on the locals, and the director has to be able to balance the needs of the state and the needs of the local community. And Ronny has been that voice of the community and us at the same time. Never, you know, sacrificing one or the other to the benefit of the other, and he could have done that as others have. But Ronny’s always been able to maintain that balance and to keep that local support strong, to keep the volunteers coming, and that’s a skill set.
Thompson: It’s a big, big deal.
Blackburn: Not everyone has because we rely on volunteers so much, but then also to follow the rules and the laws. And some other agencies right now are feeling the result of not following the laws as they should. But Ronny has understood what we do. He’s patient, works with us and the locals, and the Pawnee Bill Wild West Show would not be possible without Ronny all of these years.
Thompson: Absolutely, absolutely. Ronny, I’m only three years older than the time that you’ve been working at the ranch.
(laughter)
Thompson: I thought I’d just get that in real fast.
Brown: Okay, that makes me feel real good.
(laughter)
Thompson: Well, I want to bring in Anna Davis, who’s our historical interpreter out at Pawnee Bill Ranch. Anna, tell us a little bit about yourself and your history with the ranch.
Davis: All right, so I am starting my 16th year at the facility. I’m a Stillwater High School graduate, so I grew up in the land of Captain David L. Payne, who has a connection to Pawnee Bill. I have degrees from Oklahoma State University and OU.
Blackburn: Go Pokes.
Davis: Go Pokes, and I guess Boomer Sooner, too. I’m a house divided amongst myself, is what I tell my parents. And I thought my path through history would actually take me to Europe. So while I was studying European history at Oklahoma State, I actually lived in England for quite a while. And when I came back in my junior year of college, I needed to find a job because that was very expensive, and the facility that was nearest to me that was hiring happened to be the Pawnee Bill Ranch, and my family has connections to Pawnee. My grandfather was the Ford dealer there in the 1950s, sold Fords to everybody under the sun for about 11 years there. My mom was born there, and the first person that I met there was Ronny, and my first day of employment there was actually the day after his son was born. So we kind of joke that Quinn and I share a birthday, so yeah, I’ve been there ever since. But we always say that once you come to the Pawnee Bill Ranch, you just never leave. So, I never made it to Europe, obviously. I stayed there at the at the ranch, and I’ve just been there ever since. So, yeah.
Blackburn: Trait, if I might add a little on Anna as well, is that I’ve always admired her intellectual curiosity in learning more. She has done more research on both Pawnee Bill and May, and my wife loves historic homes. We live, in fact, this is our fourth historic home we’ve lived in. But she loves the Pawnee Bill home.
Thompson: It’s a great one.
Blackburn: It’s a high-style arts and crafts style and just beautiful. Debbie loves it. And so every time we go there for events over the years, Debbie wants to take another tour. And when Anna gave us that tour for the first time, probably 10, 12, I don’t know how many years ago. A long time ago, Debbie was really impressed and has bragged on Anna ever since.
Thompson: Certainly brag-worthy, Anna, and we’re thrilled to have you at the ranch. And moving on, you know, we always like to talk about a little bit of pop culture as we get into these podcasts. And today’s a great opportunity to talk about, we’ve talked about favorite Western movies, I think, in the past, but I think we should mention some of our favorite Western performers. And so, Ronny, do you have any favorites?
Brown: I love Western movies, obviously. Right? You know, Western performers, you know, as in, I mean, I think of movies that I loved. Dances With Wolves and then True Grit, you know, of course. So, you know, I know these are movie stars, but that’s kind of where I’m leaning towards.
Thompson: Well, that’s where the medium is practiced in most of our days today.
Brown: But, you know, Kevin Costner and Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, you know, and it’s become a tradition in my family where we, on Christmas Eve, we watch True Grit. So, and of course, my boys can harass my daughter about Little Blackie, you know, playing it out, you know, and they, because that’s a really hard scene for my daughter to watch. But they, you know, the boys torment her over that. But it’s become a tradition. But I don’t know of any Western that I wouldn’t sit down and watch, you know. I love to watch Western movies.
Thompson: True Grit is a great one. The Texas Rangers take a little bit of a hit in that movie. One of my favorite lines is when John Wayne talks to Glen Campbell’s character La Boeuf and says, “If I ever met a Texas Ranger who hadn’t taken a drink out of a muddy hoof print.”
(laughter)
Thompson: Anna, do you have any favorites?
Davis: So Westerns are not my favorite genre, surprisingly enough, but I think of modern productions, and I think of Tombstone, obviously. That’s one of those films that whenever I see it on TV, I have to stop and watch it. It’s just one of those films that captures my imagination. And then the Johnny Depp Western, Dead Man, which is, I think, a Jim Jarmusch film, which is absolutely stunning visually, cinematically. That’s one of my favorite films, actually. And then I think back to old-timey westerns. So at the time of William S. Hart with Tumbleweeds and then, my senior thesis in college was actually over the movie Cimarron, which was an Edna Ferber novel originally, and then won the Best Picture Oscar, I think, in 1931, and it was actually the first Western film to achieve that achievement of all things, but starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne. So, those are kind of a few of my favorites, actually.
Thompson: Anna coming in with the deep cuts today. I like that.
(laughter)
Thompson: Well, Bob, I know you love Westerns. So what are some of your favorite performers?
Blackburn: Well, you know, it has to be an Oklahoman one. I’m so proud of the state, and one of my favorites, and I did an exhibit about him a few years ago and met his family, who still live in Pawhuska, but Ben Johnson. And one reason for that, Ben Johnson was a real cowboy. His dad, he’s Ben Jr., and they call him son, and his sister still calls him son. So I’ve kind of developed the habit of referring to him as son. But Ben Sr. was the foreman on the Chapman-Barnard Ranch, which was the largest ranch in Oklahoma at the time, took up much of the Osage Tallgrass Prairie. And Ben was raised to be the ultimate cowboy. His dad was a roping champion in the ’20s, and he expected Ben Jr. be just as good. So he’s hard on his son. And the sister has told me that stories that Ben wanted to get away when he had a chance to take a herd of horses to Arizona to film The Outlaw, which starred Jane Russell, that he was in charge of taking that herd of horses out on by rail, and of course, the producer saw his ability on horseback. He’s a big, tall, 6’4”, rangy, tough, great horseman. They said, hey, why don’t you stay on and be our wrangler? So he did. And then they said, well, you can really ride. Why don’t you do a few stunts? He did. Well, he had to make a choice of going back home, work for daddy in his shadow and being trained to be the perfect cowboy for like $5 a week, or he could stay make $20 a day as a wrangler stuntman around pretty girls. Well, he stayed.
Thompson: Hard choice.
Blackburn: Hard choice, and developed a career that was legendary, eventually won an Academy Award.
Thompson: Cut his teeth on those, cut his teeth on those John Ford Westerns.
Blackburn: Oh, he did.
Thompson: The Horse Soldiers and the cavalry trilogy with John Wayne.
