Matthew Kerns's Blog: The Dime Library, page 31

First Review

The first official review of Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star is in. The book is released on May 1st, one month away. Have you preordered your copy?

"This groundbreaking work by Matthew Kerns brings to light a lesser-known but vitally important figure in any history of American pop culture. It's probably enough to learn that John B. "Texas Jack" Omohundro was the only full partner of William "Buffalo Bill" Cody in terms of sharing the stage and revenue from that venture.

But Omohundro was so much more than Cody's pecuniary partner. They were good friends and had each other's back in frontier Nebraska for three years before stepping onto a Chicago stage together for Ned Buntline's Scouts of the Prairie and launching what would become the most popular entertainment sensation for decades in the form of Buffalo Bill. And for years after that fateful night in 1872, "Texas Jack" and Cody helped make stars out of Annie Oakley, Doc Carver, "Wild Bill" Hickok and others—begging the question, how did those luminaries thrive in the collective consciousness of America for the next 150 years, while Omohundro remained a stalwart, if lesser-known figure?

The easy answer is that he died of pneumonia, in 1880—a few years before Cody exploded onto the national and then international scene with his famed Wild West show. There is more to this, though, and as Kerns illustrates, it's worthy of examination. He summarizes: "While his friends Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill were rendered iconic as the preeminent scout and lawman of the American West, Omohundro's legacy as the first cowboy on the American stage is fundamental to the mythologized Western hero later introduced to the world by Buffalo Bill and personified in the stories of Ned Buntline and Prentiss Ingraham . . . . If the idealized American man is the frontier cowboy, then the genesis of the American cowboy in popular culture is Texas Jack Omohundro, a man who, despite his moniker, was not from Texas." (This reviewer won't spoil the story of how he was given his nickname.)

In fact, Omohundro was born in Virginia. He served in the Confederacy, and later as a civilian scout for the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars. In 1869, at Fort Hays, Kansas, "California Joe" Milner introduced Omohundro to Wild Bill Hickok, then the acting sheriff of Ellis County. Later this year, Jack met Cody for the first time, while the latter was scouting for the 5th U.S. Cavalary at Fort McPherson, Nebraska. Cody was instrumental in getting Jack hired on as a “trail agent and scout” for the 5th. Jack soon became known as one of the best trail agents, hunting guides, and Indian fighters on the frontier.

The year 1872 was a pivotal one for both Cody and Jack, the details of which Kerns writes in gorgeous detail, as he also does with Jack's work as a cowboy, and his time alongside Pawnee and other native peoples: "The clouds of dust gradually rise as if a curtain was lifted, horses stop as buffaloes drop, until there is a clear panoramic view of a busy scene all quiet, everything still (save a few fleet ones in the distance); horses riderless, browsing proudly conscious of success; the prairie dotted here, there, everywhere with dead bison; and happy, hungry hunters skinning, cutting, slashing the late proud monarch of the plains."

As well, Kerns reconstructs the relationships between Jack and other figures such as markswoman Ena Palmer, Louisa Cody, various indigenous peoples such as Pitaresaru of the Pawnee, Ned Buntline, Hickok, and of course, the love of his life, actress Giuseppina Morlacchi, whom he met when she joined Scouts of the Prairie.

Kerns meticulously reconstructs the fascinating—if sadly shortened—life of Omohundro using Omohundro's own letters, newspaper accounts, accounts of various Indian agents and agencies, dime novels, various historical societies, and much more. What emerges is the story of the man who actually was the driving force behind Cody's decision to go into show business, and perhaps was too authentic to shine as brightly as Cody through the ages. Until now."

-Julia Bricklin, author of The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline: A Tale of Murder, Betrayal, and the Creation of Buffalo Bill

More information about Julia Bricklin and her books can be found at www.juliabricklin.com

The Three Wonders

The Three Wonders (Sunday Mercury April 6, 1873)

Texas Jack, Buffalo Bill, and Ned Buntline

Romantic and Thrilling Incidents

The Men as They Have Been and the Men as They Are

Everything About Them

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Anything or anybody in New York that is genuine, or who really is what he or she professes to be, is so rare as to become a “sensation;” a “curiosity.” Viewed in this light, New York at present is favored with three real curiosities, three genuine sensations, in the persons of three of the most noted “Border Men,” “Western Men,” “Scalp-Hunters,” buffalo-killers, scouts, and anti-Indian warriors which this Continent has ever produced, viz., Ned Buntline, Texas Jack, and Buffalo Bill.

The career of each member of this notorious trio has been more interesting than any novel could possibly be, because full of that “truth” which is so confessedly stranger than “fiction.”

And like all true heroes, whether in America, Europe, Asia, Africa, or Oceanica, these notorious hunters and scalpers are more quiet in their manners and more unassuming in their department than nine-tenths of the dry goods clerks who have all their lives traveled only from shop counters to their boarding-houses and back. Texas Jack especially is “as docile as a boy and as amiable as a girl,” so his chum “Buffalo Bill” says, and so anybody who forms his personal acquaintance will be led to believe.

TEXAS JACK’S WAY OF FORGETTING

Although he always carries a six-barreled pistol, loaded every barrel, in his pocket, “keeps a dark-knife handy,” has his room at the Metropolitan full of shotguns, and generally travels “ready for anything that may turn up,” he is the last man to provoke in a quarrel, and will bear more “chaff” than nine out of ten—but he has “Injun blood” in his veins, and never forgets or forgives an intentional insult or positive injury.

On one occasion, some five years ago, in Texas, a man attempted to bully him in a bar-room, and bandied words with insultingly. Jack took no notice of his jibes at the time, and people thought the matter had “blown over.” About seven months afterwards the two met again in another bar-room in another State. Jack thereupon stepped up to the man who had goaded him nearly a year before, and asked him to take a drink. The man complied; as they were drinking, Jack said in his characteristic way to the other: “See here, the last time we met you blew your tongue out on me. Now, I give you fair notice I am going to blow out something besides cheek. So take care of yourself, d—n you,” and thus putting his adversary on guard, and giving him time to prepare for his defense, Jack drew his revolver and fired at his insulter, who escaped with his life this time. But “Texas Jack” ultimately wiped out the insult in the life-blood of the man who uttered it, in “a fair fight” two years afterwards in the Indian Territory.

