November 10, 2019 • 41 mins
Roosevelt studied wildlife as a child, shot wildlife as a young adult, and saved wildlife as president (and beyond). How did he reconcile his passion for hunting with his deep belief in conservation as our national duty? In this episode, we’ll analyze TR’s multifaceted relationship with nature and emphasize just how much he did to preserve it in the United States.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. It's early on a spring day in eighteen
sixty six and Theodore Roosevelt, age seven, is heading down
Broadway in New York City to pick up strawberries from
the market when he sees something that rocks his world.
It's a dead seal laid out on a slab of wood,
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and as soon as he lays eyes on it, little
t D is never the same. He needs to know
everything about the seal. He asks where it was killed,
and it is told the harbor. He returns to the
market and the seal day after day, lurking, getting a
closer look whenever he can. He wants to measure the
girth of the animal, but he doesn't have a tape measure,
so he must make do with a pocket foot rule,
(00:43):
which he later recalls is a difficult undertaking that yields
utterly useless measurements. Nevertheless, t D scribbles his findings in
a notebook and begins what he calls a wholly unpremeditated
and unscientific natural history of the seal. He dreams of
taking the seal home and preserving it. It fills him,
he says with every possible feeling of romance and adventure.
(01:05):
He is obsessed. It's not hyperbole to say that the
seal changes everything. The day he saw it, tr will
later write is the day he started his career as
a zoologist. And while he doesn't succeed in procuring the
whole seal carcass, TD is able to get his hands
on the skull. It's the first spetment in his Roosevelt
Museum of Natural History, and from that point on he
(01:27):
can't resist bringing home every living or formerly living thing
he can get his hands on. Bugs and lichn fill
his bedroom. Young squirrels he raises by hand, scurry across
the floors. He befriends mice, and tries to tame a woodchuck. Once,
when he's riding a street car, he sees an adult
he knows and absent mindedly lifts his hat and greeting,
(01:48):
letting loose several frogs he'd been hiding underneath tears. Reverence
for the natural world drove many of his policy decisions
in the White House, but he was also an avid
big game hunter who relished hanging at taxidermid kill in
his wall. So how did his desire to save a
species square with his desire to shoot stuff. We're about
to find out from Mental Floss and I Hurt Radio.
(02:09):
This is History Versus, a podcast about how your favorite
historical figures faced off against their greatest foes. I'm your host,
Aeron McCarthy. In this episode is Tier Versus Nature. Theodore Roosevelt,
who went by the nickname Ted as a boy, was
born in Manhattan in eighteen fifty eight. New York City
might not be the first place you'd think to find
a budding naturalist, even in the eighteen sixties. It was
(02:31):
a bustling metropolis with factories, busy streets, and densely packed
tenement buildings. But Ted still found opportunities to foster an
obsession with the outdoors from an early age, starting with
the books he read. He suffered from severe asthma as
a child, and while bed ridden, he passed the time
by devouring books. He was especially drawn to toms that
dealt with nature. Illustrated Natural History and Homes Without Hands
(02:54):
by John George Wood, Missionary Travels and Researches in South
Africa by David Livingstone, which was so big that TV
could barely carry it, and main Read's adventure novels which
had a scientific flare were some of his favorites. Charles
Darwin also had a huge influence on tr In his
book Wilderness Warrior, historian Douglas Brinkley writes that by the
time Theodore was ten or eleven, Darwin was his touchstone.
(03:17):
A Noah like hero. On the Origin of Species came
out the year after Theodore was born, and the book
shaped not just his view of the natural world, but
his view of everything. Brinkley writes that Roosevelt swallowed natural selection,
hook line and sinker for the rest of his life.
In fact, he used evolutionary theory as his guiding light.
It illuminated his views on everything from politics, to geography
(03:39):
to fatherhood. Darwin's accounts of collecting specimens in exotic locations
compelled tr to have adventures of his own, and later
Theodore would carry on the Origin of Species with him.
On those adventures. When he was well enough to go outdoors,
t d found the nature he read about in books
all around him. Bugs were some of his first research subjects.
At age seven or eight, he wrote an essay titled
(03:59):
The four Going Aunt. As his sister Karen later recalled
of the essays creation he was reading about ants and
turning the page of his huge volume. At the head
of the following page, the narrative continued, the foregoing aunt
also has such unusual characteristics. The young naturalist, not realizing
that the word foregoing referred to the ants of whose
habits he had already read, decided that the adjective in
(04:21):
question was applied to a new species, And after ardent
investigation of the habits of this supposedly new species of aunt,
he decided to write an article entitled the Foregoing Aunt.
And having accomplished this feat in a large, painstaking, babyish hand,
he then called the members of the household together to
listen to this essay on this hitherto unknown representative of
the ant family. For a paper he penned at age
(04:44):
nine called natural History on Insects, he expanded his scope
to cover more species, like ladybugs and fireflies. T. D.
Explained his research process, writing, all the insects that I
write about in this book inhabit North America. Now and
then a friend has told me something about them, But
most I have gained their habits from observation. His powers
of observation, or should we say observation were remarkable for
(05:08):
a nine year old. When writing about a bark spider,
he described its nest in detail, noting, it looks exactly
like some cotton on top, but if you take that off,
you will see several small little webs, each having several
little occupants. These observations are maybe even more impressive by
the fact that tedd groups severely nearsighted. The remarkable thing
was he just finished reading a three thirty two page
(05:30):
book on the subject. That's David Hurst Thomas, a curator
of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. That,
to me is the remarkable part. This kid was so
precocious that he was just reading, and he was then
trying to sort of put it into practice. As he
went on, he just used all of his experiences and
(05:51):
started collecting things, and so he learned how to do this,
and he was looking out for specimens, and so he
created his own museum. When he wasn't taking it's in
the field, tr brought his work home with him. The
Roosevelt Museum of Natural History that started with his beloved
seal skull, soon grew too big for his bedroom. It
contained several hundred specimens According to historian Edmund Morris, when
(06:12):
Ted asked the cook to boil a woodchuck for twenty
four hours, which makes the meat fall off the bone
and his one way scientific specimens are prepared, it cost
a great stink in both senses of the phrase, so
she laid out an ultimatum, either I leave or the
woodchuck does. The housekeeper reportedly complained as well, saying how
can I do the laundry with a snapping turtle tied
to the legs of the sink. His parents may have
(06:35):
been the only adults in the house who didn't mind
his hobby. In fact, they supported it. Theodore later wrote,
my father and mother encouraged me warmly in this, as
they always did in anything that could give me wholesome
pleasure or helped to develop me. His father, Theodore Roosevelt Senor,
even went so far as to set him up with
his own taxidermy tutor when Tira was fourteen. John Graham
(06:58):
Bell was a colleague of John James Audubon, and in
his musty Manhattan shop, he taught Theodore how to stuff
and mount exotic birds and how to clean skeletons with
domestic beetles, which eat muscle and flesh to leave behind bone,
a method still used by museums today. It was an
unconventional education for a teenager, to say the least, per Mars.
