In the late 1880s, three groundbreaking female performers paved the way for future generations of women by celebrating what the West once was.

They left audiences spellbound with their performances.

Lucille Mulhall was the first to be called a cowgirl.

May Lilllie taught herself to ride, shoot and captivate audiences.

And Lillian Smith was a bitter rival of Annie Oakley whose shooting records have never been beat.

These trailblazers, known for their unrivaled skills and daring feats were nothing short of legendary.

They are Oklahoma's Wild West Women.

In the 1880s, working on a cattle ranch was not for the faint of heart.

Up before dawn, the herd needs to be fed, there are strays to be roped and broncs to be busted.

It's no place for a lady.

But there was one young girl who seemed to be born to the saddle.

Her name was Lucille Mulhall.

Lucille and her family came here in the land run of 1889, settled on 160 acres that became the Mulhall Ranch in northern Logan County, north of Guthrie.

At age four and five, she was already a skilled horseman and could rope a calf.

And by the age of nine, her father, rancher Zack Mulhall, said, okay, I'll give you any cattle that you can brand.

So she would rope them and had her own branding iron.

And soon he was saying, Whoa, wait a minute.

Your herd is getting larger than mine.

By age nine, Lucille was competing against men in steer roping.

She could ride a horse like most of them could not.

And she became a great marksman.

They said that she could shoot a coyote from 500 yards.

Ranch rodeos were something that people would do for fun back in the day, and the Mulhall kids would go out there and challenge the other ranches around the area just for fun.

In 1900, Colonel Zack Mulhall organized a group of his trick riders, including his daughters, Bossy and Lucille, to perform at the Big Rough Riders reunion in Oklahoma City.

One of the featured attendees of the event was Theodore Roosevelt.

He's there on the ranch, and he tells Lucille, like, I'll invite you to the parade if you can go rope me a wolf.

And 3 hours later here she comes with this dead wolf in a lasso.

And Theodore makes a comment saying that there is a real cowgirl.

And so they say that that is the first instance that the term is given to a woman.

And so we say today that Lucille Mulhall is the world's first cowgirl.

In 1898, Colonel Mulhall wanted to create a Wild West show like his friends, the Miller Brothers of the 101 Ranch.

His daughters, Bossie and Lucille, had become expert riders and ropers.

Two talented ranch hands would also join the tour.

Future film star Tom Mix and a witty teenager from Claremore, Will Rogers.

14 year old Lucille was the darling of the show.

She had a trick horse named Governor, and he could kneel.

He could take Lucille's hat off.

He could play dead.

Every day for 2 hours, Lucille worked with her horse, Governor.

He learned to pick up a wooden handled dinner bell with his mouth and swing his head while the bell rings.

Given another command, he would sink down on his back legs and sit upright like a dog.

He could bow to an audience, dance to music, rear on his hind legs and walk on his knees.

He could do everything but talk.

Bossie Mulhall.

The show was an international sensation.

For 15 years, American and European newspapers raved about the beautiful girl who could out rope and outride the men.

The life of Lucille Mulhall is a paradox.

On one hand, she was dainty, ladylike, soft spoken and educated.

But on the other hand, she was 90 pounds of dynamite.

After her older sister, Bossy, was critically injured when her horse fell on her.

Lucille launched her own show and toured the vaudeville circuit.

In May of 1919, Lucille married Texas oil tycoon Tom Burnett, son of Bert Burnett, a millionaire with an income of nearly $10,000 a day.

Lucille retired from show business.

Three years later, the marriage was over.

She was in the middle of her divorce negotiations, and she actually negotiates the ownership of the Mulhall Ranch out of the whole deal.

At 50, Lucille's body had slowed and stiffened from the years of injury and abuse.

On April 12, 1935, in Guthrie, Lucille made her last public appearance as grand marshal of the 89er parade.

Lucille Mulhall dies in a car accident December 22nd of 1940.

She insisted on being buried at the family cemetery, which was in the middle of a field at the Mulhall Ranch.

And they said it had been pouring down rain and the old timers were out there slogging in the mud to get out there to the gravesite.

Cars could not really even pull the hearse, so they borrowed plow horses from a neighbor to pull Lucille's hearse.

