Robert Duvall was more than an actor. He was an anchor. As news of his passing at 95 (on February 15, 2026) circulates, it’s hard not to look back at a career that feels less like a filmography and more like a map of the American cinema over the last 60 plus years. Duvall was the ultimate craftsman. He was the "actor's actor" who managed to be a household name without ever losing the chameleon-like mystery of a character performer. Duvall’s film debut was as Boo Radley in the

In April 1876, "Texas Jack" Omohundro was in the home stretch of a marathon. He and Buffalo Bill Cody were eight months into a grueling dramatic tour that had begun in Philadelphia the previous August. By the time the troupe arrived for their three-night stand in Rochester on April 10th, they had already traversed the Eastern Seaboard, dipped deep into the South through Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, crossed into Texas, and battled a Northern winter through the Midwest and O

On February 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt suffered an unimaginable tragedy, losing both his wife and mother on the same day, in the same house. Theodore Roosevelt 1884 Just two days earlier, his wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, had given birth to their daughter. Theodore, who was at that time a young state assemblyman serving in Albany, was urgently called home to New York City because his mother, Mittie, had fallen gravely ill with typhoid fever. By the time he arrived, ho

In 2000, I boarded a plane for the first time, heading to Los Angeles to meet my friend Amanda and begin our trek following Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature tour. I was a California novice, so she convinced me that Disneyland was a mandatory stop. We eventually made it to the front of the line for the Mad Tea Party, and as we were ushered into our teacup, the next four people in line piled in with us. I sat down, reached for the center dial to spin, and looked up straight into

It is often said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Though that phrase has often been misattributed to Oscar Wilde, it was actually included in a collection of aphorisms by charles Caleb Colton, printed in 1820, 34 years before Wilde's birth. Sometimes, attribution, like imitation, can be tricky. In the world of history, writing, and research, it has a different name: plagiarism. Recently, a post by @Dr_TheHistories / @archaeohistories (Dr. Mohammad Firoz Khan

Continuing our look through the archives of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  (which recently announced it would be shuttering its doors), I came across this curious piece of culinary history from the February 3, 1958, edition. While yesterday we shared the Gazette’s coverage of Texas Jack’s final resting place in Leadville, today we see how his name lived on in the mid-century American kitchen. This recipe for "Texas Jack" —a hearty mix of bacon, kidney beans, and frankfurters se

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper, which has been in print for nearly 240 years since it was founded as the Pittsburgh Gazette in July of 1786, just announced it will cease operations in May. The Post-Gazette was one of the many papers I referenced when I was researching my Texas Jack book, so I thought I would share a few stories from its pages. This one, from the July 25, 1887, edition shares an illustration of the second marker to adorn Texas Jack's grave in Leadville

On the evening of September 18, 1854, a large group gathered at Major M.P. Rively’s store on Salt Creek, near Leavenworth, Kansas. Four months earlier, Congress had passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and created two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska. The Act also stated that going forward the citizens of each territory, rather than Congress, could determine for themselves if slavery would be allowed. The citizens of Kansas Territory want

Carlos Montezuma as Azteka on tour with Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill in 1872. Carlos Montezuma was born Wassaja, a Yavapai, in 1866. When he was five, Akimel O'odham raiders captured him and sold him into slavery. An Italian photographer named Carlo Gentile soon bought him for thirty dollars—about seven hundred in today's money. But instead of treating him as property, Gentile adopted the boy, renamed him Carlos Montezuma, and gave him an education as they traveled the frontie

Transcript of an article from the San Antonio Express-News, published on February 22, 1925. A lonely American cowboy adrift in South America happened to run plump into a typical Wild West show. Through this meeting—a sort of reunion with home folks—he was launched on a career which ended finally in his becoming one of the greatest—perhaps the greatest—wit and comedians of his day. Few people know that Will Rogers helped the British to win the Boer war, and that, if it hadn't