Tr very likely had no peer as a teenager ornithologist.
(07:20):
It helped that his dad shared his passion for nature.
A businessman in philanthropist Theodore Senior, helped found the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City in eighteen
sixty nine. Tire also owed part of his naturalist streak
to his uncle Rob, who lived next door to t
d and his family on East Twentie Street. Robert Barnwell
Roosevelt was a well known conservationist who rallied to save
New York's fish, founded clubs devoted to wildlife, and wrote
(07:43):
an important work on ornithology. He also kept a pony
in the house and let his German shepherd eat at
the table. He taught his nephew the value of the
field of science known as ecology today. According to Brinkley,
rbr turned his nephew into a conservationist as a teenager,
and notes that Tier was a high it half his
father the other half uncle Rob. In seventy two, Tr
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received two things that changed his relationship with nature in
very different ways eyeglasses and a gun. When shooting his
gun with friends, he realized they were able to see
targets that weren't visible to him at all. He knew
something was wrong when the other boys read a billboard
ad that he didn't even notice had letters. Theodore told
his dad about the problem, and it became clear that
(08:25):
he needed glasses. Through his first pair of spectacles, he
reacquainted himself with the world. The blurry green shapes above
him sharpened into clusters of thousands of distinct leaves. The
static ground was now animated with scuttling insects and blades
of grass ruffling in the wind. But the biggest revelation
came when he saw birds. He had a hypersensitive sense
(08:47):
of hearing, which, according to Morris, is surely the legacy
of the myopic years that came before. Long Enthralled by
their songs, he was now able to see a cardinal
sitting on a branch, or a goldfinch flying through the
air in detail for the first time. Those glasses just
opens a whole new world to him, But the birds
really took the show. The colors in the details and
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the idea that there were so many he hadn't seen
before must have just been a real turnaround. His glasses
also allowed him to use his gun properly. When he
vacationed in Egypt with his family later that year, he
shot one gray heron, two partridges, two squirrels, three quail,
eight hoopoos, eight cowhron, eighteen large plover, thirty six little shorebirds,
(09:32):
and eighty one pigeons in two months. He recorded his
hall in his zoological record, but his motives weren't strictly scientific.
He also liked shooting things. Biographers have different theories on
where this desire came from. Kathleen Dalton wrote that tr
turned to nature as an outlet for his most aggressive impulses,
and liked wilderness stories best when man's aggression and wildlife's
(09:53):
destruction went unchecked. According to Brinkley, Roosevelt shot, stuffed, and
studied animals as a way to honor them, writing most
other men would simply shoot birds. Roosevelt, by contrast, shot
and collected them for scientific scrutiny. Only by learning everything
about a species could you eventually save it from the
maw of industrial man. But eventually Roosevelt himself acknowledged that
with birds anyway, he'd been too quick with a gun.
(10:15):
In one he wrote to a friend, when I was young,
I fell into the usual fashion of those days and
collected specimens industriously, thereby committing an entirely needless butchery of
our ordinary birds. I am happy to say that there
has been a great change for the better since then
in our ways of looking at these things. Regardless of
(10:37):
his motives at the time, hunting became part of Roosevelt's
new persona. Theodore had transformed from the clumsy, near sighted
boy of his youth into a budding outdoorsman. The robust
guy that tr the one we all know and love,
was a creation of himself. He literally built himself into
that person who became president, and that really colored the
(10:58):
way he viewed the world. If I can do this,
anybody can take themselves and be whatever you want. You
just need to work hard enough and have enough passion.
But tr held onto some of his boyhood habits, including
collecting animals. He enrolled in Harvard when he was nearly
eighteen to study natural history, and he kept his specimens,
both the living and the dead ones in his room
(11:20):
at the boarding house, preserved animal remains for malde Hyde,
bottles and arsenic jars were strewn around his workspace. A
tortoise of his even escaped its cage one day and
wandered into the hallway. He wasn't able to catch it
before it surprised the landlady, who, according to Mars, was
frightened into hysterics. She didn't kick him out, though tr
lived there for the rest of his time at Harvard.
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A career in science seemed like the perfect fit for Theodore.
He may have even dreamt of being a curator at
the museum his father helped found. In eighteen seventy seven,
Tier came back from Harvard to attend the grand opening
of the American Museum of Natural History's new building, and
he donated some of his personal items to the collection,
including twelve mice, four birds, eggs, and a red squirrel skull.
But ultimately a career in science wasn't meant to be.
(12:04):
After a few years at Harvard, Roosevelt learned the work
wasn't quite what he had envisioned. He had spent most
of his life studying nature up close and being cooped
up indoors in a lab left him dissatisfied, class board him,
and he interrupted his teacher, Nathaniel Schaller, so often the
professor once had to say, now look here, Roosevelt, let
me talk. I'm running this course on Harvard. Theater wrote
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in his autobiography, there was a total failure to understand
the great variety of kinds of work that could be
done by naturalists, including what could be done by outdoor naturalists,
in the entirely proper desire to be thorough and to
avoid slipshod methods. The tendency was to treat as not serious,
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as unscientific, any kind of work that was not carried
on with laborious minuteness in the laboratory. My taste was
specialized in a totally different direction, and I had no
more ire or ability to be a microscopist and section
cutter than to be a mathematician. Alternate career paths were
starting to look more appealing. He finally had to make
(13:10):
a decision, am I going to be a natural historian
or am I going to be a politician? And that
was a tough decision for him to make at Harvard,
and it didn't happen until his senior year when he
finally decided that the kind of biology and natural history
that he was learning Lui Agassi and the tradition at
Harvard that was a lab based tradition, and he was
(13:32):
a field based kid, and his dad warned him about that.
