Rodeo Pioneer. Born one of thirteen children to former slaves, Mary Virginia Elizabeth Gilbert and Thomas Jefferson Pickett in the Jenks Branch community in Travis County, Texas. His ethnicity also included Cherokee ancestry, which later became useful. He became a cowhand at age ten after dropping out of school. He and four of his brothers established a horse-breaking business in Taylor, Texas; Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders. As a young man, he observed range dogs chasing runaway steers and, by his own account, saw a small dog bite a cow's lip and actually control the larger animal. He thought to do the same, and first demonstrated his lip-biting technique to fellow cowboys in 1881, and brought a steer down with "bulldogging." Billing himself as the Dusky Deamon, he then exhibited his bulldogging technique at rodeos and fairs throughout the West, occasionally using his Cherokee heritage as a workaround if black competitors were banned. Using his new found fame, he landed a contract with the Miller brothers' 101 Ranch in the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma, where he worked as a cowboy as well as performed with the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. He married Maggie Turner in December 1890 and eventually fathered nine children. His bulldogging performance at the Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1904, America's best-known rodeo at the time, was considered to have been quite spectacular. He toured the world, and during one performance in Mexico in 1910, the five-foot-seven-inch Pickett instigated a near riot after locals bet him he couldn't subdue a fighting bull. Although injured, he bulldogged the beast to the ground. Angry spectators were said to have thrown bottles at him, one of which broke his ribs. In 1912, he put on more than 400 performances. In 1921 he starred in the motion picture, 'The Bull-Dogger, ' and followed up with 'The Crimson Skull' in 1922, which has been called the first all-black western. He retired from performing but was still active at the 101 where he continued to break horses. While roping horses in 1932, he was kicked in the head by a stallion and fell into a coma; succumbing eleven days later. He was called the "greatest sweat and dirt cowhand that ever lived, bar none." He was the first black cowboy to be inducted into the National Cowboy and Rodeo Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. He also was inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and was honored on a U.S. postage stamp in 1994.