Blackburn: And Harry Carey Jr. wrote his autobiography, and in it, he tells a story about Ben Jr.—son. He said that in one of those John Ford movies, John Ford wanted Harry Carey Jr. and Ben to ride Roman-style, where they’ve got the reins on two horses, and they got one foot on one horse and foot on another, and Harry Carey said, I could not figure that out. I couldn’t do it. But he said the first time Ben tried it, he did it.
Thompson: Wow.
Blackburn: And he said he kept watching, and he was getting tutored. But Ben was a real cowboy, and he played himself in the movies. And of course, one of my favorite scenes of all movies in Westerns is in Shane, and Ben played one of the cowboys owned by the ranchers where, you know, they were persecuting all the farmers who were trying to homestead. And Alan Ladd, who grew up in Oklahoma City, was the good guy, frontiersman. And in one of the bar scenes, Ben Johnson is told, you know, insult him so you have a fistfight. Well, of course, Ben is 6’4”. Alan Ladd was like 5’7”. And if you watch that scene again, they’re behind a bar that you can’t see. But Shane, you know, whips Ben. But at the end of the movie, after the ranchers all say, we’re going to kill Shane. They’re going to ambush him and play dirty. Ben comes in on his own and goes up to Shane and says, Shane, they’re going to ambush you, and I can’t be part of that. You know, we had a fair fight. You whipped me, and I respect that. And I am not going to sink that low, and leaves. I just love that scene. That’s Ben Johnson with Ben Johnson’s ethics. And also to me, he’s one of the favorites. He brings that realism of the Wild West shows we’re going to talk about here in a minute. And he was a real thing.
Thompson: Now, interesting trivia about the movie Shane. Jack Palance, at that time, it was one of his first roles and first Western. I think Jack Palance could not ride a horse. And so if you see him getting on and off— there’s actually one, one scene where they actually had to run the film in reverse to show him getting on the horse because he had so much trouble doing it. So, those are some of the fun things you learn when you go into the IMDb trivia section. But I found that because in City Slickers, he’s like this gruff, grizzled cowboy, you know? But in Shane, he was just learning to ride a horse. Well, of course, I’ve talked about him before, but one of my all-time favorites is Robert Duvall. Lonesome Dove to me is one of my favorite Westerns of all time, and here’s so many great quotes out of Lonesome Dove. But to me, he just embodies that, you know, idea of the, you know, the happy cowboy always off wanting a new adventure all the time. And remember that great scene where he’s telling Pea Eye says, well, let’s go chase some bison before they’re, you know, before they’re all gone. Pea Eye says, well, why do you want to do that? He’s like, because they’re there. Let’s go chase the bison. And it is just his spirit and his, you know, the way he went about it. And of course, one of my favorite quotes is “You do more work than you got to. So I feel like it’s my responsibility to do less.”
Brown: I’m going to balance this out.
Thompson: Exactly.
Blackburn: One thing that made that movie so great was Larry McMurtry’s book. And I got to meet Larry. He was doing an essay for some national publication on Angie Debo, and he came to see me because, of course, I’m an Angie Debo fan, and we had a heck of a great afternoon. He was he was quite an individual, the kind of guy you’d want to hang out with.
Thompson: Well, I’ve been to his bookstore in Archer City, which it’s still open, and it’s several buildings in downtown Archer City, which, if you’ve been to Archer City, it’s about the only thing down there. And if you’ve seen “The Last Picture Show,” it looks pretty much exactly the same as it was. Last Picture Show, I think, was filmed in ’71 or ’72. The movie’s about 50 years old now, and if you go to downtown Archer City, Texas, it looks pretty much the same. So, but that bookstore is there. And if you love old books, or books in general, just carve out a day to just go hang out in that bookstore because it is fascinating. Well, we have some great stuff to talk about today with Pawnee Bill, of course, one of the best Western performers of all time, along with his wife May, and such a great Oklahoma history story. But, Bob, I think it’s good to set the scene, as we like to do, and talk about, you know, Pawnee Bill made his living doing these Wild West shows. And why were these Wild West shows popular? Why did they spring up? What’s going on in the late 19th century that leads to the popularity?
Blackburn: Right. I always like to refer to this as the changing stage of history. It poses challenges to people. It also offers opportunities, and the stage of history was changing in the 1870s, ’80s, and ’90s, which is really the fertile ground, the soil out of which popped the the Wild West shows. Well, it was a time when people were really becoming nostalgic about the Old West. You get the Chisholm Trail and the cowboys there and the Great Western Trail, but that’s coming to an end by the 1880s. People are settling the High Plains. Technology is changing. And I think that nostalgia would become even more intense later. And by the 1880s and ’90s, the frontier literally is coming to a close. And it’s in 1893 when Frederick Jackson Turner, the great American historian who’s studying the West, comes up with this frontier thesis that, you know, in 1890, the census said, the frontier is gone, and we’ve settled the American continent.
Well, there’s this nostalgia. You see it in literature with The Virginian being published, and you see it in art, where people want the Russells, and the Remingtons, and all of these paintings and sculpture of the American West. So it’s becoming a nostalgic thing about this quote, “lost frontier” that created who we are. Why are we Americans different from Europeans? And of course, the explosion there is going to be here in Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency when he says, yes, the American nation is as great or greater than any of those Old World countries, and we’re fresh, and the frontier has made us fresh and has taught us all of these good values. It’s going to, you know, serve us for many years. So the West is becoming almost this image, this mythology is growing around the reality of the West. But then you throw in, well, Wild West shows. Well, any entertainment at that time was live. Political debates were the entertainment of the age. Abraham Lincoln writes about it. You know, people waited for these political debates, and they were lively, and thousands of people would show up to watch two candidates sit there for four hours debating these issues. And so entertainment was live. Of course, you did not have radio, television, movies, or anything like that.
Thompson: If you were lucky, you might have had a piano in your house, but you had to probably be fairly well-off to even be able to afford that.
Blackburn: Exactly, and so many people wanted live entertainment. Well, that gave rise to vaudeville, and vaudeville was full of melodrama at the time, and dramatic readings, and Shakespearean actors that would go town to town. Well, a vaudeville troupe of two or three actors with some stage settings could put it in a wagon and go from small town to small town. But as people want this Western genre, and they were interested in the real West, or at least what people would claim to be the real West, with cowboys and American Indians and the melodrama of this confrontation of good guys and bad guys of looking at this leveling experience of the frontier.