He was ultimately inspired to get into politics by the
death of his father in eighteen seventy eight. The greatest
way to honor his father, Theodore felt, was to dedicate
his life to public service. He switched majors to history
and government, but he didn't abandon his interest in the outdoors.
Nature sustained him throughout his life. When his first wife,
(13:54):
Alice and his mother Mitty, died within hours of one another,
he retreated to the Dakota bad Lands to find solace.
When his political career in New York got to hectic,
he took breaks to live out his cowboy fantasies on
a ranch out west, but after entering the White House,
Theodore Roosevelt realized that nature could no longer be just
an escape for him. Instead, it became part of his
life's work. We'll be right back after this quick break.
(14:23):
Since the early days of his presidency, the American people
have associated Theodore Roosevelt with the outdoors. Just months after
President William McKinley was assassinated and he was sworn into
the White House, Roosevelt went on a hunting trip that
would saddle him with a nickname he could never shake.
It was two and tr was looking for a way
to smooth relations with the South. He had recently invited
(14:44):
African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House,
angering segregationist voters. The invitation alone wasn't what caused to
stir Washington and Roosevelt often shared late night conversations about
politics whenever the activists came to town, but on this occasion,
Tira was double booked. He had planned to spend the
night with his children to celebrate his two youngest sons
(15:04):
finally moving into the White House, but he also had
an after hours meeting with Washington. He found a way
around the scheduling conflict by inviting Washington to join his
family for dinner. It was the first time in history
a black guest had been invited to dine at the
White House, according to Debora Davis and her book Guest
of Honor. When book Or T talked about the dinner
in years to come. It was the fact that tears
family was alongside him at the table, not his new
(15:26):
role as political advisor, that seemed to mean the most
to him, But not everyone applauded t R for the
progressive move tr got hammered for that. He accepted an
invitation to go hunt bears in the South, knowing that
there was some political liabilities, and also hoping that not
only could have some fun, but there were some political
(15:50):
things to be said there as well. The invitation came
from Mississippi Governor Andrew Longino whole Collier, a formally enslaved
Confederate cavalry that would be their hunting guide. He was
familiar with the land and according to legend, had killed
more than three thousand bears. With the plan in place,
TR headed south. He puts on his friends jacket and
(16:11):
heads down to the South to go on this sort
of ceremonial bear hunt. And even at the time he says,
you know, once you start adding more than two people
to a bear hunt, that's too many people. But he
went on this thing and it ended up being staged
and went badly, and a couple of his dogs were killed.
So he's got his Winchester ninety four is thirty. He's
(16:34):
supposed to kill this bear that they got tied up
to a tree, who's already wounded and killed the dogs,
and he just says he's not going to do it.
It's just not his idea of being a hunter, and
so he refused. He called it almost unsatisfactory, experienced, he
was embarrassed by it, and comes back Anna cars their cartoons.
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Poor a little bear tied to a tree and tr
holding his winchester, not shooting it. That's where the Teddy
bear deal comes from. After the incident, the nickname Teddy
caught on, much to the president's chagrin. As a strict
rule follower who appreciated formality, he felt the name was
too personal to be used by the public. It's also
what his late wife, Alice called him, and it was
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likely a painful reminder of her. The public ate up
the image of gruff manly Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot
a bear, though he did order it put out of
its misery and a member of the party dispatched it
with a knife. In Morris's words, but his environmentalist principles
were less popular when he tried putting them into law
at the start of the twentieth century, natural resources were
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seen as something to be tamed and exploited, not to
be conserved for future generations. Still, there were some policies
in place to protect the environment at this time. The
Rivers and Harbor's Appropriation Act of made it illegal to
dump waste into bodies of water without a permit, and
the Forest Reserve Act allowed US presidents to preserve forests
on public land. By the time tr took off as presidents, Harrison, Cleveland,
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and McKinley had set aside roughly fifty million acres of
public forest under the law. Benjamin Harrison also used his
power to protect wildlife, and even entered an international dispute
in an effort to save the First Seal. But these
laws weren't enough to match the rapid development taking place
at the turn of the century. With hunting, mining, and
deforestation left unchecked, the resources Americans took for granted were
(18:22):
on track to disappear for good. Thanks to his uncle,
Roosevelt had long known that America's wilderness was precious and vulnerable.
He had taken his own steps to preserve wilderness, co
founding the Boone and Crocket Club After proposing the idea
at a dinner in his New York City home. In
seven the B and C Club advocated for ethical hunting
practices and established wildlife preserves for big game like bison, elk,
(18:45):
and antelope. As president, tierre knew he had more power
than ever to protect the wild lands he cherished, but
with no precedent for the kind of comprehensive conservation laws
he had in mind, he wasn't sure how to move forward,
so he turned to a friend from the Museum of
Natural History for guidance. What he had done is poland
Frank Chapman, again from the American Museum of Natural History.
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So he sits down with his lawyers and with Chapman,
what's the most important thing I can do today to
make a difference. The American Ornithologist Union had made several
attempts to purchase a small island off the coast of
Florida from the government. The island was called Pelican Island
because it was the last rookery of brown pelicans on
the east coast of the state. The ao US goal
(19:30):
was to turn it into a bird preserve, but in
order to buy the land, they needed to survey it,
which would open the land up to homesteaders planning to
use it for agriculture. The AO used status as a
conservationist group would automatically send them to the bottom of
the application pile. But when they asked her to use
his executive power to make Pelican Island a nature preserve,
he actually listened, tr looks around and talks to his
(19:53):
lawyers in lands, and he said, do I have the
power to actually do that? And the legal advice is
that's a big step for a president, but you don't
explicitly not have the power to do it. So if
you want to make that move to go one step further,
all you have to do is say I so will it.
