#Texas Jack Omohundro

[coloradomartini]

Texas Jack: The Forgotten Legend Buried in Colorado

He is John Baker Omohundro (July 27, 1846 – June 28, 1880) and is buried right here in Colorado. Just like his buddies Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill, he also had an alias. He was called “Texas Jack.”

He is John Baker Omohundro (July 27, 1846 – June 28, 1880) and is buried right here in Colorado. Just like his buddies Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill, he also had an alias. He was called “Texas Jack.” Read more More about this subject

[onefootin1941]

In early September of 1873, these three men were the most famous Westerners alive. From left, Wild Bill Hickock, Texas Jack Omohundro and at the far right is Buffalo Bill Cody.

American Vintage Photos, Facebook

[barbucomedie]

"Old Model" Evans Repeating Carbine from the United States of America dated to 1873 on display at the National Museum of History in Mexico City, Mexico

The Evans Repeating rifle started development in 1871 but didn't come into production until 1873 to 1876. This first model or "Old Model" as it became known, was popular due to it's high ammo capacity of 30 rounds. Though rifles were made for military use the USA army didn't use them however the Peruvian army did during the War of the Pacific (1879 - 1884).

The guns were popular amongst the frontiers with both William "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Texas Jack Omohundro using them on stage. The Evans was used by many Indigenous and First Nations people along the Mexican-American border especially the Apache and Pueblo peoples.

Photographs taken by myself 2024

[alphaman99]

Texas Jack Omohundro

Will Rogers, who died on this day in 1935, was the very definition of American.

Born to a Cherokee Nation family in Oologah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), Rogers joked that though his ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, they "met the boat".

Dog Iron Ranch, the property of Will's father Clement Vann Rogers, had as many as 10,000 Texas longhorns, and Will, the youngest of eight children, grew up in the saddle. An avid reader and good student, Will quickly decided that the saddle was more comfortable than the school desk, and, after dropping out of school in the 10th grade, worked his father's ranch full time.

When he was 22 years old, Will and a friend set off from Oklahoma to Argentina, sure that their cowboy skills would serve them well as gauchos on the Argentine Pampas. They bought a ranch and worked for five months before running out of money. Unwilling to return home and face his father's disappointment, Will boarded a boat to South Africa, where he got a job as a rancher at Mooi River Station.

Soon, a Wild West Circus passed through the area and Will Rogers went to see the show, intent on asking for a job handling the show's livestock. Rogers would later tell a reporter for the New York Times:

"Texas Jack had a little Wild West aggregation that visited the camps and did a tremendous business. I did some roping and riding, and Jack, who was one of the smartest showmen I ever knew, took a great interest in me. It was he who gave me the idea for my original stage act with my pony. I learned a lot about show business from him. He could do a bum act with a rope that an ordinary man couldn't get away with, and make the audience think it was great, so I used to study him by the hour, and from him, I learned the great secret of the show business—knowing when to get off. It's the fellow who knows when to quit that the audience wants more of."

This Texas Jack was not John B. Omohundro. Actually, no one, not even the man himself, knew this Texas Jack's real name. He was born sometime between 1863 and 1867, and his parents had been killed when their wagon train headed west was ambushed, reportedly by a Comanche raiding party. The child had been taken captive, along with two young girls from another family's wagon, but was rescued by the cowboy Texas Jack Omohundro, who delivered the children to a Kansas orphanage, selling the Comanche ponies to provide funding for the children's education. The boy grew up not knowing his name or the names of his parents, only knowing that the man who rescued him was called Texas Jack. After Omohundro's 1880 death, this young man showed up at the Omohundro home in Palmyra, Virginia, asking for the family's blessing to use his rescuer's name as he set off on his own venture into show business.