The same spirit differently applied, led Texas Jack to befriend, several times at the hazard of his life, an Indian who had once done him some slight service, and to make “Texas Jack” your friend once is to make a friend forever.

TEXAS JACK IN LOVE

Texas Jack has always been a ladies man, in his way—as the Western phrase goes, “a lucky dog with the women.” He has incurred the enmity at sundry times of diverse red skins for his flirtations with their dusky squaws, while amongst the Mexican beauties he has been somewhat of a Lothario.

Once at a fandango he was introduced by a bosom friend, or a man whom he took to be so, to a senorita with whom he danced incessantly that evening. This marked attention and the marked favor with which they were received, excited very unexpectedly the ire of the very man who introduced him, and while dancing with the lady Jack was stabbed in the shoulder from behind. The wound was serious, but Jack finally recovered, and never knew his assailant till some time afterward, when his former “bosom friend,” who had by this time become his open enemy, avowed the act, and endeavored to repeat it, whereupon Texas Jack “shot him in his tricks.”

During Jack’s captivity for several months among the Indians a squaw became passionately attached to him, much to the chagrin of her Indian suitor, and it is currently reported that Jack’s ultimate escape was facilitated by the aid of the love-sick Indian, who wished, at all hazards, to get rid of his too handsome rival.

JACK OFF DUTY

Jack is really one of the finest-looking “boys” on the West or out of it. He is excellent company; can perform all manner of -sleight-of-hand tricks, knows all that is to be known about a pack of cards, and could make a point, if so disposed, against the Heathen Chinee himself; speaks Indian as fluently as a traveled woman does French, is a dead shot, never missed his mark but once, and then only because “somebody dirked him from behind;” is hearty and open-handed, and though free and easy in his manner, is not without a certain personal dignity. Off the stage he is addicted to big diamond pins, fancy neckties, and heavy jewelry, and loves fun next to fighting.

BUFFALO BILL

The Hon. Wm. F. Cody, alias "Buffalo Bill," whose home is "by the setting sun," but who lives just at present at Overton & Blair's, in Tenth Street, just opposite Stewart's, is somewhat more reserved in his deportment, and more "subdued" in his manner, than his friend and partner Texas Jack, but is equally amiable, and equally beloved by his intimates.

He is often to be found in his friend Jack's rooms, in the Metropolitan Hotel, where, lying at full length on a lounge, he delights in unburdening and unbecoming himself, and tells interesting stories of thrilling adventures and hair-breadth escapes. He is rather disinclined to talk about himself, but when "drawn out" skillfully, or when he finds an appreciative listener, he is eloquent. In the way of adventure stories, he has "gone through" enough to make a library of dime novels.

BUFFALO BILL'S FIRST FIGHT

His first experience with Indian fights occurred when he was fourteen years of age, when he was in the employ of Simpson & Poole, noted emigrant guards and cattle drivers. These men were conducting two trains of emigrant wagons across the plains, the trains being about fifteen miles apart. Suddenly, when half way between these two trains, Simpson, Poole, and young Cody were attacked by a huge party of Indians armed with bows and arrow, who rushed upon them from an ambush. The white men, however, were equal for the emergency, and killing three mules, and arranging their bodies in a triangle, sheltered themselves behind these mules as a breastwork, from which they discharged their rifles at the Indians with delay effect, each shot telling. The Indians fired away with their bows and arrows, but produced more effect on the dead mules than upon the brace enemies behind them. Finally, the Indians, with an air of savage satisfaction, made up their minds to surround the mules and the white men, and to "starve the latter out," but this little game was blocked by the approach of the second emigrant train, whose appearance in the due time scared the redskins away and saved Buffalo Bill and his companions.

Although, perhaps, the best shot living, Cody is averse to the use of firearms save as a matter of necessity, believing in moral as well as mere physical courage. Once upon a time, a noted Arkansas desperado named Bill Price was "raising hell" in a sutler's shop, armed to the teeth, when Buffalo Bill, without any weapons save those which nature gave him, by his looks and manner overawed the ruffian and produced in a moment by his mere appearance peace out of chaos.

THE SCOUTS AND THE ARISTOCRATS

Though Democrats of the most pronounced type, with "no airs about them," and caring little for civilization, both Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill have met, in their adventures, some of the most noted of European aristocrats. Cody became a great friend of the Duke Alexis in his sporting tour out West, and has been highly thought of in the royal family of St. Petersberg, from whom he has received medals of distinction. Texas Jack has lately received as a souvenir a magnificent shotgun from his friend, the Earl of Dunraven, while not a few of our native American magnates, New York journalists, brokers, railroad officials, generals, etc., etc., have conceived a warm friendship for "the scouts of the prairie."

Among the trophies and curiosities of Buffalo Bill is a bridle of human hair—the hair being taken from the scalp of hostile Indians killed by this renowned hunter. One of his "chums" for years has been J.B. Hickok, otherwise called "Wild Bill," and described by his friend Buffalo Bill as a "fellow with about the worst temper and the best heart." "Wild Bill" has been killed so often in the western papers that he's lately published a card, under own signature, acknowledging his own death, hoping that this last will prove satisfactory. Buffalo Bill is a married man, and is very happy in his domestic relations. His wife was a Miss Frederici and is a very quiet and most estimable lady. He has several children, one of them a bright, daring boy, his father's pet, and called Kit Carson Junior. Amid all his wanderings, Mr. Cody has always cherished a strong attachment for his home, and thinks nothing of riding a hundred miles "to get at it" as soon as possible.