The Daily Oklahoman poetically described that the following day, saying that a machine killed Lucille Mulhall, but it was horses that brought her to her final resting place.

While Mulhall wowed the crowds with her rope tricks, another young girl would bring audiences to their feet with her shooting skills.

Lillian Smith is born in Coleville, California, in 1871 to Levi Smith.

Her family is pretty poor by standards and, to bring the family out of poverty, Levi learns that his daughter is a crack shot.

When she is seven years old, Levi starts entering her into shooting contests.

If you're making a name for yourself, who's going to come looking for you?

But Buffalo Bill himself.

At age 14, Lillian Smith became part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Annie Oakley would have there been the only sharpshooter on the circuit at that point.

And Lillian is a completely different beast to Annie Oakley.

She is almost a decade younger.

She is much more brash and garish than Annie Oakley.

Oakley immediately viewed Smith as an intruder.

As far as she was concerned, Buffalo Bill had added one too many stars to his western sky.

Annie Oakley, she always wore dresses.

She always wore her hair long.

The only jewelry that she would wear was her shooting medals.

Lillian Smith doesn't bother.

Lillian Smith has a different M.O.. Lillian had the reputation of being very brash and very bold.

She rode a horse like a man, and she acted strong and flashy.

She had at least six husbands that we know of, and then probably just as many boyfriends.

She doesn't wear a corset.

One of the facets of the feud between Oakley and Smith was the issue of Lillian Smith's weight.

In order to get her father out of her career, Lillian marries a cowboy in the show.

Her new husband immediately starts planting rumors in the newspapers, saying Annie Oakley is old, can't shoot and is cheating.

You also start seeing in the newspaper stories about how Lillian is overweight and how Lillian is ugly and how Lillian is too brash to be a proper Victorian woman.

So you actually have these stories being planted by both women against both women.

And again, it's all part of that big PR machine.

And Annie is getting tired of it and she really wants Buffalo Bill to take a stand.

Buffalo Bill did not mind this incredible rivalry because newspaper men were all over the country writing about this fight.

And one newspaperman said, Why don't they just duke it out somewhere or have a shooting competition?

Lillian was a horseback shot.

She was shooting glass balls and the glass balls were thrown in the air.

Very theatrical.

They were usually filled with feathers.

So when you hit that ball, of course, feathers fly everywhere.

And Annie Oakley was doing her stunts off of the ground.

Lillian's records have never been broken, using a single loading 22 from the back of a running horse.

She broke 71 of 72 balls thrown in the air, then three hundred swinging balls in 14 minutes and 33 seconds.

Lillian and Annie Oakley went with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show to England in 1887.

They met with Queen Victoria.

Now, Annie Oakley got a lot of bad press, which certainly pleased Lillian because she had shaken the hands with the princess.

You're not supposed to do that.

But Lillian took it upon herself to approach Queen Victoria and show her her rifle and show her how it worked.

And Queen Victoria thought that was the most charming thing she had ever seen.

And of course, for Lillian, that was that was great.

So she would always boast like, Oh, I'm friends with Queen Victoria.

And unfortunately, Buffalo Bill still doesn't comment on it.

And so that is when Annie Oakley takes the stand and says, if you won't comment, I am out.

And that's when she goes back to America, refuses to tour in 1888 and goes with Pawnee Bill.

And Lillian thinks that she's won.

She thinks that she has won this war.

I've beat Annie Oakley, and she's gloating.

She thinks I've won.

I'm now the superstar with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Buffalo Bill sees a downturn in ticket sales and realizes he needs Annie Oakley.

After the 1888 season, is over, he quietly releases Lillian from her contract.

Oakley, the little sure shot, goes back to Buffalo Bill and Lillian goes to Pawnee Bill.

But she makes a change first.

She bills herself as Princess Wenona.

She has long, dark dyed hair.

She wears the buckskin dress.

She dresses with beaded moccasins and it's really Lillian shedding her skin and becoming a new woman and finding a freedom that she could not be when she was Lillian.

Lillian moved to Oklahoma permanently in the year of statehood, 1907, and when she joined the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch near Ponca City.

She was known for her collection of chickens and dogs and then, of course, Rabbit, her horse.

Rabbit was a constant fixture in Lillian's life.

