Ben Picket
Ben Picket, brother of cowboy Bill Picket
Photographer unknown, courtesy of Spike Harris Collection.
Blacks were proficient horsemen and were active in cattle raising and
related professions throughout the Americas. Renowned as exceptional horsemen,
Africans in Peru were distinguished for being the only bullfighters who
performed on horseback the graceful capework essential to the sport. For
example, Estevan Arredondo was considered to
be one of the best bullfighters of the nineteenth century.
The first documented reference to African Slaves in Argentina is in 1534. The vast majority resided in the major slave port of Buenos Aires where, by 1822, they made up 25 percent of the total population. In both Argentina and Uruguay many worked as gauchos, tending the livestock on the grassy plains of the Pampas. Ben Picket was the brother of Bill Picket, an internationally famous rodeo performer in the U.S. West, who originated the technique of steer wrestling known as bull-dogging.