HOME, SWEET HOME

Thus one Thursday evening, according to the local papers, the officers at Fort Randall were surprised to see the browned visaged countenance of "Buffalo Bill" enter the office with his customary salutation of "How!" They were surprised from the fact that his appearance was wholly unlooked for. Mr. Cody left the command about sixty-five miles distant on Monday evening, and succeeded in reaching the Fort. He says that the North Platte is booming high, and where he crossed, the current is very swift. A person possessing the ordinary amount of nerve would have hesitated in crossing such a deep turbulent stream; but Bill has taken so many chances during his career as a scout that he was not to be turned off. He was alone in the perilous undertaking. He stripped himself to the waist, and, taking the bridle rein of his animal in his mouth, he boldly struck out, and after a desperate effort succeeded in reaching the opposite shore. His friends tried to prevail upon his remaining in town over night, but his anxiety to see his family was too great, and after a short rest he pushed on the Fort, making a ride of eighty-five miles in one day.

NED BUNTLINE AS A BUSINESS MAN

As for Colonel E. Z. C. Judson, the famous Ned Buntline, he is so familiar to the world, and his adventures by sea and land and his former excesses and his recent reform and seal as a temperance lecturer are so well known, that the only thing that is really new to the public about this celebrated individual is that he has lately become a shrewd business man, and is making a great deal of money.

To him is due the conception and the carrying out of the present remarkable scheme, which as actors and as curiosities has united the three noted scalp-hunters in a paying combination.

The "Scouts of the Prairie," as his play is called, was composed in Chicago, between 1 AM in the morning and twenty minutes past 4 in the afternoon. It was rehearsed the Saturday and Sunday following and on Monday night, under the management of Mr. Nixon, who engineers the combination, the drama was produced to an overflowing house.

Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill receive $1,000 per week for their services, and the entire onus of the management falls upon Ned Buntline, who, in his blue coat and brass buttons, and gorgeous jewelry, takes the world and all its cares as easily as if he had been born a manager.

Really, the three men as they are in themselves individually, and as they appear in combination, are curiosities, human wonders, types of a phase of romance of which they are the most remarkable living exponents.

First Night Review

The first night of Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack's stage career did not go as planned. They had only three days to rehearse a play that was written in four hours, and two of the three days saw major interruptions to their rehearsals. Then, on opening night, with Omohundro and Cody waiting nervously offstage while Ned Buntline—in the guise of trapper Cale Durg—talked them up to a packed crowd at Nixon's Opera House, the worst possible thing happened. A distraction. Before the titular scouts could join the dime novelist on stage, a man from the audience walked onto the stage, causing a few moments of confusion and commotion before he was removed, rather forcibly, by Buntline.

Those few moments of disraction were all it took for Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack, neither of whom were skilled actors, to forget every line they had spent the last couple of days trying to commit to memory. When they walked out to join Ned, the audience cheered, and the pair just stood there. Buffalo Bill was supposed to greet Ned, telling him about the great buffalo hunt he and Texas Jack had just come from, but he had forgotten what to say, and the nervous energy in the crowd was growing by the moment. Finally, Buntline asked him if he'd been on a buffalo hunt. In the crowd, he spied a man named Milligan who had actually come west to Nebraska the previous summer, so he answered Buntline truthfully, if out of character for the play, that he had been hunting buffalo with Milligan from Chicago.

Cody talked for a few moments about the hunt with Milligan, but he forgot to introduce Texas Jack. Some of the audience, including at least one reporter, assumed that Texas Jack was playing the part of Milligan. But at the end of the day, Cody's inability to speak his lines confidently, the confusion over Milligan, the fact that every actor in the play seemed at a loss with what to do with their hands while they spoke, and the fact that the Indian maiden was an Italian ballerina and the warriors were actors from Chicago didn't seem to do anything to dampen the spirits of the capacity crowd. They weren't there to see great actors, they were there to see real heroes. "Reality is what the people want," said a Chicago reviewer. Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill were the first reality stars, presenting to the country a version of themselves. They would become legends.Review from the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper, December 17, 1872.

NIXON’S AMPHITHEATER – “BUFFALO BILL.” “NED BUNTLINE” AND “TEXAS JACK.”

After all, reality is what the people want. Fine scenery, elegant appointments, unapproachable delineations, are all very well in their way; but if a theatrical manager means to succeed, he must put a spice of nature into his piece. “Nature, my dear Dombey,” said the faded Cleopatra, “give me nature.”

Mr. Vincent Crummies was a shrewd manager, although he could never draw such an audience as did Mr. Nixon last night at his amphitheater on Clinton street. Mr. Crummies, however, knew how to hit the public.

“We’ll have a new show piece out directly,” said Mr. Crummies on one occasion. “Let me see – new scenery – particular resources of the establishment. You must introduce a real pump and two wash tubs.”

“Into one piece?” said Nicholas.

“Yes,” replied the manager. “I bought ‘em cheap at a sale the other day, and they’ll come in admirably. It’ll look well in the play bills in separate lines—Real Pump! Splendid Tubs! Great Attraction!”

The manager of the amphitheater probably took a useful hint from Mr. Crummies, and he bettered the instruction. Let other managers take heedful note of it. There’s money in’t. Mr. Hooley hung up a real oil painting in one of his scenes the other day, and made an impression. But was that, or pump and washtubs, ever so real, to the reality presented last evening at Nixon’s? There was the real Edward Buntline, of the dime-novel and New York Weekly. There was the real Mr. William Buffalo, whom the aforesaid Buntline has a thousand times ground into paint for his pictures. There was the real Mr. John Texas, and the real Mr. Cale Durg, assisted by the—but here we enter upon dangerous ground. That peerless danseuse M’dlle. Morlacchi, and them Indians, we fear, betrayed a decided flavor of civilization, and alas, we are forced to admit, of stage culture. It was, perhaps, a mixture of wild reality and stage paint and spangles, and it may be that in the curious blending of these the true art of the dramatist was discernible.