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And by saying I so will it, you can turn
that into law. The President was on board by pushing
the executive order through the U. S d A. It's
snuck by Congress without causing a fuss. In three Pelican
Island was established as the first ever national wildlife refuge
in the United States. Also sort of redefined a modern presidency.
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If I'm not explicitly, by law not able to do it,
that means I will do it. I so will it.
Then I think that was the cornerstone moment and his
presidency and his career. On a camping trip he took
that same year, Tier realized there was even more he
could be doing to save the environment. The president spent
three days in California's Yosemite with naturalist John Muir. They
(21:00):
height in the shadow of the Granite Sentinel Dome and
camped under the towering sequoia trees of Mariposa Grove. Tr
with forty wold blankets to keep him warm, but it
wasn't a pleasure trip from your He was determined to
convince his friend to use his power to protect the
incredible place. Mir made his case around the campfire and succeeded.
Tr left California humbled by the natural beauty he saw,
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and he vowed to preserve it. When writing about Yosemite
a few years later, he said, there can be nothing
in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite. The groves
of the giant sequoias. Our people should see to it
that they are preserved for their children and their children's children,
with a majestic beauty, all unmowed. When theater returned home
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from the camping trip, he was inspired to pass new
laws preserving America's wilderness, often using the iso will it
approach that worked for him With Pelican Island Congresston shared
TR's environmentalist goals, though so he went over their heads
on many occasions, using executive orders to craft the conservation
policy he wanted for the nation. He has a Speaker
of the House, Joseph Cannon, during his presidency that famously
(22:07):
says that he will not appropriate one sent for scenery.
That's Tyler caliberta education technician. At Roosevelt's Long Island home,
Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, where on one floor there
hangs a painting of Roosevelt and Cannon arguing, and that
was the attitudes of a lot of people that these
were natural resources to be used. This is how people
make their livelihood, and why should we bar them from
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using them, or as Roosevelt had a conservationist idea, where
they're the people's resources and we can manage how many
of them are used. Some of TR's most influential management
came from the Antiquities Act of six With the Act,
Theodore Roosevelt had the power to establish national monuments on
federal land. If he felt there was an area in danger,
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he could grant it permanent protection without having to get
permission from Congress. First, here's Real Shaffroth, president and CEO
of the National Park Foundation, whose great grandfather was involved
with the creation of the Antiquities Act. I mean it
was a very different time in our country. You know,
the population that it was dramatically less, and the West
was relatively undiscovered, that the Homestead Act was still in place,
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and you know, as people realize, wow, these places about
some value. Let's use them for economic benefit. The Antiquities Act,
which was formerly passed in the nineteen o six, was
a law that was created to provide the President of
the United States with the flexibility the authority to establish
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national monuments. Sometimes a president will need to have essentially
kind of an emergency authority to set aside lands because
Congress is not acting or is taking too long to act,
so that the particular resources of concern can be protected
in a short period of time and for the long term.
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The goal of the Antiquities Act wasn't to shut people
away from the nation's natural wonders. With these protections put
in place, tier ensured national monuments would be preserved for
more citizens to enjoy, whether by studying them, in a
scientific capacity, reflecting on their history, or just appreciating their beauty.
The first site designated a National Monument was Devil's Tower
in northeastern Wyoming. Anyone who's seen close encounters of the
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third kind knows this rock formation. The eight hundred and
sixty seven foot tall butte juts out from the horizon
with cliffs lined with hundreds of parallel cracks, leading to
a flattish summit. The Antiquities Act was also used to
preserve places of cultural significance. Immediately following Devil's Tower, El
Moro and Ancient Pueblo in New Mexico, and Montezuma Castle,
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a pre Columbian structure built into an Arizona cliff face,
were added to the Register of National Monuments. The Antiquities
Act was really put to the test on January eleven.
That's when President Roosevelt upgraded the Grand Canyon from a
game preserve to a National monument. Well that happened. It
was like, okay, this was the full scope of the
(24:54):
Grand Canyon of something like eight hundred thousand Anakers, i
think at the time, and that was a big deal
for the government to do that, and it established a
precedent for other presidents do something that bold in their
own way. The Grand Canyon, already a major tourist attraction,
may have started to resemble a theme park without federal protection,
or maybe it would have fallen victim to copper and
(25:14):
zinc mining interests. Instead, Theodore Roosevelt paved the way for
the Grand Canyon to become a full fledged national park
in three years after the National Park Service was established.
The National Park Service, alongside other government agencies, would be
tasked with protecting these lands. Before the environment was a
top issue with voters and before climate change was a
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regular part of the news cycle, Theodore Roosevelt saw the
importance of conserving the country's resources not just for his constituents,
but for future generations of Americans. T R. Gave a
speech titled Conservation as a National Duty. In it, he
said that we have become great in a material since
because of the lavish use of our resources, and we
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have just reason to be proud of our growth. But
the time has come to inquire seriously, what will happen
when our forests are gone, When the coal, the iron,
the oil, and the gas are exhausted, When the soils
shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams,
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polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation. These
questions do not relate only to the next century or
to the next generation. One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized
men is foresight. We have to as a nation exercise
foresight for this nation in the future, and if we
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do not exercise that foresight, dark will be the future.
Tier did as much as he could to protect the environment,
perhaps more than any other president before or since. By
the end of his presidency, he had established on fifty
national forests, on federal bird reserves, for national game preserves,
five national parks, and eighteen national monuments, a total of
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two and thirty million acres of public land. Oh they're
protected status to him. As Brinkley puts it, that's almost
half the size of the Atlantic Coast states from Maine
to Florida, or almost half the landmask Thomas Jefferson had
acquired from France in the Louisiana purchase of eighteen oh three.
This feels like a good place to take a quick break.
