The Everything Theodore Roosevelt Book (13 page)

In November 1902, TR went on a bear hunt to Mississippi, but game was difficult to find. Eventually, the hunting dogs cornered a small black bear. Party members asked TR to kill the bear, but he felt it was unsporting and refused. Based on this story, artist Clifford K. Berryman of the
Washington Post
created an amusing cartoon called “Drawing the line in Mississippi.” The cartoon delighted readers and prompted several toy makers to manufacture stuffed toy bears named for the president.

Breaking the Rule

TR’s refusal to talk about Alice deprived the world of a great deal of knowledge about the happy life they lived together. (Her name is not even mentioned in his autobiography.) But there was a major obstacle to forgetting Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt altogether: his newborn daughter, Alice.

TR broke his self-enforced rule not to speak of Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt after her death. He wrote of her in a private moment:

She was beautiful in face and form, and lovelier still in spirit; As a flower she grew, and as a fair young flower she died. Her life had been always in the sunshine; there had never come to her a single sorrow; and none ever knew her who did not love and revere her for the bright, sunny temper and her saintly unselfishness. Fair, pure, and joyous as a maiden; loving, tender, and happy. As a young wife; when she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be just begun, and when the years seemed so bright before her—then, by a strange and terrible fate, death came to her. And when my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever
.

Enter Bamie

Young Alice was a constant reminder to TR of his first wife. He needed someone to take care of her. He turned to his family once again, as he so often did in times of trouble. His sister Anna stepped in—and TR stepped out.

The social conventions of the time suggested that a widower was not the proper person to raise a young daughter. Even though TR was not above breaking convention on occasion, he chose not to in this regard. Enter Bamie.

Bamie was twenty-nine years old at the time. She may not have known much about child rearing, but she did know that her younger brother needed help, which she provided to his everlasting gratitude.

Bamie had to walk a tightrope with regards to Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt’s death and TR’s refusal to speak publicly of her or let anyone mention her name in his presence. Young Alice did ask him occasionally about her mother, but he always referred her to Bamie. As a result, Alice learned about her mother from her aunt, who became her confidante.

Leaving New York

While Bamie took over the task of raising young Alice, TR sought a way to forget his beloved wife. His way of coping was to erase her memory completely, an impossibility. Her memory would follow him wherever he went. Nevertheless, he tried to escape it.

Not long after the funerals of Alice and his mother, TR left New York to try to forget Alice. The light may have gone out of his life, but it would come back on eventually. It began to gleam again in the Dakota Badlands.

QUIZ

5-1 The “teddy bear” is named after TR
.

A. True

B. False

5-2 A city in North Dakota is named after one of TR’s close friends from college. Which is it?

A. Saltonstall

B. Welling

C. Minot

D. Moorehead

5-3 Valentine’s Day was bittersweet for TR between 1880 and 1884. Why?

A. He could not find the appropriate card to express his love to Alice Hathaway Lee.

B. It was the day he announced his engagement to Alice and the day she and his mother died.

C. He did not like romantic holidays.

D. It was too close to Groundhog Day for his taste.

5-4 Typhoid fever in New York State is:

A. quite common

B. completely eradicated

C. limited to children

D. rare

5-5 It is still possible to leave messages of sympathy on Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt’s memorial
.

A. True

B. False

ANSWERS

5-1. True

5-2. C

5-3. B: He announced his engagement to Alice on Valentine’s Day, 1880. She and his mother both died on Valentine’s Day, 1884.

5-4. D: Only thirty to fifty cases of typhoid fever occur in New York each year. Most of them are acquired during foreign travel to underdeveloped countries.

5-5. True: There is a website where people can–and do–leave such messages.

CHAPTER 6

There Is a New Sheriff in Town

“It was still the Wild West in those days, the Far West of Owen Wister’s stories, and Frederic Remington’s drawings, the soldier and the cowpuncher. The land of the West has gone now, ‘gone, gone with the lost Atlantis,’ gone to the isle of ghosts and strange dead memories … In that land we led a hardy life. Ours was the glory of work and the joy of living.”

TR visited the Dakota Territory in 1883, which whetted his appetite for the area. In 1884, after his wife died, he moved there for two years to forget her. TR bought two ranches and immersed himself in the Western lifestyle. He learned a great deal about people’s ability to adapt to new circumstances and mended himself mentally, physically, and spiritually. After a disastrous winter ruined his business venture, TR returned to New York with a much healthier attitude about the western United States—and a renewed zeal for life.

TR’s First Trip to the Badlands

TR’s 1884 trip to erase the memories of his deceased wife was not his first visit to the Dakota Territory. He had been there earlier under happier circumstances, most recently in 1883, when Alice was pregnant and he was looking for some diversion. He got the diversion and unknowingly took a major step in altering his life drastically.