Then, of course, it changes, but it’s possible to add to the number of actors to the scenery because of another change on the stage of history called railroads. The American nation is crisscrossed by railroad networks in the 1870s and ’80s. The first railroad comes to Oklahoma, at that time, the Indian Territory, 1871, with the KATY tracks going north and south, then in ’86 east and west, and ’86 through central Oklahoma, what’s now Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Norman corridor. So railroads, they are the technology, the computer technology of that time. And so as railroads expand, then these entrepreneurs who were looking to get paying customers into their stands, so supply and demand think, well, yeah, the West will sell. People want this melodrama of good guys and bad guys and these events of our history and kind of illustrating who we are. Railroads allowed these entrepreneurs to get from city to city. You couldn’t go to a town of 500 and make much money on a Wild West show. So you had to go to the big towns, you know, towns of 50,000 and up. So to go to Kansas City, and St. Louis, and New York, and Chicago, and then overseas. The railroads made all of that possible. And so then you throw in, well, where are the Wild West shows going to come from? Where are the cowboys? Where are the Indians? Where are the horses? Well, it was the Indian Territory. We were the last frontier, did not become a state until 1907, and all of these cowboys came here to work in the range industry, open range at first, and then in the cattle industry, and then you have the land of Indians.
To this day, we still have more American Indians than any of the state of the Union. And that’s not per capita. That is the total number of American Indians. Thirty-nine tribes were colonized here, and so they’re here. And many of those American Indians are resisting changing, whereas the reformers say, oh, you got to become good little Americans. Let’s cut your hair, do away with your religion. Teach you how to farm, how to how to run a household. Well, they resisted. They wanted to remain like their dads, and their moms, and their grandparents, and their aunts and uncles, and so they were still thinking in terms of 19th century in open Plains Indians, especially the Pawnee, the Ponca, the Cheyenne-Arapaho, the Wichita, Caddo. And so, all of these tribes were in Oklahoma. So back in the early Edison films, instead of taking the cowboys and the Indians and the horses to New Jersey to the studios that Edison’s running, he sends his crews out here because he can gather them. We know in 1904, some of the early film footage in Oklahoma, or Indian Territory at the time, was shot with 101 stock. We’ve proven that. We can see scenes where they have their brand on there. So they were coming here.
And so it was natural for the Wild West shows to start here, where you throw in a few entrepreneurs like the Miller brothers, but in in our case here, Pawnee Bill came here in the times of the frontier, was a boomer before the Land Run of 1889. He was friends with the Pawnee Indians who had been moved to Oklahoma. He comes, or the territory, comes with them, knows them, knows the language. They trust him. He can get the Indians. He knows horses because he’s grown up around horses. And with the help of his wife, they become a great team, and they get more expansive all the time. And like any good business people, you’re looking to expand your product. And the public was willing to pay to come in and see this. So they adapt the vaudeville business system. They expand because the railroads are there to do it, and they have the raw materials to pull together into this thing that we call Wild West shows.
Thompson: Well, let’s jump into it. And Anna, Pawnee Bill— Gordon Lillie—is born in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1860. His father owns a flour mill. So they come to Kansas and then to Oklahoma. So let’s talk about the early history of Gordon.
Davis: Okay. So he was born on Valentine’s Day, so February 14, 1860. Just so happened to be his parents’ fourth wedding anniversary, so happy anniversary to them. He would be the eldest of four children born to Newton and Susan Lillie. And he was the eldest by quite a few years. It’s an interesting history for the Lillie family because his father, who was not an American citizen, he was actually French-Canadian from Quebec, Canada, joined the Illinois Volunteer Infantry during the first year of the American Civil War in 1861, and he fought in all the years of the Civil War as a private. So, Gordon’s nearest sibling would be his brother Albert, born in 1866. So it created this kind of interesting dynamic within the family where he was the eldest sibling by six years, which would come into play later on, when there was some friction between the two brothers. And then he would have two younger sisters, Effie and Lena, born in 1868 and 1872. But yeah. So Bloomington is where he would learn all about Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill, born William Frederick Cody in 1847, by this point was very popular, especially in the dime novels. The Ned Buntline had created this mystique around Buffalo Bill. And, you know, as a young child, he had grown up reading these dime novels about the adventures and exploits of Buffalo Bill. And it had kind of created this want to go into the American West. And we know when he was about 12 or 13 years old, he had gone to the Bloomington Opera House to see what was, in a sense, the first Wild West show, which was “The Scouts of the Prairie,” which was a vaudeville performance starring Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, Texas Jack Omohundro, and Texas Jack’s wife, Giuseppina Morlacchi, who was an Italian ballerina. So technically, she was the first cowgirl, which is kind of an interesting fact.
Thompson: That’s an interesting trivia, fun fact for the day.
Davis: So all four of them were performing the stage play. Wild Bill Hickok would later on be replaced by Ned Buntline. He was too drunk to continue the show, so he would be replaced later on. And Pawnee Bill, it just kind of sparked his imagination as a young man. And so when the flour mill burnt to the ground in Bloomington, and they salvaged what they could and then moved into Wellington, Kansas, at that time, it just kind of sparked his imagination. He’s now living on the frontier. He’s living in a place where he’s seen a cattle town, a true cattle town. He’s running his own cattle. His brother is getting involved in running supplies for Native nations. So his brother is actually running a line from Arkansas City down to Red Rock, Oklahoma. So he’s hitting the Ponca Nation. He’s hitting the Pawnee Nation, as they’re being moved from their Native lands into Oklahoma. And so it’s kind of inspiring him to be more like Buffalo Bill, who, in a sense, was his hero.
Thompson: And he befriends the Pawnees because they’re on their way down.
Davis: They’re on their way.
Thompson: Final reservation or their final place? They’re coming in Oklahoma, but they’re wintering in Wellington, and that’s how he starts to befriend them.
Davis: And their native lands are in Nebraska. And so they’re being moved from Nebraska into, at that time, what was known as County Q, which was later on Pawnee County. And so, yeah, he happens upon them, and he starts to trade with them, and little things at first. What I’ve always heard was that he was trading knives with them, and that’s when he happens to meet a man who was known as Blue Hawk with the tribe. He’s a member of the Chaui band of the Pawnee Nation. And Blue Hawk was a big influence on him because they would always say that he was like a second father to him. He’s the man who taught him the language. He’s the man who taught him the religious aspects of the Pawnee Nation, and it always was that, Blue Hawk brought him into Oklahoma in a sense. He always said, you know, if you’re ever down in our area, you know, come see me. Come stay with me for a while. And when Pawnee Bill was 19 in 1879, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was looking for somebody to come down and teach on the agency at that point. And he was suggested and hired by the bureau to come in and start teaching school to the children at the Pawnee Agency school at that time. And so he starts living with Blue Hawk and his family, off and on, on what would become his ranch in the future. And it was kind of fortuitous because it would not only get him his nickname, Pawnee Bill, because the Pawnee had difficulty in saying the name Gordon. And so they just kind of started calling him Bill from his nickname, his middle name, William.
Thompson: And the Pawnees bestowed this name on him, right, Ronny?
Brown: Yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, he wouldn’t be Pawnee Bill if he would not have had the connection to the Pawnee.
Thompson: I think it’s always one of those things that, you know, we live in this era of sensitivity to cultures and everything. And so I think it’s important to note that he didn’t bestow that name on himself.
(DAVIS AND BROWN) No, no, no.