The audience was not what the ordinary critic would stigmatize as select and cultivated; but it was appreciative, yes, enthusiastic. It was a “Dime Novel” audience. Beginning from the irrepressible, sparkling gamin, it traveled, row by row, through all intervening grades of intelligence, up to the hard-handed, sable-browed mechanic, who rests on Saturday night, and devours his dime novel, his New York Weekly, with their thrilling tales of the plains, and to whom the title of “pale face” for a white man still has some tincture of romance. It was worth more than all the play to watch this audience. It numbered fully 2,000 and never, out of an English pit, was anything ever seen like it. Auditors and actors were in deadly earnest about the performance and that is something that neither Mr. Barrett, Mr. Booth, or Mr. Fechter can accomplish nowadays with all their splendid Hamlets and “new readings.” No, this audience was an audience that seldom frequents fine theaters. To them, the novel is the intellectual stuff of life. The hairbreadth escapes, the thrilling adventures of Indian life, the heroic scout, the splendid Indian maid, the terrible redskin, are all conceivable entities, and here they had all been promised a chance of seeing the actual heroes of whom they had so long read and dreamed.

The play was “Scouts of the Prairie, written expressly for this occasion. Signal appearance of Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack, and Cale Durg,” and the dove-eyed Indian maiden, who, we regret to admit, was not transplanted from the wilds of nature. The audience sat patiently through the sadly-enacted farce (“The Spectre Bridegroom”) and came at last to the sensation of the evening. They could hardly wait for the fiddlers to stop and the curtain to rise upon the mimic scene. At last, however, there entered the renowned (and real) Cale Durg, the terrible scout, rifle in hand. Storms of applause. Cale has evidently been in the mountains, but never before on the stage. He don’t handle his rifle neatly, like Mr. O’Neil in Claude Melnotte; he speaks his first speech not trippingly upon the tongue, and he uses his arms like a pump handle. But what of that? Durg is the real thing, and the boys fairly yell with admiration as he alludes mysteriously to the redskins that infest his path. Here came in an incident. Just as Durg had clapped the butt of his rifle on the stage with a terrible thump, a half-tipsy fellow from the upper row stumbles on the stage. Possibly with the best intentions, he pulls a bottle of whisky from his pocket and presents it to Buntline. It was the poor fellow’s humble tribute of admiration—his way of throwing a bouquet. There was a moment of breathless suspense, and then the valiant Cale seized the offender by the neck and dashed him into the orchestra, smashing a half-dozen footlights as he went. Cale then addressed the audience as follows: “Let any renegade pale face dare to cross this red line, and he shall thus feel the weight of my strong arm”—a speech which was hailed with rounds of rapturous plaudits. The luckless admirer of the scout was plucked from the inside of a bass fiddle into which he had fallen, and was promptly handed over to a policeman, who dragged him through the audience, wildly protesting, and consigned him to the care of a regular, who led him to the station. The play proceeded. Cale Durg made some more speeches, accompanied with the pump-handle action, and presently Mr. William Buffalo came to the front, a tall, handsome-looking fellow, but looking, and evidently feeling, exceedingly ill at ease, and quite at a loss what to do with his hands. He was accompanied by a Mr. Milligan, of this city, dressed as a hunter, who made a wild attempt to walk on in the dare-devil easy fashion, and then stood stock still, only shifting his attitude occasionally, and simpering, while proceeding to relate a series of anecdotes about the famous Duke Alexis buffalo hunt, in which Mr. Milligan participated. [Here the excited policeman came back from his man, and went down to the orchestra for poor drunken friend’s hat, left by mistake in the violin.]

But hah! There’s trouble ahead. A white woman has been seen in the wilderness. And this brings us to the next scene to view a beautiful maiden, armed with a rifle and a dagger, roaming these deserts with evil intent on Indians. Possibly, to the select and cultivated audience it would have seemed strange indeed to see this lovely damsel, whose father had been a friend of the Indians, and who was roaming alone with her faithful rifle through the wilderness, suddenly pause in a passionate speech, and marching clear up to the footlights, troll off, in an artistic fashion, a select air from Offenbach. But to the dime novel audience all this was in perfect keeping. And then came a terrible scene in which Bill, Durg, and Milligan of Chicago, and all the Indians were hurried off to participate in a grand bonfire and barbecue, in which Durg was to be the barbecued. Of course he was rescued, and this circumstance naturally gave allowance for more scenes of red terror—rescues, savage pow-wows, battle scenes, oaths of vengeance—which ran through three dreadful acts, and all of them were hailed with such cheers of wild delight and sincere admiration as would have made the heart of the proudest manager happy. The play will be repeated—of course it will “draw”—night after night. It is the most successful drama which has ever been presented in this city. It has drawn one immense audience and will draw more of the same.

Buckskin & Satin

Does the world need another biography of Texas Jack?

That's the question I asked myself. I had planned on writing a novel about Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, and Texas Jack's dramatic season together as The Scouts of the Plains. I was doing some research on the men, and I read Joseph G. Rosa's They Called Him Wild Bill, Don Russell's The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, and Herschel C. Logan's biography of Texas Jack, Buckskin & Satin.

Buckskin & Satin reminded me very much of a specific moment from my childhood. I was in third or fourth grade at Rivermont Elementary School, and our teacher told us we were going to the school library. There, our assignment was to pick out a biography, read it, and write a report on the life of the person whose story was depicted there. I had no context for my choice, so just picked out a book with an interesting picture on the cover. Whoever said "Don't judge a book by its cover" forgot about the field of marketing, which is very much a combination of advertising and psychology combined in such a way as to convince you, by virtue of a book's cover, to judge it as worthy of a read. The book I picked up was a biography of Jim Bowie. The only thing I knew about Bowie was that Bowie knives were a thing, and I assumed he had invented them. I wondered if he was related to David Bowie, who I very much liked in the movie Labyrinth.