We'll be right back. It's hard to find a surface
(27:35):
of theatre. Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill estate that isn't adorned with
something that used to be alive. The walls display trophies
of big horn, sheep and moose, while the tanned skins
of big cats are draped over chairs and placed on floors,
their faces frozen in permanent snarls. In the north room
the saber and hat from Tierras days is a rough
rider hanging the antlers of an elk, one of two
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in the room, which are situated across from two bison heads.
There's a dinner chime made of elephant tusks in the foyer,
beneath the head of a water buffalo. In his upstairs library,
there's a bizarre looking chair made with the horns of
longhorn cattle and a hippo foot that was transformed into
an Inkwell, though not all the animals there were bagged
by tire, the former president's home is a testament to
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his love of big game hunting. A lot of the
hunting trophies that you see, they are the rugs on
the floor, they're most of them in the house of
vast majority of them are hunted by him, So he
is an avid big game hunter. That's Tyler caliberta. He's
trying to display animals from all over the country, and
I would say it was his goal to try to
get as many as he could of a certain animal,
(28:39):
So it was important for him to be able to
hunt every animal. Many of the trophies at Sagamore Hill
came from a hunting trip Tier took after leaving office.
Like many ex presidents, he celebrated the end of his
tenure with a much needed vacation. But instead of relaxing
on some beach, he set off on a safari in
the East African wilderness. Tierra. Embarked from New York on
March and arrived in Mombassa on April one. He was
(29:04):
accompanied by a team of explorers and his son Kermit.
This wasn't a typical post presidency vacation. The expedition was
sponsored by the Smithsonian and it was organized for the
purpose of collecting specimens for the National Museum of Natural History.
The former president took this job seriously. He entered Africa
with rifles, a shotgun, a barrel of salt for preserving hides,
(29:24):
a trunk of pigskin, pound books, and a gold mounted
rabbit's foot for good luck. The party returned home with
more specimens than the museum could have hoped for. Between them,
Kermit and Theodore shot and killed five dred and twelve animals.
That's not including the hundreds of creatures the other party
members collected, or the many birds the Roosevelts didn't telly.
Most specimens were donated to the National Museum of Natural
(29:45):
History and the American Museum of Natural History, though the
pair did keep a few trophies for themselves. It took
the Smithsonian eight years to catalog every item it received.
Some of the smallest specimens the party pocket had ended
up in the u S Tick Collection, a mass of
catalog of ticks from around the world that scientists used
to study tickboard illnesses. Some criticized here for the excessive
(30:06):
amount of slaughter that took place in the trip, but
even after shooting hundreds of animals in the span of
eleven months, he insisted it was done in the name
of science. He told the press, I can be condemned
only if the existence of the National Museum, the American
Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are
to be condemned. Any self described environmentalist president killing one
(30:29):
lion let alone nine as tr did would be a
massive scandal today, But a conservationist hunter wasn't an oxymoron
in the early twentieth century. If you wanted access to
an animal in Roosevelt's day, you had to have it,
and a lot of times I meant killing it. If
you wanted to study a burb you wouldn't want to
put it in a trap and put in cage, because
(30:50):
you want to take a part and we learn something
about it, so you shoot it. He and other conservationists
at the time, and other people are interested in natural history.
They are all their subjects. That includes ornithologist John James Audubon,
another outdoorsman naturalist that Roosevelt was obsessed with when he
set off to create a life size guide to All
the Aviens in America, which would become The Birds of America,
(31:12):
a book so large that it required its own furniture
just to look at it. He didn't capture the level
of detail and it's vibrant and lifelike painting solely by
studying live birds through a pair of binoculars. His work
required him to hunt. He shot his specimens, articulated them
with wires, and then painted them. Here's David Hurst Thomas.
Somebody liked Audubon. He carried a paintbrush, but he also
(31:36):
carried a gun. He collected everything that he could, in
part so that could paint them and understand them. And
one of his tax deervisism. When who taught tr how
to do that? There wasn't any distinction. As tr was growing,
Uper set off on another expedition, this time to the
Amazon Rainforest. Originally meant to be a lectra tour of
(31:57):
South America, he turned the trip into a scientific mission
by collecting specimens for the American Museum of Natural History.
At age fifty five, he knew that his adventuring days
were limited. He called the journey his last chance to
be a boy. On the expedition, Tier and his team
famously charted the Amazon's River of Doubt, a feat that
almost killed the former president. The trip is also notable
(32:18):
for helping to shape the public's perception of piranhas. Tear
came back with stories of children being devoured alive, a
man losing a total a piranha, and one story that
seems straight out of a B movie, a seemingly stunned
parana nearly biting a man's tongue off, so to be
fair to the piranha, that the guy did put it
in his mouth. These scenes have been recreated in pop
culture countless times thanks to Theodore's account of it. His
(32:41):
description of the fish itself also helps them in its
terrifying reputation in the public imagination. He wrote, the head,
with its short muzzle, staring malignant eyes and gaping cruelly
armed jaws, is the embodiment of evil ferocity, and the
actions of the fish exactly match it's look. Whether he
was watching a flock of birds or spreading tales about
(33:03):
the piranha. Theodore Roosevelt loved nature. As Caliberta explains, he
expressed his respect for wildlife by hunting. It something that's
difficult for people to wrap their heads around today. Hunting
isn't just shooting an animal. Hunting is spending time out
in the wilderness, sometimes for a week or many days,
or even longer than that. Hunting is cooking out in
(33:24):
the open. Hunting is testing yourself, testing your abilities, and
these things all attract Roosevelt to hunting. Harvesting animals from
museum collections doesn't happen in such large numbers today. It's
strictly regulated and there are ethical guidelines, but when it
does happen, there's often public outrage. One scientist who collected
or rarely seeing bird received death threats afterwards. I know
(33:45):
what I'm about to say is not going to be popular,
but hear me out. Scientific collections are essential. Specimens collected
in the past help scientists solve scientific mysteries and make
new discoveries that can actually help save wildlife in the
late ninety in sixties. In early nineteen seventies, when peregrine
falcon populations were mysteriously declining, scientists compared contemporary falcon eggs
(34:06):
two decades old specimens at several museums and private collections
around the country. They noticed the fresh egg shells were
much thinner than the old ones and determined that the
pesticide d d T was to blame. Another example, by
comparing the old feathers of seabirds to new feathers, scientists
could show that the amount of mercury in the world's
oceans was rising. Who's to say what future scientists might
(34:28):
learn from specimens being collected today. Hunting can even be
used as a conservation strategy in Midwestern States hunter's bid
in auctions or enter lotteries to obtain the tags needed
to hunt big horn sheep, with the proceeds going to conservation.