Davis: And then in 1883, something kind of magical is happening in Wild West show history in that Buffalo Bill has hooked up with a theater promoter named Nate Salsbury. And Mr. Salsbury is helping him to create what we know as the traditional Wild West show, and that is what is being performed in an arena with the horses and the pageantry. And so, in 1883 is the very first Wild West show that is being performed in an arena. And so Buffalo Bill has some pretty big performers that year. He has, Frank North, who is his sharpshooter. He has Native American nations that he is gathering, and he wants a representation of Pawnee. Well, at that time, you couldn’t just take them off of their lands. You had to negotiate between Bureau of Indian Affairs, and most of the time, they had to go with representative. Well, the representative at that time was Gordon. And so he’s being sent with a contingent of Pawnee natives to the Buffalo Bill Wild West show. So he is sent in 1883 as their interpreter, and so that is how he gets his start in show business as the party attorney.
Thompson: And I think it’s important to note, you know, Buffalo Bill, he’s a showman. He’s got his eye towards, so he invents this idea of the Wild West show. Now, one thing I want, I don’t think that we have a true understanding of what a Wild West show is, because today there’s just, you know, we think of rodeos maybe, or something like that. But, Ronny, can you talk about the scale of what’s involved? This isn’t a few horses and a few wagons and, you know, two or three people riding around. Can you give us a sense of the scale of these shows?
Brown: Absolutely. People really can’t, you know, put their mind to, you know, we have this wonderful diorama in the museum that recently we just had restored, and it shows, you know, the mess hall where they fed the cast and housed the livestock and all the wagons and, you know, all the, you know, employed over a thousand people, or a thousand horses and 500 people. And so when you think about the logistics of what it took to move this. You know, Dr. Bob mentions the railroads. You know, of course, they had to load everything on these railroads, and they would move from city to city to city. It’s just incredible to see, you know, 10 or 11 huge tents, and not even to mention the arena, you know, because they would advertise rain or shine, you know, two shows every day, 2 o’clock and at 8 o’clock at night, but what it would take, you know, to do this for one day, pack it all up, go to the next town.
Thompson: Well, you got to think about the logistics, right? And we think about the performers, but what about all the behind the scenes? Somebody’s got to be cooking. Somebody’s got to be taking care of the animals. Where are you going to go to the bathroom? You know, all of those things have to be arranged, and somebody, it’s a big logistical enterprise.
Brown: It’s a big business. And, you know, and you think about all the people that it took and involved. And we get questions all the time at the museum. People, you know, my great-great-grandmother, grandfather, whatever, we think was in the Wild West show, you know, can you tell us about them? And we’re just like, oh my gosh, we have no idea. We’d have to find a route book, can you give us a year? But there was so many people, and Pawnee Bill hired so many people. But, you know, it’s so amazing to me, you know, the story of Pawnee Bill and May Lillie. I mean, if it ever gets turned into a movie, it’s going to be one of the best Westerns. It really is, because his infatuation of this boy that idolized and loved Buffalo Bill, who was a big guy, he was at the time. I mean, he was a big man, you know, and movie star, you know, and so for Gordon to take this job of the six Pawnees that was sent to the Buffalo Bill show, you know, and then to get to do what he was idolizing and wanted to do his whole life. And here I am, you know.
Thompson: Well, in Philadelphia, there’s a 15-year-old Quaker girl that Gordon sees named May. Want to tell us a little bit about her?
Davis: Yes. So he goes to Philadelphia in 1884 with the Buffalo Bill Wild West show, and I believe they’re there for about two weeks in the summertime. And he is there, and, of course, the expectation for performers was that when he was with the Pawnee band, he would dress up like them. So it wasn’t unusual to see him wearing tribal clothing or even dressed in buckskin. And buckskin was the really popular costume of the time, especially for Wild West performers. So he would be dressed from head to toe in buckskin suits that were elaborately beaded. But of course, you know, if you’re in downtown Philadelphia, that’s not normal, right, in 1884. And so he’s standing at a theater, and for lack of a better term, it’s a meet and greet. So they’re there drumming up business for the Buffalo Bill Wild West show. And according to Gordon, he looks in the crowd, and there’s a woman standing there with a baby. And next to her, there is a younger woman who has pigtails. And he would always say the moment he saw the woman with pigtails, it was love at first sight. And that would end up being Mary Emma Manning, who was known as May from the day that she was born. She was born March 12, 1869, in Philadelphia. And May would always say that she went to the meet and greet to see the Native Americans, because she’s from Philadelphia, born and raised. She had never seen one in her life.
Thompson: Her dad’s a doctor. Her dad’s what was called an electric physician. So weird pseudoscience stuff going on in this household. She was the middle of eight children, and she was just having a day out with her sister and her niece, who was the baby that Gordon had seen originally. And she would always say she was there to see the Native American, and she saw this guy dressed in buckskin, and she thought he looked weird. That’s what she said. So he fell in love at first sight. She thought he looked funny. But Gordon would introduce himself to the pair, and he would invite her to the Wild West show with her sister Elmira as the chaperone. And they would start a correspondence by letter at that point, and her mother was not keen on the whole thing, because she had probably heard stories of performers coming in and wooing young women, and she was not keen on the whole thing. So she was actually intercepting these letters and keeping them from her daughter. And the two of them just thought, I’m not getting letters from Gordon. I’m not getting letters from May. This is kind of strange. And at one point, May actually got a letter in the mail, and she was so excited she ran into the kitchen and told her mother, I finally got a letter from Gordon Lillie
Thompson: And there was a bunch of them, right?
Davis: Her mother actually told her, well, that’s nothing because I’ve got a dozen of them in the fire because she had been taking them and throwing them away. So Gordon actually had to get his mother, Susan, to write Mrs. Manning a letter saying he’s not married, he has no children, he’s single. Because he was about a decade older than her. He was 26 at this time. And so this letter went out to Mrs. Manning. The Mannings let them court. And in 1886, he writes a letter to May saying I’m coming back to Philadelphia with the Wild West show. When I come back, we’re going to get married, and they married on August 31, 1886.
Thompson: So Bob, you know, today I think we would see a mid-20s person dating a 15-16 year old as being, you know, well, out of the norm. Is that normal back in those days, or what’s the custom?
Blackburn: I think so because of the high mortality rate for women in childbirth, is that it was very common for men to marry women much younger, even siblings. They might, if a first wife might die in childbirth, might marry the sister. So typically, that would have been fairly common at the time to have that. So no one really would have looked at that as scandalous, and women got married earlier, and usually had a lot of kids at that time, so that would not have been unusual at all.
Thompson: Okay. So we get married, and then what’s life like for them? I assume they’re moving back to Oklahoma.
Davis: They actually moved to Kansas.
Thompson: Oh, okay.