Initially called Texas Jack Junior, by the time he had established himself as a performer in America and Europe he dropped the "Junior" entirely. By the time Will Rogers asked for a job in Ladysmith, South Africa, his show was billed as Texas Jack's Wild West Circus. According to Rogers, he asked the circus owner if he was really from Texas, if he was related to the famous Texas Jack from the dime novels, and if he had any jobs wrangling horses for the show. Jack Jr. asked the young man if he could put together a rope trick act. The young man said he believed he could and Jack Jr. hired him on the spot, suggesting the young performer adopt the nickname “The Cherokee Kid”. Performing the same lasso act that Texas Jack Omohundro introduced to the world thirty years earlier, this was Will Rogers’ first job in show business.

Will Rogers died in a plane crash with aviation pioneer Wiley Post in Alaska on August 15th, 1935. Before his death, the State of Oklahoma commissioned a statue of him to place in the United States Capital's National Statuary Hall collection. Rogers agreed on the condition that his statue face the House Chamber so that Rogers could "keep an eye on Congress." Since the statue's installation in 1939, each President of the United States of America has rubbed the Will Rogers statue's left foot for good luck before stepping into the House Chamber to deliver the State of the Union address.

[Pictured from left to right: Texas Jack Junior, Lyle Marr (TJ Jr's wife), Clarence Welby Cooke, and Will Rogers.]

[gregarnott]

When this picture was taken, likely in early September of 1873, these three men were the most famous Westerners alive. Seated on the right is Buffalo Bill Cody, who earned his name as the greatest buffalo hunter alive before rising to fame as a scout for the United States Army. Across the table sits Wild Bill Hickok, the deadliest gunslinger of his day and perhaps the most fabled lawman in American history. And behind these two men, with his right hand resting familiarly on Wild Bill's shoulder, stands Texas Jack Omohundro.

Omohundro wasn't a buffalo hunter or a lawman in Kansas cow towns. Texas Jack was a cowboy. The Earl of Dunraven, who hunted with both Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill, wrote:

"Buffalo Bill had always been in Government employ as a scout, but Texas Jack had been a cowboy, one of the old-time breed of men who drove herds of cattle from way down South to Northern markets for weeks and months, through a country infested by Indians and white cattle thieves."

When these three men toured as The Scouts of the Plains, audiences who rushed to their local theaters to catch a glimpse of their heroes were gladly spending their hard-earned money to see the West's most famous scout, its most famous lawman, and its most famous cowboy together on stage. They were so famous that nearly 150 years after they posed for this picture, they still shape our stories of the American West. Buffalo Bill became the most famous American, and perhaps the most famous person full stop, during his own lifetime. His Wild West show performed before thousands on both sides of the Atlantic, shaping the public perception of the West in his own image forever. Wild Bill was struck down by an assassin's bullet, but his name lives on, inspiring countless books, movies, television shows, and trips to the small South Dakota town of Deadwood, where Hickok was killed and is buried.

Texas Jack didn't live long enough to ensure his name would be remembered forever and he didn't "die with his boots on" to go down in history. But his life and his legacy as America's first famous cowboy, the man who introduced the lasso act to the stage and rode with Pawnee warriors across the western prairie, has influenced every cowboy story that followed. From Owen Wister's The Virginian to Louis L'amour's Hondo, from Tom Mix to Cary Grant, from Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name to John Wayne's Ethan Edwards—every cowboy has been cast in the mold of Texas Jack.

[usedcarheaven]

Wild Bill Hickok left,  Texas Jack Omohundro center,   Buffalo Bill Cody right.

[theleylinesblog]

Hickok, Texas Jack Omohundro, and Buffalo Bill Cody as the "Scouts of the Plains" in 1873

[tombstonetourism]

John Baker (Texas Jack) Omohundro, Evergreen Cemetery, Leadville, Col. Second photo: standing for the photographer with friends James Butler (Wild Bill) Hickok and William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody.

[delux2222]

Happy Birthday, Wild Bill Hickok (1837-1876)

with Texas Jack Omohundro and Buffalo Bill Cody at the time of their theatrical collaboration

[cobblestonestreet]

Wild Bill Hickok, Texas Jack Omohundro, and Cody in 1873

[delux2222]

Happy Birthday, Wild Bill Hickok (1837-1876) with Texas Jack Omohundro and Buffalo Bill Cody at the time of their theatrical collaboration