Now, you may not know this, but Jim Bowie led a pretty exciting life. I, unfortunately, didn't know about it, because the book didn't hold my interest like C.S. Lewis's Narnia books had. The biography of Bowie was written in a very specific kind of language, one that I didn't really understand then, but have come to associate with a certain kind of biography written in the middle of the 20th century. Academics have a word for it—hagiography. Originally, a hagiography was a book about a saint or religious leader, but now it just means a biography where the author reveres the subject, doesn't point out that subject's flaws, and heaps praise on their subject throughout. The writer of the biography of Jim Bowie I picked up at the Rivermont Elementary School library and Herschel C. Logan both believed that they were writing about someone important. Someone good. Someone who had, in some small way, changed the world and shaped it into their own vision—changed and shaped it for the better.

And I get it. I really do. The more I learned about Texas Jack and his wife Morlacchi, the more I liked them. The more I found myself pulling for them, despite knowing how their story would tragically end. You can't spend that long reading and writing about a person without developing some affection, and even some sense that in a way, their story has become a part of your story. I could write a thousand books after this one, but I will always be the guy that wrote the book about Texas Jack. That's part of who I am now.

But when we ignore, or simply don't see, the faults in people, I think we can be blinded to not just the realities of who they are, but what they have to overcome on the way to achieving whatever it was that made them notable. Texas Jack was no saint. Few men are. He drank and told stories and had a generally good time. Now, he wasn't a violent man. He didn't hit his wife or carouse or embarrass his family. But he was a man, with faults, who was very much a product of his times. On the day he was born, twenty-five slaves worked the fields of his father's home. As a teenager during the Civil War, Jack and his brothers fought to maintain that status quo. That doesn't make Texas Jack evil, at least not in the context of a Virginia landowner during the 1860s. But it does make the fact that Texas Jack later shared the stage with black actors more notable. It does make the fact that in Texas Jack dime novels—including a couple written by his real-life best friend and partner Buffalo Bill Cody—he employs and trusts implicitly as "majordomo" of his ranch a freed slave named Ebony Star all the more meaningful. Lillian Schlissel, professor emerita and director of American studies at Brooklyn College-CUNY, wrote in her book Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in The Old West that “Not many other books before 1900 showed friendships between a white man and a black man...The story is unusual because in it a black man, Star, rescues the hero and saves his life. As with the Lone Ranger and Tonto, the Ebony Star is Texas Jack’s powerful friend and ally...Star has a place in the legends of the Old West.”

The men (and women) who became legends in the American West were imperfect. It isn't their perfection that makes them notable, it is the ways in which they rose above the adversity of their time. It was a world in which black men and women had been slaves on Virginia plantations, but in that world, Texas Jack shared the stage with African-American costars. It was a world in which it was easy to dismiss all Native Americans as "savage redskins," but in that world, Texas Jack hunted with, befriended, and immersed himself in the culture of the Pawnee people. It was a world in which to call a man a "cowboy" was amongst the worst of insults, but in that world, Texas Jack wrote about and spoke about his former profession in a way that made a lasting impact on the way America viewed the cowboy.

That's not to say that Buckskin & Satin isn't good, or isn't worthwhile. It just left enough room in Jack's life and in his legacy that I felt like there must be more to it. There is a paragraph, on pages 99-100 of Buckskin & Satin, that captures exactly what I mean. Having described Jack's life from 1872 until 1877, Logan writes:

"Very little is heard of Texas Jack during the next two years; it is presumed that he spent at least a part of his time hunting, a sport which he so thoroughly enjoyed. Some time was undoubtedly spent on stage, and last, but not least by any means, much time was enjoyed in the comfortable home he and his attractive wife occupied in Billerica, near Lowell, Massachusetts."

I read that paragraph, and I felt—KNEW—there must be more. And there was. So much more. What Mr. Logan covered in that paragraph takes me 106 pages and just over 34,000 words to cover in my book.

Those years, 1876 to 1879, were full of adventure. To summarize in brief, Texas Jack was involved with a venture at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia that ended tragically. Jack wasn't even in Philadelphia at the time because he had been called to serve as a scout for General Terry after Custer's defeat at Little Bighorn. Texas Jack befriended Donald McKay, a Warm Springs native and the hero of the Modoc War. McKay, along with Morlacchi and John Burke, joined Jack's new theatrical combination. Jack went west at least three times: once with Sir John Rae Reid, once with Captain Bailey and T.B. Birmingham, and once with Count Otto Franc. On one of these trips, Jack met Thomas Edison, nearly scaring the famous inventor to death. On another trip, Jack helped save some tourists who had been attacked by Nez Perce in Yellowstone Park. One of his fellow travelers alleged in the press that Texas Jack was a coward who knew nothing about Indians and less about the Yellowstone region, raising Jack's ire and forcing a response. Texas Jack played at least 400 shows after his partnership with Buffalo Bill ended, not counting matinees and performances in cities that haven't yet digitized their newspaper archives.

I wish Herschel Logan was around to see my book...to see what else there was to learn about Texas Jack...to talk about John B. Omohundro together. I hope he would enjoy the direction I went. I hope you will too.

Scout's Rest

Scout's Rest, the North Platte, Nebraska home of Buffalo Bill Cody has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. Just over 8 acres of Cody’s former ranch property in North Platte—including the mansion, barn, outbuildings, irrigation system, windmill, and landscaped lawns—earned the designation on January 13th. This home, and Buffalo Bill Cody himself, have been recognized for their significance in the creation of the Wild West entertainment movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In denoting the significance of the place and its owner, the National Park Service noted that "So compelling and engaging was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West that it inspired more than one hundred imitator shows, spawned the modern rodeo, and influenced the motion picture industry. The movement influenced—and continues to influence—how the entertainment industry, mass media, and popular culture present the history of the American West."