Davis: Yeah. So she has grown all of her 17 years in Philadelphia, like the heart of Philadelphia. She grew up just a stone’s throw from the Philadelphia courthouse. So, I mean, she is in the heart of the city. She knew nothing about horses, about guns, about the Wild West. This was her husband’s life. And in fact, her aunts, she had lots of aunts, expressed concern about this marriage, and she actually quoted the Bible, and she said, like the biblical Ruth, I shall follow my husband, I shall go. And the first stop is Caldwell, Kansas. And when they get off the train, she actually says to him, like, well, where’s our carriage? And it was a buckboard wagon.
(laughter)
Thompson: Life is different now.
Davis: Life is different now, and he deposits her on his cattle ranch in Caldwell, Kansas. He’s running cattle in Caldwell, and she gets pregnant as they get married. And shortly after that, she gives birth to their first son, a child who we believe is named Gordon as well, Gordon Jr., and all that we know about this child is that it was born the year after they were married. So she is 18, and she is attended by a country midwife, and Gordon is on the road with a Wild West show. And so they have to send a telegram to him saying, you have a son, you need to come home. And when he comes home, she says in an interview that that is when the trouble began. And so we believe that something happened to her that barred her from having children in the future, and the child itself dies at the age of six weeks.
Thompson: I read it was some sort of surgical procedure that was performed.
Davis: Most likely, we believe she had a hysterectomy very young. So something happens during that birth. The baby itself was ten and a half pounds at birth, and she was only about five foot tall. So you can imagine that it was a very traumatic birth. And because of the death of the child, and because of, you know, these were two people who loved children. I mean, they adored children. They wanted a child of their own so badly. She was very depressed after this happened, and so he came up with the idea that he was going to teach her more about his life in the Wild West shows. And so he teaches her how to use his wedding present, which was a Marlin 22. He had given her a gun and a pony. And so he taught her how to ride, and he taught her how to shoot to get her over the depression and the loss of their child. And so in 1888, they start thinking, well, maybe we don’t need the Buffalo Bill Wild West show anymore. Maybe we can start our own show. And that’s kind of an interesting year, because Buffalo Bill was about to go back to Europe, and his star attraction, Miss Annie Oakley, had decided she did not want to go back to Europe. And he had known Frank and Annie, Frank Butler and Annie Oakley, and Frank actually helped him to raise funds to start his own Wild West show. So, in 1888, the Pawnee Bill Wild West Show, starring Miss Annie Oakley and Miss May Lillie, was created.
Thompson: I think it’s really interesting because I did come across this in my research that she took up trick riding and shooting as a way to combat the depression from the death of her son, which is, you know, I think it’s a natural reaction to find something to distract you from such terrible tragedy. And of course, as we’ll talk about here in a minute, tragedy with their children would, that wouldn’t be the only one.
Davis: No.
Thompson: They had a great marriage, but unfortunately, they didn’t have too much success when it came to child rearing. You know, I think that we can’t gloss over the fact that May Lillie was an incredible Western performer. And Bob, I just, I want to get your thoughts on this, because that’s pretty uncommon back in those days. I think women had a specific role that they were to play in marriage and family. And so to see a woman like May Lillie, who’s out performing and as a part of the show is probably pretty rare.
Blackburn: Well, you know, a lot of people look at the Wild West shows as kind of a progressive impact on the day because it really showed that women were capable of doing greater things, and women could at the time. All they needed was an opportunity. And generally the, you know, the glass ceiling on women is still there even today. It’s become higher and not quite as limiting. But and at that time, it would have been very limiting, but women were capable of it, and Wild West shows drew these women in. They also allowed minorities, African Americans, Bill Pickett being the most famous. And so putting African Americans in a star role, putting women in a star role, putting American Indians in a star role, not just as the menacing enemies on the frontier, but real people with real stories. This is almost a progressive way of looking at our society, at the time, and Wild West shows were really providing an opportunity for women as well as minorities to make a living, one, and then secondly, to develop their own careers with their own personalities. And so I’ve always looked at Wild West shows as one of those ways that the arts have changed our culture because people start seeing these successful women and say, well, yeah, they can do that. Why are we limiting them? Why don’t we provide more opportunities? And then women, of course, breaking through the glass ceiling on their own in a variety of occupations. But Wild West shows was one of those early ways that women could really break out.
Thompson: I have a quote here from May Lillie from 1908, and this is such a spectacular quote that I can’t go by and not read it. But she says, “Let any normally healthy woman who is ordinarily strong screw up her courage and tackle a bucking bronco, and she will find the most fascinating pastime in the field of feminine athletic endeavor. There is nothing to compare to increase the joy of living. And once accomplished, she’ll have more real fun than any pink tea or theater party or ballroom dance ever yielded.” What a fascinating woman she must have been.
Blackburn: She was a feminist at that time.
Thompson: And Ronny, she was not only a performer in the show; she was part owner of the show. She managed, when they have the ranch up at Blue Hawk Peak, she manages the ranch while he’s gone. She’s an incredible woman.
Brown: Absolutely. Spearheading, you know, one of the earliest women that we know, you know, taking on the duties of a ranch manager, and at its height, you know, the Blue Hawk Peak Ranch, over 2,000 acres. So this was not, it wasn’t a little ranch. There was a lot going on. They had Scottish Shorthorn cattle, you know, the buffalo, of course, and lots of employees working at the ranch as well, and May oversees all the aspects of the ranch. And, you know, we think about the Wild West shows, and you just couldn’t do a Wild West show without women. I mean, the romanticizing of the West. You know, you have, women have to be there and to have them riding astride and riding bucking broncos, and shooting targets, and, you know, all this, these acts and recreating of the West was such a huge draw for people to come to this, you know, for entertainment. But May, we’ve done oral history, and people tell us that knew May, she had a big personality, and you know there’s a video where...
Davis: Yeah, there’s a video here in this archive.
Brown: They have friends stop and visit the ranch, and May’s outside dancing.
Davis: She’s chewing gum.
Brown: So happy, smiling, and yeah, they share gum, and boy, she just chews her gum, and you just can tell she’s the life of the party, you know, just a great, positive, bigger than life personality.
Blackburn: You know, you can imagine a generation of young girls watching this performance and saying, wow, there is a woman doing these things. I can do that, too, you know? And that’s the way culture and society changes and improves. Do you think, wow, they can do it? I can, too. I can just imagine the impact she had on thousands and thousands of young girls.
Thompson: So they have their Wild West show, and they started up in 1888. And then I think in 1889, they reconstituted a little bit. But it is very popular, and it’s financially successful for them. And then Gordon buys an interest in Buffalo Bill’s show, and then eventually they merge. So let’s talk about that a little bit.
Davis: Okay, so yeah. So it wasn’t unusual for shows to go bankrupt. In fact, Wayne Spears is one of our greatest volunteers ever, who portrayed Pawnee Bill in our Wild West show for so many years. He always used to joke, well, it’s not a Wild West show unless you go bankrupt a few times, you know? So, I mean, you can imagine with all the working cogs in one of these shows, it was not unusual to, you know, lose money during a season. So I think it’s a testament to Pawnee Bill and May that they kept this thing going in the black for so many years. I mean, you’re talking 1888 to 1913 was when the first iteration of it would actually finally end. But, yeah, 1889, they kind of refigured it because he had gone through the Boomer Movement and the Oklahoma land run. So that was when he kind of put that in his title and got more people coming through. But yeah.