TR arrived in the Dakota Territory for the first time before dawn at the Little Missouri train depot on September 8, 1883. The timing was hardly auspicious. TR had left his beloved wife at home, he did not know anyone in the Badlands—and he did not have a horse. None of those factors bothered him.

TR was a man who was used to adversity and well-equipped to deal with it. As far as he was concerned, adversity in the Badlands was no different than adversity in New York. As events turned out, he was right.

One thing TR had in his favor was a pocket full of cash, which he used to induce Joe Ferris, a twenty-five-year-old hunting guide from New Brunswick, Canada, to help him. The rugged individualists in North Dakota may have distrusted Easterners in general, but they did respect the value of a dollar. Once TR secured Ferris’s assistance, he turned to his next goal: acquiring a horse.

Joe Ferris wasn’t particularly helpful to TR at first. He was skeptical that the bespectacled, rather unfit looking young man could handle the rigors of Western life. TR changed Ferris’s mind almost immediately. In fact, Ferris could hardly keep up with the young Easterner as he looked in vain for the buffalo he had come 1,800 miles to shoot.

He used his considerable powers of persuasion to convince Ferris’s brother Sylvane and his friend Bill Merrifield to lend him a mount. They didn’t trust this stranger who had just stepped off a train from New York in the dead of night. Again, TR resorted to a cash inducement.

TR offered to buy a horse. That convinced Ferris and Merrifield that he had no intentions of riding off into the sunset with their steed. They lent TR a horse, and the hunt was on.

Not a Good Time for Hunting

Conditions were not suitable for buffalo hunting in western North Dakota in September 1883 as the men set off on the hunt. (Buffalo are known technically as bison, a distinction TR’s naturalist side would appreciate.) The weather was rainy and commercial hunters had practically eliminated any buffalo in the territory.

Despite the difficulty TR had in finding live buffalo, he put his time to good use. He and Ferris spent their evenings at the ranch managed for Sir John Pender by Gregor Lang, a recent immigrant from Scotland. While Ferris recovered from the relentless pace of each day’s hunt, TR peppered Lang with questions about ranching, life in the West, and politics. Lang’s answers intrigued TR. He decided to buy a ranch of his own. First he had to find a buffalo to shoot.

Determination had always been one of TR’s strongest characteristics. He had traveled to North Dakota to shoot a buffalo, and he wasn’t going to leave without one. It took almost a week of hunting in steady rain, but he finally succeeded.

When TR, Ferris, and Merrifield closed the Maltese Cross Ranch deal at Gregor Lang’s ranch, TR gave them a check for $14,000 (or $12,000, depending on the source). Merrifield asked TR if he wanted a receipt. “Oh, that’s all right,” TR replied. And these men had been reluctant to lend him a horse only a few days earlier!

TR shot an old bull, which was one of only 1,200 buffalo left in the world. Virtually all the rest were killed by the end of 1884. TR’s kill left him with just one more goal before returning to New York: buying a ranch.

Buying a Ranch

TR, not one to pass up what he considered to be a wise investment, offered to buy the herd Lang managed. Lang demurred and suggested that TR approach Sylvane Ferris and Merrifield, who were running the Maltese Cross Ranch for a Minnesota-based company named Wadsworth and Hawley. The three men agreed to a fairly complicated contract that was signed in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 27, 1883.

According to the terms, Ferris and Merrifield agreed to manage up to 400 cattle on the ranch for seven years at a cost to TR of no more than $12,000. (Some accounts suggest that he paid $14,000 initially.) At the end of the seven years, Ferris and Merrifield would return to TR 400 cattle or their equivalent in value.

If there were any increases in the number of cattle during that period, Ferris and Merrifield would receive half of them. The contract permitted TR to add cattle according to the same terms as the initial 400 animals. The timing was propitious for him, but the venture ended in disaster several years later.

TR returned to New York, where he was re-elected to the state assembly. Dakota Territory became a memory until Alice died.

TR stayed in New York long enough to clear up some administrative details, then returned to the Maltese Cross Ranch, this time to stay for a while. He sank an additional $26,000 into his investment there.

Pursuing the “Strenuous Life” Anew

TR had been living a rather sedentary life between his graduation from Harvard and his trip to the Badlands. Once he bought his ranch there, he pursued the “strenuous life” again.

TR was happy living the hard life of a cowboy. He made it sound at times like a life of ease and downplayed the work that went into surviving the rigors of the West. He said about his time in the Territory that “It was a fine, healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the value of instant decision—in short, the virtues that ought to come from life in the open country. I enjoyed the life to the full.”

Two of TR’s old guides from Maine responded to his request to help him manage the Elkhorn Ranch. William W. Sewall and his nephew Wilmot Dow, neither of whom had any experience working with cattle or ranches, joined him in 1884. Their wives and children arrived shortly thereafter—and practically drove TR out of his own home. Both women gave birth to children there in 1886, which kept the house abuzz with activity at times.