Buffalo Bill arrived in North Platte just after Texas Jack in the late 1860s, and the pair were soon inseparable. The Kansas Jawhawker turned buffalo hunter was employed as a scout at nearby Fort McPherson when he met the former Confederate cavalry scout turned cowboy, who was tending bar at Lew Baker's saloon. The pair began hunting together, and soon Cody convinced his superior officers that despite regulations disallowing the service of former Confederates, Texas Jack would be an invaluable addition as a civilian scout. Buffalo Bill's confidence proved well-founded, as Texas Jack soon saved his friend's life in an altercation with Miniconjou (Mnikȟówožu) warriors.

Nearly a decade after Texas Jack's death, a reporter visiting the now famous Buffalo Bill Cody at Scout's Rest noted that just inside the home, greeting Buffalo Bill, his family, and his guests each time they arrived, was a hand-colored portrait of Texas Jack. Nearby hung a portrait of Ned Buntline, the writer who made them famous. Together, these three men who met first on the Nebraska prairie would create and star in The Scouts of the Prairie, the first western and the beginning of what would become the Wild West.

Buckskin Sam's Tribute to Texas Jack

"Buckskin Sam," was the name given to Samuel Stone Hall by legendary Texas Rangers Bigfoot Wallace and John Ford when Sam served alongside those notables under the command of Ben McCullogh. Originally born on a farm near Leominster, Massachusetts, July 23, 1838, young Sam had tired of farming and his father's discipline and ran away from home and headed west.

He found work as a butcher aboard a train bound for New York, and in the city took a job as a hotel bellboy. He soon boarded a ship bound for Indianola, Texas, where he became a bullwhacker. A small man, weighing only 125 pounds, when Buckskin Sam joined Ben McCullough's Rangers. he impressed his fellow rangers with his gentle manner and his deadly accuracy with both pistol and rifle.

It was here, as a small man in the company of figurative and literal giants like Bigfoot Wallace and John Ford that Sam earned the nickname "Buckskin," for the fringed leathers he often wore. At the start of the Civil War, Sam along with the other Rangers were drafted into service with the Confederate army, but Sam, born in Massachusetts, resented being forced to fight for a cause he didn't believe in, and in July 1864, he became a Union scout with Donaldson's Rangers in the Army of the Southwest.

After the war, Sam tried his hand in hotel management, but eventually rejoined the Rangers for a short time before returning to New England, where he was cooly received by a family that didn't particularly relish his return. As a bullwhacker and later Ranger, Sam had acquired a taste for strong drink and a habit of "painting the town red", which shocked the staid New England village of Leominster. Same once again left his childhood home bound for New York, where for several years he worked as a hotel clerk. Here he became friends with other Western men who frequented the city, and soon Sam's new friends Texas Jack, Buffalo Bill, and Colonel Prentiss Ingraham persuaded Buckskin Same to write up some of his personal experiences for dime novel publisher Beadle & Adams.

Sam's first story was ostensibly about the actor hired to replace Wild Bill in the Scouts of the Prairie, an actor who pretended to be the son of the legendary scout Kit Carson. "Kit Carson, Jr.; or, The Crack Shot of the West," was published as No. 3, in Frank Starr's New York Library. Building on this success, Sam wrote many novelettes for Beadle and many short sketches for the Banner Weekly, among them a series on "Heroes and Outlaws of Texas."

Eventually, Sam's heavy drinking led him to leave New York, where he found himself beset by too many temptations to resist. He headed to Wilmington, Delaware, to live with a friend from his years in Texas. When that friend abruptly departed, leaving a wife and several small children without financial security, Buckskin Sam stood by them and remained their sole support. When Sam was stricken with pneumonia, his friend's abandoned wife took care of him until his death, February Ist or 2nd, 1886. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Leominster, his funeral expenses being paid by the publishers that had printed so many of his stories.

Buckskin Sam died six years after his friend and fellow Texas transplant Texas Jack Omohundro. Hearing of the death of his friend in the high mountains of Colorado, Buckskin Sam penned this ode in Omohundro’s memory:

Noble and brave, with a heart kind and free,

Erect and graceful as a pecan tree.

With open, fair face and an eye that told

Of a friendship more pure and lasting than gold

With a hand that would open to poverty’s child,

Or quickly grasp rifle ‘mid war cries wild;

With a love sincere and lasting as life

For that beautiful woman, his gifted wife --

Such was Texas Jack, a true prairie pard,

And his death it has struck me, struck mighty hard.

No more will he turn the wild stampede

With whoop and yell on galloping steed;

No more take the red man’s moccasined track,

‘Mid bowstrings’ twang and rifle’s crack;

No more with rare skill his lasso whirl,

Or through the air his dread bowie hurl;

No more be poised on mustang’s back,

And drive wild herds on the northern track;

No more the ‘black snake’ deftly swing;

Mo more on the Llanos will his rifle ring --

The far-away trails his feet have trod

Will know him no more--he has gone to God!

Moaning o’er prairies on the norther’s breath

Methinks I hear the weird call of death.

Sighing through canyon and chaparral

The muffled sound of Jack’s funeral knell.

Methinks that now the coyote’s sharp bark

And the howl of black wolf in the woodland dark

Is tempered with much more mournful sound,

And prairie flowers droop lower to the ground.

Methinks the warblers of the Rio Grande

Must sing less sweet as the mount the air,

And the maidens of that summery land

Must veil their faces in their raven hair.

Lay him to rest in his narrow home

Beneath the sky, earth’s natural dome

Where Southern verdure luxuriant grow,

Ne’er withered by icy northern snows

There, ‘neath the Spanish moss and vine,

Where myriads of flowering creepers twine,

Let him repose in Nature’s wild,

Fit resting place for Nature’s child.

There would I dig in grassy bank,

Afar from noisy cow bells’ clank,

Where oft the red man leaves his track,

A fitting grave for Texas Jack.

There would I lay him down to rest

Amid the scenes that he loved best

I’d dig his lone grave long and wide,

And lay his rifle by his side.