During the cold winter of 1930, Lillian Smith died at her cabin on the 101 Ranch.

And she had frozen to death that morning.

So, unfortunately, Lillian was only in her fifties when she passed.

Her request was that she be buried in her Wenona costume.

So she was buried as Wenona, not as Lillian, and the cowboys at the 101 gave her that ceremony.

She went for 69 years until 1999 to even have a gravestone, when the 101 Ranch Oldtimers Association erected a headstone.

May Lillie was born in 1869 in Philadelphia to a pretty working class family.

So she grew up as thoroughly a city girl.

She met Pawnee Bill, actually, when he was an employee for Buffalo Bill Cody.

Cody had wanted some Pawnee Indians to be in his show.

And Lillie was working as an interpreter.

And that was how he got his stage name as Pawnee Bill.

They met on the sidewalk.

And later, Pawnee Bill remembers that he was smitten from the instant that he saw her.

That was it.

That was the only woman he ever wanted to know in his life.

And it was love at first sight.

He was unlike anything that a Philadelphia girl would have seen.

He was a Western frontiersman and he wore fringe and buckskin.

And when he went to visit the Mannings, he forgot himself and spat tobacco juice on her mother's parlor floor.

May'’’s parents really didn't want her to marry Pawnee Bill.

He was much older from a different part of the country.

He was rough around the edges, and she from the Quaker family, was very, you know, elegant, quiet.

Two opposites.

After overcoming her mother's objections, May and Gordon William Lillie were married August 31st, 1886, in Philadelphia.

She was very young.

He was a lot older than her.

But for a wedding gift, he gave her a pony and a 22 rifle.

All of her later accomplishments grow out of an early tragedy.

Sometime in about the first year or so of their marriage, May became pregnant and the birth was complicated.

And because of the complications of the birth, the baby died and she herself was unable to have any more children.

She needed a new dream.

May takes that pony and rifle and runs with it, and she becomes an excellent equestrian and an excellent sharpshooter.

And so in a couple of years, in 1888, when Pawnee Bill forms his own Wild West show called Pawnee Bill's historic Wild West, May is ready to go, too.

She immediately gets the nickname The Champion Girl Horseback Shot of the West.

So she was doing her act off the back of a bucking bronco where most of these women were doing their act on the ground.

May was an excellent shot.

She once hit 24 out of 25 targets thrown in the air at a distance of 200 yards.

During their first season.

The most famous performer in the world asked to join their show.

Annie's husband Frank, was wanting to put her with a Wild West show because of the dispute with Buffalo Bill about Lillian Smith.

And so they bring Annie Oakley on as the headlining act for the 1888 season.

Because why wouldn't you?

You have America's superstar as your headlining act for your very first season.

So Annie Oakley joins the show as the sharpshooter.

While she is the headlining act, she is also very supportive of May, really, as a young sharpshooter.

She watches the act from the sidelines.

She is encouraging her in her budding routine.

They were very fortunate to have her for that one season.

And then in 1889, Buffalo Bill did his mea culpa and brought Annie back into the fold and kicked Lillian out.

The Pawnee Bill Wild West Show continued to grow.

In 1894, The Lillies were invited by the King of Belgium to perform at the Antwerp World's Fair.

May Lillie socialized with nobles and celebrities.

She loved the shopping in Paris, but longed for home.

I like to think of May Lillie, as a respectable rebel.

She is engaged in work for pay.

She's a world traveler.

She's very capable.

She's very athletic.

She's doing all of these things that are supposed to be men's job.

The Wild West Show was an inherently dangerous place.

Wild West shows traveled every day.

They were in a new city every day.

They would set up and tear down tents.

They were dealing with live animals.

All of those things are inherently dangerous.

And May herself was not immune to injury.

She and Pawnee Bill were performing a rifle shooting act together, so they were stationed at opposite ends of the arena.

They were each holding targets for each other.

And unfortunately, on this particular day, Pawnee Bill missed.

His bullet hit May's hand as she was holding targets.

Blood starts gushing out of her gantlet and the crowd goes wild.

Not in a good way.

And she's rushed offstage to see the doctor.

At the end of the performance, the crowd refuses to leave until May comes out and waves to the crowd to show everybody that she was okay.