These hunting tag programs, along with reintroduction efforts, have helped
the once endangered big horn sheep make a dramatic comeback.
(34:48):
Here's David Hurst Thomas Well, I've taken museum cruise out
for years and years and years working at twelve thousand
feet in areas where Native Americans were hunting big horn sheep.
We can see all the archaeological evidence for that they're
not there anymore, except the last time we went back there.
There are big hornback. And the reason they're back is
(35:11):
because of the hunters what they've done. He has gotten
together and see themselves as a prime movement of conservation.
By raising money and reintroducing antelopen elk and big horn
in former environments and having some kind of limiting hunting
season on them, they're actually making a pretty positive difference.
(35:32):
And I see that as a legacy where tr was
coming from it. Theodore Roosevelt's legacy may have looked much
different if it wasn't for his time spent in the
bad lands in two year old headed west in search
of bison to hunt and display. There was nothing like
the bad Lands Painted canyon back east, The hilly vista
would have rolled on for miles before him, the colors
(35:55):
of the rock formations varying in intensity depending on how
sunny it was outside or if it had rained that day.
The Lakota people dub the terrain Maco Ska or land
bad because it was barren and unforgiving, but to tr
it was paradise. Bad luck followed him the whole trip.
He and his hunting guy discovered that the great herds
of bison that had once roamed the region were now
(36:15):
hard to find. He was also plagued by bad weather,
but nothing could dampen his mood. They woke up one
morning and it had been raining, and he was lying
in a puddle. And he woke up and said, by Godfrey,
this is fun, when most other people would say, lest
(36:36):
just go home. It's hot, it's wet and nasty out here.
That's Eileen Andy's chief of interpretation in public affairs at
Theatore Roosevelt National Park. Even after he bagged his bison,
Tier wasn't quite ready to leave the bad Lands behind completely.
He had fallen in love with cowboy life and decided
to invest in a cattle ranch in North Dakota called
the Maltese Cross. Later he'd buy another, which he dubbed
(36:58):
the Elkhorn. There was nothing glamorous about being a rancher
in that part of the country. Fuel, food, and water
were all hard to come by. In the summer, temperatures
exceeded a hundred degrees, and in the winter the snow
piled up so high that cattle were found in trees.
Though challenging, the hardships he faced out west were refreshing
change from what tr experienced in New York. I think
(37:20):
he had some freedom out here that he didn't have
when he was back east, and when he came out here,
he didn't have the same kinds of responsibilities. So it
was a romantic life for him. He spent the next
few years traveling back and forth between North Dakota and
his New York home, but it was in the badlands
(37:41):
where he built his rugged persona. He took his iconic
buckskin suit. There picture, a buttery fawn colored garment with
long fringes trimming nearly every scene. To t R it
was a symbol of the Old West at its peak.
He also found it practical. The neutral color camouflaged him
in the woods and the soft material will allowed him
to sneak through the brush quietly, But most working cowboys
(38:04):
at the time were not impressed. Here's caliberta It's interesting.
Roosevelt went out to the Coda Territory, went to be
a cowboy, but he was very wealthy. Cowboys aren't wealthy.
So he gets these very nice kind of finery, easily
gets a rifle with things engraved on it. He gets
a knife from Tiffany that he sticks at his belt.
He has a buckskin suit because Davy Crockett had a
(38:27):
buckskin suit, but no one's wearing buckskins suits in the Dakotas.
So he had this idea of what a cowboy was,
and he decided he was just going to go for it.
And when he gets out there, he gets made fun
of him. One of his most iconic portraits shows him
wearing the get up and what appears to be a
forest with a rifle resting in his lap. Labeled CEO
Roosevelt as Hunter. The photograph was actually shot in Manhattan.
(38:49):
As Andy's explains, Tiers time in North Dakota also helped
shape his stance on conservation well. The first time, when
he came out and it was so hard to find
a bison, that was an indication that the great herds
of bison were pretty much gone. He could see that
for himself when he came out here and was a rancher.
(39:12):
He saw the effects of overgrazing. He saw diminishing wildlife population.
So it wasn't just hearing about it. He saw it
for himself, and he started to think probably more clearly
about conservation and what needed to be done, and his
ideas started to crystallize, and he was able to do
(39:37):
that out at the Elkhorn, kind of like thorough did
at Walden Pond. It gave him space to think, but
he also saw things, and he also saw the need
for habitat, which we all know now that without habitats
you can't save species unless they have a place to live.
It seems logical, but that's not always been a known thing.
(40:00):
Twenty years after trekking to the bad Lands to kill
his first bison, Theodore Roosevelt used his power as president
to help them. He became the Honorary President of the
American Bison Society at the Bronx Zoo In with Tier support,
the organization transported bison out west in an effort to
repopulate the Great Plains. There were less than a thousand
wile bison living in the US in the late eight hundreds,
(40:22):
and there are roughly three fifty thousand of them today.
Theodore Roosevelt's time in the Dakotas is what inspired him
to live a life of significance and adventure with little
room for compromise when it came to changing the world
for the better. On his time there, he proclaimed, I
have always said I would not have been president had
it not been from my experience in North Dakota. It
(40:45):
was here that the romance of my life began. History
Versus is hosted by me Aaron McCarthy. This episod ode
was written by Michelle dead Check and researched by me,
with fact checking by Austin Thompson. Field recording by John
(41:06):
Mayer and Tyler Clang. Joe Wigan voiced tr in this episode.
The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang.