I’d coil his lariat ‘round his feet,

His serape use for a winding sheet;

And those brave hands which oft grasped mine,

In lonely watch on the picket line,

When yelling Sioux with hasty tramp

Strove to stampede the frontier camp;

Those hands that grasped in van of battle,

‘Mid cannon’s roar and sabre’s rattle,

The flag he thought waved over the right,

And bore it firm through bloody fight;

Those hands should clasp ‘round knife and ‘six.’

Yes, all his various prairie ‘tricks.’

Should lay beside him, until the horn

Of Gabriel waxes the eventful morn.

But, be his grave in wild woods made,

Or in the city’s busy mart,

Carve on the stone, in words of gold,

‘HERE LIES A NOBLE HEART.’

March 1874

Newspaper advertisements had assured the public for weeks that their heroes would soon be treading the boards of theatres and music halls across New York State. A show in Schenectady had already been booked and sold out when an announcement appeared in papers, informing ticket holders that the show had been canceled, as the heroes they so longed to see were busy fighting on the frontier.

"Theater-goers will be pleased to learn that Texas Jack, Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill have been engaged to scout during the Indian war," the St. Louis Globe announced, "and that the service is one of considerable danger. The only subject for regret is the fact that Ned Buntline is not included in the cast."

Of course, this was a lie. Some theater critics were still quite upset that the masses who stormed the largest venues in city after city for the last two seasons weren't clamoring to see the nation's finest actors, but rather its most famous scouts. The show wasn't even a particularly good one, these critics told their public, and as actors the buffalo hunter William F. Cody, the cowboy John B. Omohundro, and the lawman James B. Hickok were dismal. This did nothing to discourage people from going to see The Scouts of the Prairie in 1873 or The Scouts of the Plains the following year. They didn't want to see great actors—they wanted to see "the real heroes."

Two years later, the lie and the truth merged. Wild Bill would be assassinated in Deadwood, a gold boomtown on Sioux land deep in Dakota Territory, and both Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack would be called into service as scouts following the defeat of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn/the Greasy Grass.

The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America's Gilded Age

Robert McNally's brilliant book The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America's Gilded Age is now available in paperback from Bison Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, IndieBound, or your favorite local, independent bookseller.

When Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack, and Ned Buntline brought their Scouts of the Prairie show to the big eastern cities of Boston and New York in March of 1873, the citizens of those cosmopolitan towns were primed to receive exactly what the western scouts were peddling. A little context explains why urbanites far from the nation's western frontier were at that very moment experiencing a kind of existential dread concerning the western Native American tribes.

In the months preceding The Scouts theatrical debuts in Baltimore, Boston, New York, and Washington D.C., Army troops and Modoc warriors had been facing off in the lava beds of northern California. This conflict between the Modoc and the American military was the tragic consequence of what historian Robert Aquinas McNally calls "a decades-long campaign of extermination and removal that symbolizes all too much of European America's treatment of Native America and the continent." The Modoc had largely ignored the white settlers who streamed through their lands in pursuit of gold after its discovery near Yreka in 1851. Another nearby tribe, the Pit River Tribe, attacked a white settlement, and an angry militia retaliated by killing the men, women, and children of a Modoc village, not knowing the difference between the two distinct groups. The Modoc retaliated by attacking and killing members of a California-bound wagon train. A peace parley was arranged—a ruse that would lead to the deaths of 41 more Modocs.

Eventually, an uneasy peace was purchased at the price of confinement to the Klamath Reservation, where the Modoc shared the land with their ancestral enemies but were provided food, blankets, and clothing. When the food proved scarce, the blankets and clothing insufficient, and the government unable to keep the Klamath from stealing Modoc lumber, their leader Kintpuash (known in English as Captain Jack) lead a group of Modoc back towards the Lost River, where hunting could provide the food that the reservation system had failed to yield.

Kintpuash and the Modoc took refuge in what is now called Captain Jack's stronghold in the present-day Lava Beds National Monument. A series of conflicts followed, with the powers-that-be in Washington appointing General Edward Canby to convince, coerce, or compel the Modoc to return to the Klamath Reservation. The Lava Beds proved a formidable defensive position, and the conflict drug out for months, with national interest focused on what would come to be called the Modoc War.

The two famous Indian-fighters, Texas Jack Omohundro and Buffalo Bill Cody were touring the country in their first dramatic show and were often asked for their expert opinion on the situation. Buffalo Bill said to one reporter, “Give me old ‘Nancy Ann’, my breech-loader there, and let Jack have a lasso and scalping knife, and I’ll bet every cent I own we can clean out every bloody red son-of-a-corkscrew of ‘em inside of thirty days, and do our own scouting and cooking too!”

At a gathering to ostensibly discuss terms of peace, the Modoc ambushed and killed General Canby and Reverend Thomas, severely injuring several others. Perhaps the Modoc remembered the peace parley that had turned deadly years before. Perhaps they believed that killing the commanding officer of the force that stood against them would convince the federal government that it wasn't worth fighting a war with the Modoc.

Whatever the case, with the death of General Canby, any chance of peace was off the table. Canby's death occurred just before Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill ended their two-week-long run of shows at New York's Niblo's Garden. Advertising that followed shows that the Scouts of the Prairie deliberately played upon the public's concerns over the events at the lava beds:

Soon, newspapers asserted (with varying levels of sincerity) that if Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill had been sent to remedy the "Modoc Situation" rather than General Canby, that man would still be alive and the Modoc threat would have been eliminated in rapid order. "Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack ought to have been put at the head of five thousand prairie scouts and allowed to fight the redskins in their own fashion," reported te Buffalo, New York, Morning Express. "If these distinguished persons could have been induced to throw up their lucrative engagement with Mr. Ned Buntline, and to take the field, the Modocs would all have been in the Happy Hunting Ground long before this."