So, the Buffalo Bill Wild West show by 1908 was in financial difficulty. He had joined up with what we call the circus trust in the early 1900s. And that was a financial security for him, and in a sense, because he had lost Nate Salsbury. Nate Salsbury had passed away. And we find with Buffalo Bill, that although he knew the business side of it and he could run the business, it just didn’t interest him. He wasn’t the kind of guy who sat behind a desk and wrote checks. That just wasn’t him, and he did invest in very poor business decisions. By 1908, the Buffalo Bill Wild West show was technically owned by the Bailey estate from the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Yeah. And Mr. Bailey had actually passed away, and Mrs. Bailey owned it, and it just wasn’t financially successful for her. And so she was looking to offload it, and there was really nobody that was willing to step forward at that point until it kind of came to Pawnee Bill, and he was very interested in it, and May was not. In fact, May’s quote to him was, why do you want to purchase the show of someone who’s trying to ruin you so often? Because the Wild West show was very cutthroat. It was a cutthroat business. You were constantly trying to steal business from other shows. You might go and put up your posters over the top of another show and, say, hey, I’m coming at the same time, and then he would never show up, or you would try to steal performers from each other. So it was incredibly cutthroat. And she was basically saying, you know, this guy has tried to ruin you. Why do you want to be business partners with them? And it went back to that childhood idol, and he just said, I have to try this. I have to do this. And May said, I’ve only ever had one boss in my life. I can’t abide by two, and so she quit the show.
Thompson: She tapped out.
Davis: She tapped out.
Thompson: She’s like, I’m going back to the ranch.
Davis: And in 1908, the agreement between the Bailey Circus estate and Pawnee Bill was that he would buy the show in increments, and so he paid $33,000 in 1908 to start purchasing the Wild West show. And he got about halfway through the 1908 season, and he decided, I don’t want to be business partners to Mrs. Bailey anymore. So he ponied up the rest of the money, and he ended up paying a little less than $100,000 in cash for the entire Buffalo Bill Wild West show.
Thompson: No small chunk of change in those days.
Davis: No small chunk of change. I think it’s about $2.5 to $3 million today, and he ends up being the sole owner of the Wild West show, even though they billed themselves as equal partners after that, and they billed themselves as the Two Bills Show, and it created one of the largest entertainment mergers in history up until that point. And of course, now we have, you know, movie production houses that have billions of dollars behind them. But at this time, I mean, this was the merger, the biggest merger that had occurred.
Thompson: Yeah, just this is Paramount. This is Columbia. This is a major entertainment company.
Davis: Yeah. And so, they went on the road with the understanding that Pawnee Bill would be the business man, and Buffalo Bill would be the name that drew people in. And it worked wonderfully for four out of the five years of the merger. And then, unfortunately, in the fifth year, due to financial constraints, they lost the show to a bankruptcy.
Thompson: Well, I also want to say, too, that this is Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East. So we have an incredible photo in the museum at Pawnee Bill Ranch of all of the performers with Pawnee Bill and Buffalo Bill sitting in front. But you, Ronny, we’ve got people that are represented from all parts of the world.
Brown: Oh, absolutely. It’s one of the best exhibits to go into the tent where this big, you know, image has been blown up. And we get a lot of school groups, right, that visit the ranch. And one of our thing is how many ethnic groups can you identify in this photograph? And so it’s so amazing, you know, I mean, because these people, all these different countries, and you know, they were either had been at war or going to war, but yet they have come together under Pawnee Bill and Buffalo Bill’s name and to do these performances and to do their acts, you know. It’s usually families, you know, families, family groups that are putting on these performances. But still it’s still amazing, you know, and it was even ingenious, really, you know, by 1908, for Pawnee Bill to think after so many Wild West shows of doing the West, I think we need to bring in some of the far East. We need another draw. We need to keep the Wild West show business going. So it was. It was an enormous, you know, venture.
Blackburn: Well, and too, at this time, not only was the business very expensive and risky, and needed a lot of financing when banks were not willing to invest in something quite that risky. But you also have the competition, and that’s the way the free market works is that, you know, supply and demand. Well, if there’s a demand for another kind of entertainment, you lose that. Well, it was the age of the movies. The first full-length movie is released in 1905, “Birth of a Nation.” But Edison had already been making shorts and showing around the country of cowboys and Indians and bison and all of these shows.
Here in Oklahoma in 1920, a crew out of Hollywood comes out and makes a movie called Daughter of Dawn, and we’ve been involved with restoring that movie. Three hundred American Indians are in the movie, and it’s set at a time before white men ever came to the West. And so there’s still an interest in the teens and ’20s, but suddenly people can satisfy that interest with another supply. They’re demanding it, but they can watch the movies, and then you get the Tom Mixes of the world who come out of the Wild West business, the Will Rogers who comes out of the Wild West show business into the movies, and suddenly it starts putting pressure on these Wild West shows.
Thompson: Right, right. So we have the two shows that have come together. And how long did they go before they broke up?
Davis: So the show lasted from 1908 to 1913. And breakup pretty much happened over a financial decision. It wasn’t unusual for them to split the costs in their winter quarters, and the winter quarters was really a time for them to create new wagons, to create merchandise. So they would produce their posters. They would produce their souvenirs that you could go buy at the show. And so they would really operate in the red for about half of a season before they would, you know, start making their money back. And the 1913 season, they were splitting a cost, I believe, of $40,000. And so Pawnee Bill just told Buffalo Bill, you know, I need you to go get your half of the money, and it didn’t really matter where the money came from as long as he gave him the money. And Buffalo Bill told him, okay, well, I’m going to go visit my sister in Denver, and I’ll get the money from her. And he did not do that. He went to these two men in Denver, named Harry Tammen and Frederick Bonfils, who owned the Denver Post, and they also owned a circus called the Sells Floto Circus. And he negotiated with them to pay the debt for that season. and then he just happened to sign a contract with them saying, hey, I’ll tour with you for the next few years, too and unbeknownst to Pawnee Bill.
So when they went to Denver in May of that year, he did not know that this merger had really happened, and the Denver sheriff’s office showed up and seized all their assets. And that pretty well ended the Wild West show because you can’t tour without your livestock, your costumes, and and all of that. So that would actually create a headache for Pawnee Bill, because he was in the courts from 1913 to 1916 trying to get back his personal property, trying to figure out who actually owned the name Buffalo Bill because Buffalo Bill had sold it to Pawnee Bill. And Buffalo Bill was, unfortunately, touring for the rest of his life. He would die in January of 1917. But Pawnee Bill and Buffalo Bill were trying to figure out a way to retire Buffalo Bill, because by that point, he was in poor health, and he was looking for a way to retire and spend time with his children and grandchildren. And unfortunately, he had to tour for the rest of his life after the show ended up bankruptcy.
