This is the story of “Princess Wenona,” a rival of Annie Oakley and one of the great trick shot artists of the Wild West era.
First of all, despite the billing, she wasn’t a Sioux princess at all. Her real name was Lillian Smith and she began shooting competitively when she was seven years old. In 1886, at the age of 15, she joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West where she and Oakley competed daily for the attention of the audience (and male admirers). In 1887, she went to England with Cody and met Queen Victoria. Two years later Annie Oakley returned to the show and Lillian Smith left.
Over the years Lillian Smith traveled with Pawnee Bill, and in 1907, she joined the Miller Bros 101 Ranch Show where she was billed as Princess Wenona – though her background was more Anglo-Saxon than Native American. Some of her records still stand, including when she was ten years old and she broke 323 glass balls with a .22 caliber rifle without missing. Later she broke 495 glass balls out of 500, another unbroken record.
This particular Strobridge half sheet was used by 101 Ranch in 1911, less than ten years before she retired. When she died in 1930 at the age of 59 she had been married five times – each of the marriages ending in divorce. She is buried in Ponca City, Oklahoma.
-C. Berry