Episode 4 in a 6 part Legends of the Old West series which I wrote on Buffalo Soldiers. The Trans-Pecos desert of West Texas in 1880 was a blistering furnace, a land of jagged ridges and dry basins where survival was measured in drops of water. For over a year, the legendary Apache chief Victorio had turned this punishing landscape into a weapon, striking with lightning speed before vanishing back into the mountains. He was a master strategist who knew every hidden wash and

Sitting Bull was killed 135 years ago today, on December 15, 1890. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West presented itself, in both Europe and America, as an authentic historical exhibition—what its programs called the “Drama of Civilization” as it unfolded in the frontier West. Central to that story, and to the Wild West itself, were the show’s Lakota performers. This was Bill Cody’s show, and he was its star, but the Indians were its most essential element. Audiences watched the Lakota e

On October 30, 1912, the Jacksonville Journal  ran a small human-interest piece tied to a large piece of news: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West had broken up for the season. As it often did, the great traveling show was dispersing for the winter, its performers and employees scattering across the country by rail and steamship. For Frank M. Ironmonger, Florida passenger agent for the Clyde Line, the news stirred memories that reached back nearly half a century—past the Wild West, past

In 1879, the simmering tensions between the Ute people and the U.S. government finally boiled over in northwestern Colorado. At the center of the conflict was Nathan Meeker, an idealistic Indian Agent who believed he could force the Utes to abandon their nomadic culture for farming and fences. When Meeker’s rigid demands met Ute resistance, the situation escalated into a crisis that drew Major Thomas Thornburgh and a column of 200 soldiers into the territory. But instead of q

Episode 2 of the Buffalo Soldiers series which I wrote for Legends of the Old West follows the 9th Cavalry into the unforgiving terrain of southern New Mexico, where small patrols of Black troopers were tasked with tracking fast-moving Apache bands through canyons, arroyos, and the jagged Florida Mountains. The episode sets the stage by showing how these soldiers operated in hostile country—often outnumbered, always overworked, and constantly navigating landscapes where the e

The newest Legends of the Old West  series has launched, and it begins with a powerful opener written by podcast host Chris Wimmer . Episode 1, “Battle of Fort Lancaster,”  sets the stage for a six-part exploration of the Buffalo Soldiers and the pivotal moments that shaped their history on the American frontier. I wrote episodes 2-5 of this series. The Buffalo Soldiers’ story begins in fire and chaos at a lonely outpost on the Texas frontier. In Episode 1: “Battle of Fort L

One of the most interesting things about working with history is how much of it we’ll never actually see.  We have studio portraits of Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill, a handful of stage shots with Morlacchi, and the occasional lucky outdoor photograph. But the larger world they moved through—their rides, their performances, their campfire hours—lives mostly in written accounts. That’s where the new Nano Banana Pro, running through Google’s Gemini, turns into a surprisingly helpf

A Newly Discovered Photograph of Texas Jack Junior and the Mexican Joe Show Company Every so often, I open my email and find that history surprises me with something truly remarkable. Last week, I got an email from Don Arth, who shared this image with me and graciously allowed me to share it with you. This newly uncovered photograph, shared here publicly for the first time, captures Texas Jack Junior and fellow performers from the Mexican Joe Show Company, taken around 1886,

Back in August of 2017, I made the trip to Cody, Wyoming, for the Buffalo Bill Centennial Symposium at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. I had just finished the first draft of my book on Texas Jack Omohundro and was trying to find a publisher. That evening’s keynote speaker was historian and author Paul Andrew Hutton , whose book The Apache Wars  I had brought with me, hoping to have him sign it. After his talk, I had the chance to meet him and tell him about the project I

Before Texas Jack was a cowboy legend, he was John Baker Omohundro. And before he was synonymous with the Lone Star State, he was a boy from Virginia — born July 26, 1846, in Palmyra, 50 miles as the crow flies northwest of Richmond. He earned the name “Texas Jack” years later, after driving longhorn cattle across the plains and scouting alongside Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. But no matter how far he roamed, from the open range of Texas to the vast prairies of Neb