The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited
by Dylan Fagan and Lobra Anti. Special thanks to David Hurst,
Thomas Tyler, Caliberta Will Sha Froth, Eileen Andy's, and North
(41:26):
Dakota Tourism. To learn more about this episode and Theodore Roosevelt,
visit mental fluss dot com slash History Versus. That's mental
flush dot com. Slash h I S t O R
y vs. History Versus is a production of I Heart
Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
(41:53):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. It's early on a spring day in eighteen
sixty six and Theodore Roosevelt, age seven, is heading down
Broadway in New York City to pick up strawberries from
the market when he sees something that rocks his world.
It's a dead seal laid out on a slab of wood,
(00:22):
and as soon as he lays eyes on it, little
t D is never the same. He needs to know
everything about the seal. He asks where it was killed,
and it is told the harbor. He returns to the
market and the seal day after day, lurking, getting a
closer look whenever he can. He wants to measure the
girth of the animal, but he doesn't have a tape measure,
so he must make do with a pocket foot rule,
(00:43):
which he later recalls is a difficult undertaking that yields
utterly useless measurements. Nevertheless, t D scribbles his findings in
a notebook and begins what he calls a wholly unpremeditated
and unscientific natural history of the seal. He dreams of
taking the seal home and preserving it. It fills him,
he says with every possible feeling of romance and adventure.
(01:05):
He is obsessed. It's not hyperbole to say that the
seal changes everything. The day he saw it, tr will
later write is the day he started his career as
a zoologist. And while he doesn't succeed in procuring the
whole seal carcass, TD is able to get his hands
on the skull. It's the first spetment in his Roosevelt
Museum of Natural History, and from that point on he
(01:27):
can't resist bringing home every living or formerly living thing
he can get his hands on. Bugs and lichn fill
his bedroom. Young squirrels he raises by hand, scurry across
the floors. He befriends mice, and tries to tame a woodchuck. Once,
when he's riding a street car, he sees an adult
he knows and absent mindedly lifts his hat and greeting,
(01:48):
letting loose several frogs he'd been hiding underneath tears. Reverence
for the natural world drove many of his policy decisions
in the White House, but he was also an avid
big game hunter who relished hanging at taxidermid kill in
his wall. So how did his desire to save a
species square with his desire to shoot stuff. We're about
to find out from Mental Floss and I Hurt Radio.
(02:09):
This is History Versus, a podcast about how your favorite
historical figures faced off against their greatest foes. I'm your host,
Aeron McCarthy. In this episode is Tier Versus Nature. Theodore Roosevelt,
who went by the nickname Ted as a boy, was
born in Manhattan in eighteen fifty eight. New York City
might not be the first place you'd think to find
a budding naturalist, even in the eighteen sixties. It was
(02:31):
a bustling metropolis with factories, busy streets, and densely packed
tenement buildings. But Ted still found opportunities to foster an
obsession with the outdoors from an early age, starting with
the books he read. He suffered from severe asthma as
a child, and while bed ridden, he passed the time
by devouring books. He was especially drawn to toms that
dealt with nature. Illustrated Natural History and Homes Without Hands
(02:54):
by John George Wood, Missionary Travels and Researches in South
Africa by David Livingstone, which was so big that TV
could barely carry it, and main Read's adventure novels which
had a scientific flare were some of his favorites. Charles
Darwin also had a huge influence on tr In his
book Wilderness Warrior, historian Douglas Brinkley writes that by the
time Theodore was ten or eleven, Darwin was his touchstone.
(03:17):
A Noah like hero. On the Origin of Species came
out the year after Theodore was born, and the book
shaped not just his view of the natural world, but
his view of everything. Brinkley writes that Roosevelt swallowed natural selection,
hook line and sinker for the rest of his life.
In fact, he used evolutionary theory as his guiding light.
It illuminated his views on everything from politics, to geography
(03:39):
to fatherhood. Darwin's accounts of collecting specimens in exotic locations
compelled tr to have adventures of his own, and later
Theodore would carry on the Origin of Species with him.
On those adventures. When he was well enough to go outdoors,
t d found the nature he read about in books
all around him. Bugs were some of his first research subjects.
At age seven or eight, he wrote an essay titled
(03:59):
The four Going Aunt. As his sister Karen later recalled
of the essays creation he was reading about ants and
turning the page of his huge volume. At the head
of the following page, the narrative continued, the foregoing aunt
also has such unusual characteristics. The young naturalist, not realizing
that the word foregoing referred to the ants of whose
habits he had already read, decided that the adjective in
(04:21):
question was applied to a new species, And after ardent
investigation of the habits of this supposedly new species of aunt,
he decided to write an article entitled the Foregoing Aunt.
And having accomplished this feat in a large, painstaking, babyish hand,
he then called the members of the household together to
listen to this essay on this hitherto unknown representative of
the ant family. For a paper he penned at age
(04:44):
nine called natural History on Insects, he expanded his scope
to cover more species, like ladybugs and fireflies. T. D.
Explained his research process, writing, all the insects that I
write about in this book inhabit North America. Now and
then a friend has told me something about them, But
most I have gained their habits from observation. His powers
of observation, or should we say observation were remarkable for
(05:08):
a nine year old. When writing about a bark spider,
he described its nest in detail, noting, it looks exactly
like some cotton on top, but if you take that off,
you will see several small little webs, each having several
little occupants. These observations are maybe even more impressive by
the fact that tedd groups severely nearsighted. The remarkable thing
was he just finished reading a three thirty two page
(05:30):
book on the subject. That's David Hurst Thomas, a curator
of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. That,
to me is the remarkable part. This kid was so
precocious that he was just reading, and he was then
trying to sort of put it into practice. As he
went on, he just used all of his experiences and
(05:51):
started collecting things, and so he learned how to do this,
and he was looking out for specimens, and so he
created his own museum. When he wasn't taking it's in
the field, tr brought his work home with him. The
Roosevelt Museum of Natural History that started with his beloved
seal skull, soon grew too big for his bedroom. It
contained several hundred specimens According to historian Edmund Morris, when
(06:12):
Ted asked the cook to boil a woodchuck for twenty
four hours, which makes the meat fall off the bone
and his one way scientific specimens are prepared, it cost
a great stink in both senses of the phrase, so
she laid out an ultimatum, either I leave or the
woodchuck does. The housekeeper reportedly complained as well, saying how
can I do the laundry with a snapping turtle tied
to the legs of the sink. His parents may have
(06:35):
been the only adults in the house who didn't mind
his hobby. In fact, they supported it. Theodore later wrote,
my father and mother encouraged me warmly in this, as
they always did in anything that could give me wholesome
pleasure or helped to develop me. His father, Theodore Roosevelt Senor,
even went so far as to set him up with
his own taxidermy tutor when Tira was fourteen. John Graham
(06:58):
Bell was a colleague of John James Audubon, and in
his musty Manhattan shop, he taught Theodore how to stuff
and mount exotic birds and how to clean skeletons with
domestic beetles, which eat muscle and flesh to leave behind bone,
a method still used by museums today. It was an
unconventional education for a teenager, to say the least, per Mars.