The Modoc War seems both a consequence of easily avoidable misunderstanding and the inevitable outcome of a deliberate and determined strategy by the state of California to wipe out Native American life—a quite literal state-sponsored genocide. After the Battle of Dry Lake, it was obvious to Kintpuash and the Modoc that their struggle was unwinnable. On September 10, President Grant approved the death sentence for Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Black Jim, and Boston Charley. Two others, Brancho and Slolux, were committed to life imprisonment on Alcatraz island. On October 3rd, Kintpuash and his comrades were hung at Fort Klamath. The remainder of his band was sent to the Quapaw Agency in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, to live the rest of their lives as prisoners of war.

The Modoc War is an incredibly complicated and important piece of American history that is seldom spoken of today. Author Robert Aquinas McNally masterfully covered the conflict and its consequences in his 2017 book, The Modoc War, a Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America's Gilded Age, which has just become available in paperback for the first time. In McNally's hands, the story of Kintpuash (Captain Jack) and the Modoc people is a page-turning piece of history, full of action, conflict, and character. It is also unique in making understandable the cultural context of the conflict on the sides of both natives peoples and white settlers and soldiers. I really can't recommend this book enough. Understanding this 1872-1873 conflict is key to understanding the success of Buffalo Bill Cody and Texas Jack Omohundro, as well as both the military and native mindsets going into the Great Sioux War of 1876 and the Apache conflicts of the 1870s and 1880s. Grab your copy of this incredible book today. I promise it is well worth your time.

The Ruined Virginia

Texas Jack Omohundro and Captain Jack Crawford never shared a stage. Crawford, who joined Buffalo Bill's troupe after Cody and Omohundro dissolved their theatrical partnership, did often write to his cowboy friend, and at least one of their letters is in the collection of the Denver Public Library. Texas Jack would later occasionally perform Crawford's play Fonda, including in Denver in early 1880, his last stop before arriving in Leadville, Colorado.

This 1878 poem, about the Virginia City, Nevada, fire of two years earlier, was written by Crawford, "The Poet Scout" to his friend Texas Jack.

THE RUINED VIRGINIA.by Capt. Jack Crawford TO MY PARD, J. B. O'MAHUNDRO (TEXAS JACK).

Virginia City, Nevada, almost totally destroyed by fire, October, 1876.

Did I hear the news from Virginny—

The news of that terrible fire?

Yes ; but I couldn't believe it —

I thought the bearer a liar;

But when I found it square, pard,

I weakened, you bet, right here,

And I didn't care a tinker's

Who saw me drop a tear.

Just reason the thing for a minute—

There's two thousand miners right there,

It's cold up there in the mountains,

And some's got no breeches to wear.

And that ain't the worst; for instance,

There's two of my old pards hurt,

And a dozen that wore plugs on Sunday

Ain't got the first stitch but their shirt.

Now, Jack, ain't that rough on Virginny?

Well, there ain't no saints out there;

And I 'spec' it's a second Chicago,

And this is a kind of a scare.

But dog my cats if I see it

Exactly in that thar way,

For most of them hardy miners

Are honest, by Joe, as the day.

But maybe it's all for the better—

That's what the good people say;

But I don't want any in mine, pard,

If the Lord will but keep it away.

I don't read much in the Scripture,

But I've heard the good parson talk

About sinners bein' punished by brimstone

When against the commandments they balk.

Now, I don't jist understand it,

Though I tumble to what they say;

Nor I don't see why the Almighty

Should treat a poor man in that way.

While the fellers who's got the lucre,

And the worst to connive and swear,

Always give us poor devils the euchre—

The deal ain't exactly square

And if, as the parson tells us,

There's a place after this called hell,

With fire and red-hot brimstone—

With a nasty kind of smell

I'll be dogged if some fine snoozer

(That'd have a reason to know)

Won't find it a scorchin' old corner

In that furnace way down below.

Now, there was old Kit McGregor,

He was rough and ready, but smart,

He could whip any man in the diggin's—

And there wasn't a flaw in his heart.

But when old Parson Plum, one evening,

Done dirt—didn't act on the square—

He sent daylight clear through him,

And laid- the old sinner out there.

Now, is Kit goin' to hell for that, Jack?

Not much! the Lord bid him shoot,

And he killed a worm of the devil—

A hypocrite, rogue and galoot.

Besides, the gal was his darter,

And she panned out a woman most fair,

And was loved by all in the diggin's—

But Kit had revenge right there.

And if some of them Eastern preachers,

Who's Tiltin' around the courts,

Would do as old Kit McGregor,

And stop these long-winded reports,

There wouldn't be so much sinnin',

Nor wimmin degraded so low,

But they go in for the lucre—

Revenge has a d—d poor show.

So, Jack, while we look at Virginny,

We'll just take a bead on New York,

And see where the sinners are greatest—

Back there or out on the fork.

We won't say a word about Brooklyn,

For who but the saints can tell

Whether it will be turned to religion,

Or still be a fortress of hell?

That is, after Moody and Sankey

Have done with their preachin' and sich;

I hope that the gods will assist them

In awakin' the guilt-covered rich.

And yet it matters but little

To us in the diggin's, I'm sure,

But this is my candid opinion:

The Lord won't go back on the poor.

Custer City, Dakota Territory, December, 1878.

Deep Nostalgia

A lot of interest created by the animated images of Texas Jack and his friends run through the Deep Nostaliga AI, so I thought I'd make a post to share them all, and to link you all to where you can do the same to your favorite photos.MyHeritage's Deep Nostalgia AI can be found here. Accounts are free but users are limited to five photos per account before they want you to sign up for the premium version of their service.This Gizmodo article describes how the process works, for those of you interested in how this seemingly magic process occurs behind the scenes.Here is the main cast from the first two seasons that The Scouts of the Prairie and The Scouts of the Plains toured. Ned Buntline was involved with the first tour, and Wild Bill the second. Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack, and Jack's wife Giuseppina Morlacchi toured together from 1872 until 1876

Texas Jack Omohundro Buffalo Bill Cody Wild Bill Hickok The Peerless Giuseppina Morlacchi Ned Buntline