Unfortunately, she was not okay.

The bullet had lacerated the last two fingers on her right hand so badly they had to be amputated.

From that day on, she hid her hand from photographers and she never held her husband's targets again.

In 1906, Buffalo Bill Cody was in financial trouble and was looking for a partner.

May did not like Cody.

May thought he was a scoundrel and a cheat and a womanizer and a drunkard.

And she wasn't wrong.

May could have been the only woman in America that did not like Buffalo Bill.

She didn't really like her husband, Pawnee Bill, dealing with Buffalo Bill.

Pawnee Bill was in the camp that we need to strike while the iron is hot, and we need to purchase it.

And May Lillie is sitting there saying, Why in the world would you want to purchase this wild west show?

And he says, You know, I want these people who have tried so hard to ruin us, to have to take a check out of my hand and look me in the eyes and know that I am their boss.

In 1907, Pawnee Bill paid $100,000 to Buffalo Bill and merged the two shows.

It was called Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Pawnee Bill's Great Far East.

Most people just called it the Two Bills show.

She refused to go on tour with him.

She refused.

And so she did not.

She stayed here in Pawnee.

She starts looking around her life and realizes, Hey, we've got this ranch here.

It was May who wanted to preserve the legend and preserve the continuation of the buffalo of the American West.

And they had about 300 head of bison that lived here on the property during her lifetime.

The Two Bills show only lasted a few years.

They began touring in 1908 and they ended in Denver, Colorado, in 1913.

Buffalo Bill Cody had made a deal with a guy named Henry Tammen who turned out to be something of a loan shark.

And so when he couldn't pay back his debts, Tammen seizes the show as collateral.

And all that Pawnee Bill got out of the show was his saddle and his trunk.

Interestingly, Cody did not have authority to put up the show as collateral for his loan.

And I would have loved to have known what May told him when he came home penniless in 1913.

In 1910, during the Two Bills Show era, Pawnee Bill and May created their dream home just outside of Pawnee, Oklahoma.

No longer in show business, the Lillies became focused on their community.

They adopt a little boy out of Kansas, and they name him Gordon William Lillie, Junior.

And they just call him Billy for short.

Billy had an idyllic childhood.

He had the run of the ranch.

He had his own horse and his own saddle and all these incredible pets.

He had a pet coyote and a pet black bear.

It seemed that May's dream had finally come true.

But on his eighth birthday, Billy died in a tragic accident.

During the eight years of Billy's life, May got to live her dream of being a mother.

And she adored Billy.

And she just tried to give him everything that she possibly could.

In 1936, they celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

Pawnee Bill and May were such celebrities that Frank Phillips, one of the founders of Phillips Petroleum, gave them a car that was gold plated, if you can imagine.

And on their way home, it is said that the glare of the sun off of that gold car caused Pawnee Bill to lose control in a one vehicle accident.

They left the roadway and May was killed.

And Pawnee Bill was badly injured.

Pawnee Bill was absolutely devastated.

After 50 years of marriage, he didn't really know what life was going to be like.

They had the funeral here in the mansion for her.

He would give newspaper interviews, and he always would say that no matter what he had done in his life, he had done it for her.

There would never have been a Pawnee Bill without a May Lillie.

Pawnee Bill lived until 1942, just a few days shy of his birthday.

The mansion they built is kept just as they had left it and is maintained by the Oklahoma State Historical Society.

The bison herd still roams the ranch, and there is a museum.

Every June, we recreate Pawnee Bill's original Wild West show.

It's a massive undertaking, mostly by area volunteers.

Most of our cast and almost all of our staff is from Pawnee and the surrounding area.

And we come up on the hill to create this moment out of 1890s, Wild West Show.

Rodeos were a direct offshoot of Wild West shows.

In fact, a lot of the performers from Wild West shows became rodeo superstars.

It is amazing to me that the efforts of three women from Oklahoma helped shape the future of rodeo, but especially in allowing women in America to compete in cowboy and rodeo competitions.

They most definitely were trailblazers of their time period.

These three lives were uniquely American, and the world will never see their like again.

They defied the odds, made their mark on history, and helped pave the way for other girls who enjoy roping, riding and the wide open frontier.

They are Oklahoma's Wild West Women.