Slue-Foot Sue

Also Known As: also written Slue-foot Sue and Sluefoot Sue; sweetheart and bride of Pecos Bill
Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Urban Legends & Contemporary Folklore
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: A rider good enough to steer a catfish the size of a whale along the Rio Grande, undone on her wedding day by the one mount she could not keep.
Role in Mythos: She is the love of Pecos Bill’s life and the victim of the cycle’s most famous disaster, the bouncing bride.
Relation to Humans: She is a human woman, not a spirit, in a cycle of comic cowboy tall tales. Her story turns on a wedding, a jealous horse and a husband who can rope a cyclone but cannot bring his wife back to earth.

The first thing anyone on the Rio Grande saw of her was the fish. It came up the brown water with its whiskers streaming and its back as broad as a barn roof, a catfish the size of a whale, and standing on it, riding it the way a cowhand rides a bronc, was a young woman who did not look worried in the least. Pecos Bill, who had ridden a mountain lion into camp and whipped it along with a rattlesnake, took one look and was finished.

Slue-Foot Sue belongs to the Pecos Bill cycle, and the Pecos Bill cycle belongs, as far as anyone has been able to prove, to one man. Edward O’Reilly, a journalist and screenwriter, published “The Saga of Pecos Bill” in The Century Magazine in October 1923 and told his readers the tales had been passed around cow camps for generations. The Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie concluded that nobody had heard of Pecos Bill before that article, and O’Reilly himself admitted he had invented the character when he sued another writer for lifting his work. Richard Dorson later held the whole cycle up as a textbook case of what he called fakelore. Sue is part of that inheritance. She is a printed creation, not a campfire one, and her story is short.

It goes like this. Bill had married more than once, the tellings say, but Sue was the one who mattered. Their courtship ended at the altar, and on the wedding day itself Sue announced what she wanted as her present: a ride on Widow-Maker, Bill’s horse. That was a bad idea and everybody present knew it. Widow-Maker had been found as a colt in Arizona and raised on nitroglycerin and dynamite, and Bill was the only man alive who could stay on him. A woman who could handle a whale-sized catfish must have fancied her chances.

She lasted about as long as the first jump. Widow-Maker threw her straight up, so high that she nearly struck her head on the moon, and gravity did the rest. The trouble was the dress. Under her wedding gown Sue was wearing a big steel-spring bustle, and when she came down she landed on it. It flung her back into the sky. She came down again and went higher. Every landing was a launch. The wedding guests stood about on the prairie with their hats in their hands, watching the bride pass overhead at intervals.

Then the joke turns black, in the way cowboy humour often does. After three days and four nights of bouncing, with no sign of her stopping and no way of getting food up to her, Bill worked out that she was going to starve to death in mid-air. So he shot her. The Handbook of Texas, writing the story down in 1952, puts it in a single flat clause: Bill shot her to keep her from starving. It is the most famous thing anyone ever did for Sue, and it killed her.

That is almost the whole record. Nobody gives her parents, her home, her age or the colour of her hair. The tellings never explain the name either, and the “slue-foot” goes unglossed from the first printing to the latest picture book. She has no adventure of her own once the catfish has carried her into the story, and no life after the wedding in the version that ends with the gun.

Later retellings could not leave that ending alone. As Pecos Bill moved from a magazine for grown-ups into schoolbooks and cartoons, Sue kept getting rescued. In some versions Bill ropes her out of the sky with his rattlesnake lariat, and in many children’s books the pair simply marry and live happily. Walt Disney’s Melody Time in 1948 took a third road: Widow-Maker spoils Bill’s throw, Sue lands on the moon and stays there, and a heartbroken Bill goes back to the coyotes who raised him, which the film offers as the reason coyotes howl at the moon. The shooting, which is the oldest ending on record, is the one the classroom editions most often leave out.

There is an irony in the whole cycle that suits Sue better than it suits Bill. The Handbook of Texas entry of 1952 still describes Pecos Bill as the product of anonymous range hands trying to out-brag each other, with no known originator. By the time the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains came to him, the verdict was that Bill looked more like a product of journalism than of folklore. Mody Boatright had taken O’Reilly’s stories and spread them across three chapters of Tall Tales from Texas Cow Camps in 1934, and every retelling after that drew on the printed page. Sue was never whispered around a chuck wagon. She has been read aloud in classrooms for a hundred years, which is its own kind of tradition.

Her gifts are all horsemanship and nerve. She rides what nobody else would try to ride, and she chooses the most dangerous animal in the West as her wedding present without hesitating. Her weakness is the same nerve pointed the wrong way, plus a fashion accessory. Sue was beaten by a jealous horse, a hard landing and a steel spring, three things a bride in any century might reasonably fail to plan for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Slue-Foot Sue?

Slue-Foot Sue is the sweetheart and bride of Pecos Bill in the American cowboy tall tales. She is introduced riding a catfish the size of a whale on the Rio Grande, and her best-known story is the wedding-day disaster in which Bill’s horse Widow-Maker throws her and she cannot stop bouncing.

What happened to Slue-Foot Sue?

On her wedding day Slue-Foot Sue insisted on riding Pecos Bill’s horse, Widow-Maker, which threw her so high she nearly hit the moon. She landed on the steel-spring bustle under her wedding dress and kept bouncing. In the oldest recorded ending, after three days and four nights Bill shot her to keep her from starving, while later retellings have him rope her down or leave her stranded on the moon.

Is Slue-Foot Sue real folklore?

Slue-Foot Sue is part of the Pecos Bill cycle, which traces to Edward O’Reilly’s “The Saga of Pecos Bill” in The Century Magazine in October 1923. The folklorist J. Frank Dobie found no trace of Pecos Bill before that article, O’Reilly admitted inventing the character in a lawsuit, and Richard Dorson classed the cycle as fakelore. The tales spread through books, schoolbooks and films rather than through oral tradition.

What is the name of Pecos Bill’s horse?

Pecos Bill’s horse is Widow-Maker, a colt Bill found in Arizona and raised on nitroglycerin and dynamite. Bill was the only man who could ride him, and Widow-Maker is the horse that throws Slue-Foot Sue on her wedding day.

How does Slue-Foot Sue’s story end in the Disney version?

In Walt Disney’s Melody Time (1948), Widow-Maker spoils Pecos Bill’s attempt to lasso Slue-Foot Sue, and she lands on the moon and stays there. The heartbroken Bill returns to the coyotes who raised him, and the film presents their howling at the moon as a lament for Sue.