Description

How the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome appeared on the Texas frontier.

From 1895 to 1913, promoters on the Texas-Mexico border imported a variety of large mammals from around the world to pit them against one another in interspecies combat. Lions fought bears, an elephant took on a bull, and one promoter released a tiger, a bull, and a bear into the same cage at the same time. Human combatants occasionally entered the fray, from a rodeo pioneer who squared off against an elk to a bullfighter who took on a buffalo. Vaudeville showmen supplied livestock, sensationalistic newspapers drove ticket sales, and Progressive Era animal rights groups lobbied to shut down the spectacle. Bradley Folsom gives an account of the epic border battles, both in and out of the cage, which tell the story of a time when Texas was a rising economic power and Mexico verged on revolution.