Thompson: Wow. Now, Ronny, in the meantime, in 1910, they build their big mansion that is on Blue Hawk Peak, and the house cost $100,000.
Brown: Correct.
Thompson: And this is their big ranch. Tell us a little bit about the house that they built.
Brown: Oh, my goodness. They had an architect, Mr. Hamilton, from New Jersey?
Davis: Pennsylvania.
Brown: That designed this home. And it was an arts and crafts home, which was really unique for Oklahoma. I mean, this was a modern structure that was mostly being built on the east and west coasts. Well, here you are on the Plains of Oklahoma, on the middle of nowhere. And they built, and of course, they even referred to it as a bungalow. This is just our little bungalow out on the Plains.
Thompson: And you can go visit it today at Pawnee Bill Ranch. I assure you, friends, it is not a bungalow.
Davis: It’s a 5,300-square-foot property.
Brown: It’s a 14-room mansion, and it’s just beautiful. And, you know, and to think that, you know, we have it today, restored, saved, you know, for all to enjoy.
Thompson: With most of the original furniture inside.
Brown: And it’s just like, you know, stepping back in time. You walk in, and you’re just like, you expect to see Mayor Pawnee Bill any moment. You know, it’s like they’ve stepped out, and you get to go in and enjoy their home.
Thompson: Well, and in 1916, Gordon and May adopt a son that they named Billy. Let’s talk about Billy.
Davis: Yeah. So they waited until after the Wild West shows were over with to kind of consider having a second chance at having a family. And there was actually another adopted child in there, which we didn’t know about until we got to reading in some newspapers that May had given interviews shortly before her death. And so they had adopted another boy at six months old, who also passed away six weeks after they adopted him. So there was another loss of a child, which is incredibly tragic.
Thompson: These poor people. I just feel so badly for them.
Davis: So, actually, it’s 1917, they tell their friends that they’re taking a trip to Kansas City by train. So they leave Pawnee, go to Kansas City, and then when they come back, they have a baby with them, and this baby is a month old. They adopt him on January 17, 1917, and they name him Gordon Lillie Jr., and his nickname is Billy. And May was over the moon. Like she, this was everything she had ever wanted in her life was this little boy, like, all of their hopes and dreams and everything was placed upon this child, and he was the happiest little boy. They say that he was just like Pawnee Bill. He was a little actor. He liked to act in school plays. They dressed him up like a cowboy. I mean, he was everything to them. He was roping and riding from the time that he could sit on a horse. So, yeah, he was everything to them. But, yeah, this was their pride and joy, basically, of everything. But yeah, they adopted him at four weeks old in 1917.
Thompson: And what happens to Billy?
Davis: So, Billy unfortunately passes away at the age of eight. So he was playing after school on March 31, 1925. He had just turned eight in December of the previous year, and he accidentally got caught up in his lasso while he was playing on the windmill tower just outside of the mansion and hung himself.
Thompson: I read that he was reenacting a Tom Mix movie scene where they’re hanging horse thieves.
Davis: Yeah. So Pawnee Bill got in on the movie craze where, you know, he actually had hired the Edison Film Company, at one point, to film his Wild West show, and so he himself started his own little film production company. So, you know, he had grown up with cowboys who had done the hanging the horse thief in the Wild West show and seen the stunts, and was most likely trying to recreate a stunt like that, or was trying to lasso trick or something, and just did it wrong, and it was a very tragic accident. And it really, at that point, changed the trajectory of our history, I believe, at the ranch. Pawnee Bill and May didn’t spend a whole lot of time at home anymore. They started taking longer vacations that Christmas, which also would have been Billy’s birthday of ’25. They took an extended vacation to New Mexico, which was their favorite vacation spot, and Mexico itself. And then they just, you know, just didn’t spend as much time at that house as they had in the past.
Thompson: Yeah. And so, you know, looking at some of Pawnee Bill’s other interests, you mentioned he got into movies. He was into oil. He had, you know, different investments. But one of the things, I guess, is kind of last hurrah in showbiz is Old Town, right? What is Old Town?
Davis: So I describe it as his little tourist trap. It’s kind of like the old smoke shops that you would see out in the southwest. So he got involved in building highways, of all things. There was this man named Jack DeLysle, who was part of the US Highway Association, and he would go to all these Chamber of Commerce in the state of Oklahoma, and he was trying to drum up support to build highways all across Oklahoma. So, as the railroads were kind of fading, they were trying to bring in highways. And he got Pawnee Bill attached to US-64, which is the highway that literally if you throw a rock off our balcony, you’ll hit it. You could hit cars passing by. But he actually got Pawnee Bill to lend him his name. So it’s called the Pawnee Bill Highway. He paid him $100, in, I think 1920, to name it the Pawnee Bill Highway. So he was very invested in US-64. And along with that Pawnee Bill thought, hey, why don’t we put this thing called Old Town on there? And so they only ever built one. He had hopes to build multiple all across 64. But the one that he built opened in June, May or June of 1930, on Pawnee Bill’s ranch. It’s actually, what, about a mile or two miles? Two miles west of our ranch site.
Unfortunately, it burnt down in 1944, so there’s nothing left of it anymore. And then, to add insult to injury, it got hit by a tornado in the ’50s, so it really leveled it. Something didn’t want it there anymore. But when you went to Old Town, you could, there was a restaurant out there. You could get your gas out there. You could see the little museum that he had out there. It had like a trinket shop, a smoke shop. It had a place where you could watch a Wild West show if you wanted to. You could see his bison herd out there. You could stay in the teepees. You could stay in the cabins. So, yeah, it was just kind of this little Wild West village, that was just out there in the middle of nowhere, just off the highway. But, yeah, he had visions of building them all across 64, but he only ever built the one just there in Pawnee.
Blackburn: Trait, this is, you know, part of the context here is that this is the golden age of of new transcontinental roads. Route 66 would open in 1926. That’s when it would really start. And although Route 66 is now become the most famous of the roads, there were many others. Sixty-four was kind of paralleling it, kind of crossed 66 at one point, so no one knew exactly which road is going to become dominant. But it was this new way of traveling in cars. Model Ts, you could buy for $400 apiece at the time. Chevrolet would become the leading car manufacturer in the late ’20s, taking over Ford, and it was just the age of the automobile. And entrepreneurs like Pawnee Bill and May decided to get in on it. It was just another way for them to invest in this changing stage of history.
Thompson: Pawnee Bill loved his automobiles, correct?
Brown: Oh, yes. We have a great, it’s an advertisement that his show did, that’s in the house, and it’s his entire show loaded up in 1910 Buicks. And so, but yeah. Oh, and then you mentioned the Ford. He had a Ford that he made a deal with the Ford Motor Company where he would tour, you know, and advertising the Old Town, you know.
Davis: He was like the master of corporate sponsorships: Winchester, Quaker Oats, Old Town was sponsored by Coca-Cola. He had a Pierce-Arrow. I mean, it was just like he was the master of corporate sponsorship.
