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PECOS BILL
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Pecos Bill was a legendary cowboy hero of the American
Southwest, who personified the frontier virtues of strength, courage,
ingenuity, audacity, and humor. His story comprises a series of
superhuman feats that illustrate these virtues.
Pecos Bill is said to have been born in Texas in the 1830s. According to
legend, as an infant he used a bowie knife as a teething ring and played
with bears and other wild animals. After falling out of his parents'
wagon near the Pecos River in Texas, he became lost and was raised by
coyotes.
As an adult, Pecos is said to have ridden into a town on the back of a
mountain lion because he did not have a horse at the time. While riding
the mountain lion he was attacked by a 25-foot rattlesnake, which he
tames and uses as a whip. In another version, Pecos is going after the
Devil’s Gulch Gang, "the mangiest, meanest, most lowdown bunch of
lowlife varmints that ever grew hair." On the way to find them, he
tames the mountain lion to ride and the snake to use as his whip. The
sight of Pecos riding a lion and twirling a snake impressed the
Devil’s Gulch Gang so much that they immediately elect Pecos as their
leader.
He also rode a horse, a golden mustang, named Widow-Maker, which no one
else could ride, not even Pecos Bill's bride, Slue-Foot Sue. He met her
when she rode down the Río Grande on a catfish as large as a whale.
During a dry year, Pecos Bill drained the Río Grande to water his
ranch, which included the entire state of New Mexico.
The original "Saga of Pecos Bill" was written in 1923 by
Edward O'Reilly for The Century Magazine. Later writers either borrowed
tales from O'Reilly's article or added further adventures of their own
invention to the cycle. Since O'Reilly's time, Pecos Bill has been
celebrated in countless publications and in two motion pictures: Melody
Time (1948) and Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill
(1995).
Although O'Reilly claimed that cowboys told Pecos Bill stories, students
of folklore have not been able to authenticate any oral accounts of
Pecos Bill among cowboy storytellers. Despite his enduring appeal for
American readers as a symbol of the Wild West, the legend of Pecos Bill
is more a product of popular culture than of folklore.
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