Thompson: Any of those cars he had still, around, or did they all just disperse?
Brown: None that we know of.
Davis: His last car was given in the will to his maid, a former Wild West show performer named Nellie Ruffner. And we know in 1942, when the estate was being settled, she was given her $500 and his brand-new Buick, which was the newest. The will stated she got the newest car on the ranch, which was his Buick, and she drove it out to Los Angeles, which is where she lived the rest of her life. So yeah.
Thompson: Okay, so May dies in 1936 in a car accident.
Davis: In a car accident, yes.
Thompson: Gordon lives until 1942, until he passes away. But I want to transition here to talking about something that’s very exciting for Pawnee Bill Ranch, which is the cannon that he used in his Wild West shows. Now, when he died, he gifted that—or before he died, he gifted that cannon to a friend of his in Oklahoma City, and then eventually the friend, in his will, it came to the Oklahoma Historical Society. So, Ronny, let’s talk about the significance of that cannon.
Brown: Oh, this was a tradition. You know, of course, he acquired it.
Davis: This frustrates Ronny to no end.
Brown: Yeah. I mean, you know, it was surplus. I mean, it’s just like today, you know, army surplus, you know? So this was, this cannon was made in 1863.
Davis: In Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, which is just a stone’s throw away from where May was born.
Brown: And so anyway.
Thompson: And it saw service in the Civil War.
Davis: It did, Missionary Ridge.
Brown: Yeah. In 1863, I think, wasn’t it?
Davis: I believe so, yes.
Brown: But anyway, so this cannon was fired at the beginning of every Wild West show. We still do that in the reenactment. We’ll fire a cannon to get people’s attention. The show was about to, you know, the grand entry. You don’t want to miss it. So they would fire the cannon. But this is something that Pawnee Bill did, and Anna’s right, it really gets. Pawnee Bill, you know, he was seriously injured in that car wreck that killed May and never did really recover. And so as he got older, he, just like anybody, he started wanting to make sure his things were going to be taken care of, so he started giving things away, and so he gave this cannon away. We have so many images of May and family and Billy, you know, their son all on this, standing or sitting on the cannon. And so for this cannon, after, what, 80 years to be coming back to the front lawn of the mansion is just incredible, and we just can’t wait, you know, that this is going to take place, that the original cannon that was shot in the Wild West shows is going to come back to its place and on the lawn, and we’re going to have a huge celebration.
Thompson: We’re so excited about it, and we want to share this with you, because this is going to be a celebration open to the public. So on July 2 at 10 o’clock in the morning at Pawnee Bill Ranch, we’ll be bringing that cannon back and have a dedication ceremony, and it’ll be a big party. And so, like Ronny said, after 80 years, it’s coming home again, and we’re very, very excited about that. So we want you all to come and be a part of this with us. Well, before we go. You know, Bob, if you could just kind of sum up, what’s the legacy of Gordon Lillie and May Lillie, and why is it important that we’re preserving their ranch and their legacy here in Oklahoma?
Blackburn: Well, I think it’s more than just a Wild West show. This is a history of free enterprise and commerce, of taking opportunity, taking risks. The business side of it is just as important to me as the show itself and what that was really presenting to a public. But I think what we can accomplish at the ranch, you can see the snapshot of this extraordinary family with a home, with the buffalo, with the museum. You can buy books and really learn more about this time period, really from the 1880s all the way into the mid–20th century. And the role of the American West in mythology and the American spirit, the story of minorities and women being able to achieve great things. All of these stories come out of this one thing. And I think that’s one reason Pawnee Bill would always had a soft spot in my heart, since the year that we transferred that from tourism/recreation, which I think was ’90.
Brown: I think so.
Blackburn: And immediately I said, we’re going to throw resources into this because I was able to do that as deputy director at the time and later director because there’s so many parts to this story. It’s more than just a story of entertainers. It’s a story of the great American West and the role that American Indians and minorities played in it, and then this remarkable couple. So I think there’s a lot to understand at that site, and we’ve got—the assets are there. The land is still there. It’s still beautiful. And with the with the barns and the implements, it is an important part of our cultural legacy in Oklahoma, and located where it is, an hour from Tulsa, a little over an hour from Oklahoma City, not far off of I-35, even Turner Turnpike, Cimarron Turnpike, not far away. It’s in a good location. And of course, we’ve done a great job of preserving the ranch and its story. We need to improve its marketing. But that’s what we’re doing with this podcast. We’re marketing. We need to let people know what they can see it. I don’t know how many people have told me, I finally went to the Pawnee Bill Ranch. I can’t believe what I saw. And then they come back. We need to let the world know what we have at this site and what it represents and the story, and hopefully, at some point, what’s the plan on the new museum coming? Do we have a schedule?
Davis: Well, we’ve done a lot of work with the Oklahoma Heritage Preservation Grant. We have a whole new front gallery, which is amazing. With that grant, we have done tremendous work in telling the story of Pawnee Bill outside of Wild West shows, which is incredibly important, like you say, the business side of things, especially telling the story of Blue Hawk Peak, about his work with the bison, and then also the stories of Mexican Joe. So pulling in some ethnic minority history too. So, you know, we’ve done a little bit of work, but hopefully now with the new bond issues and hopefully continued on discussions with our politicians and community leaders, we can continue the work there and get more of our galleries renovated to continue that work that we’ve done.
Blackburn: Hopefully, in three years, we’ll cut a ribbon on the brand new museum.
Brown: Yeah, I think that would be wonderful. And it’s just like you said, we get so many people. I can’t tell you. You know, they’re just like they had no idea. I mean, and I really truly believe I know of no other site like the Pawnee Bill Ranch. To think that we have all the structures, and it’s all still there and standing, and no other Oklahoman that I know exemplified the Wild West.
Thompson: Ronny, tell him when you’re open. We are open currently Wednesday through Saturday, 10 to 5, and on Sundays, 1 to 4.
Thompson: And you go out there, and you can drive through the pasture, and you can see the longhorn cattle, and you could see the American bison out there. And right now, you can see the babies out there. And as Anna’s wearing a t-shirt today that you can buy in the gift shop there that says “don’t pet the fluffy cows.” So that’s going to be our parting words of advice to you today. So Anna and Ronny, I want to thank you so much for being a part of the podcast today. And, Bob, it’s always great to be here and talking to you about this fascinating Oklahoma history that we get to share with people.
Blackburn: Well, thank you, and I want to thank Ronny and Anna and everyone else there, including all the volunteers, an amazing support group there. I’ve always been so impressed for preserving this. And what I like about it is that you have to have passion for what you do. I had it for my 42 years here, and you’ll have 42 here soon, Ronny. But really, without that passion, these sites cannot be saved. So thank you for what you’re doing there.
Brown: Thank you.
Thompson: Okay, well, with that, we will see you on the next episode. You’ve been listening to “A Very OK Podcast,” hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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