Tr very likely had no peer as a teenager ornithologist.
(07:20):
It helped that his dad shared his passion for nature.
A businessman in philanthropist Theodore Senior, helped found the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City in eighteen
sixty nine. Tire also owed part of his naturalist streak
to his uncle Rob, who lived next door to t
d and his family on East Twentie Street. Robert Barnwell
Roosevelt was a well known conservationist who rallied to save
New York's fish, founded clubs devoted to wildlife, and wrote
(07:43):
an important work on ornithology. He also kept a pony
in the house and let his German shepherd eat at
the table. He taught his nephew the value of the
field of science known as ecology today. According to Brinkley,
rbr turned his nephew into a conservationist as a teenager,
and notes that Tier was a high it half his
father the other half uncle Rob. In seventy two, Tr
(08:04):
received two things that changed his relationship with nature in
very different ways eyeglasses and a gun. When shooting his
gun with friends, he realized they were able to see
targets that weren't visible to him at all. He knew
something was wrong when the other boys read a billboard
ad that he didn't even notice had letters. Theodore told
his dad about the problem, and it became clear that
(08:25):
he needed glasses. Through his first pair of spectacles, he
reacquainted himself with the world. The blurry green shapes above
him sharpened into clusters of thousands of distinct leaves. The
static ground was now animated with scuttling insects and blades
of grass ruffling in the wind. But the biggest revelation
came when he saw birds. He had a hypersensitive sense
(08:47):
of hearing, which, according to Morris, is surely the legacy
of the myopic years that came before. Long Enthralled by
their songs, he was now able to see a cardinal
sitting on a branch, or a goldfinch flying through the
air in detail for the first time. Those glasses just
opens a whole new world to him, But the birds
really took the show. The colors in the details and
(09:09):
the idea that there were so many he hadn't seen
before must have just been a real turnaround. His glasses
also allowed him to use his gun properly. When he
vacationed in Egypt with his family later that year, he
shot one gray heron, two partridges, two squirrels, three quail,
eight hoopoos, eight cowhron, eighteen large plover, thirty six little shorebirds,
(09:32):
and eighty one pigeons in two months. He recorded his
hall in his zoological record, but his motives weren't strictly scientific.
He also liked shooting things. Biographers have different theories on
where this desire came from. Kathleen Dalton wrote that tr
turned to nature as an outlet for his most aggressive impulses,
and liked wilderness stories best when man's aggression and wildlife's
(09:53):
destruction went unchecked. According to Brinkley, Roosevelt shot, stuffed, and
studied animals as a way to honor them, writing most
other men would simply shoot birds. Roosevelt, by contrast, shot
and collected them for scientific scrutiny. Only by learning everything
about a species could you eventually save it from the
maw of industrial man. But eventually Roosevelt himself acknowledged that
with birds anyway, he'd been too quick with a gun.
(10:15):
In one he wrote to a friend, when I was young,
I fell into the usual fashion of those days and
collected specimens industriously, thereby committing an entirely needless butchery of
our ordinary birds. I am happy to say that there
has been a great change for the better since then
in our ways of looking at these things. Regardless of
(10:37):
his motives at the time, hunting became part of Roosevelt's
new persona. Theodore had transformed from the clumsy, near sighted
boy of his youth into a budding outdoorsman. The robust
guy that tr the one we all know and love,
was a creation of himself. He literally built himself into
that person who became president, and that really colored the
(10:58):
way he viewed the world. If I can do this,
anybody can take themselves and be whatever you want. You
just need to work hard enough and have enough passion.
But tr held onto some of his boyhood habits, including
collecting animals. He enrolled in Harvard when he was nearly
eighteen to study natural history, and he kept his specimens,
both the living and the dead ones in his room
(11:20):
at the boarding house, preserved animal remains for malde Hyde,
bottles and arsenic jars were strewn around his workspace. A
tortoise of his even escaped its cage one day and
wandered into the hallway. He wasn't able to catch it
before it surprised the landlady, who, according to Mars, was
frightened into hysterics. She didn't kick him out, though tr
lived there for the rest of his time at Harvard.
(11:41):
A career in science seemed like the perfect fit for Theodore.
He may have even dreamt of being a curator at
the museum his father helped found. In eighteen seventy seven,
Tier came back from Harvard to attend the grand opening
of the American Museum of Natural History's new building, and
he donated some of his personal items to the collection,
including twelve mice, four birds, eggs, and a red squirrel skull.
But ultimately a career in science wasn't meant to be.
(12:04):
After a few years at Harvard, Roosevelt learned the work
wasn't quite what he had envisioned. He had spent most
of his life studying nature up close and being cooped
up indoors in a lab left him dissatisfied, class board him,
and he interrupted his teacher, Nathaniel Schaller, so often the
professor once had to say, now look here, Roosevelt, let
me talk. I'm running this course on Harvard. Theater wrote
(12:25):
in his autobiography, there was a total failure to understand
the great variety of kinds of work that could be
done by naturalists, including what could be done by outdoor naturalists,
in the entirely proper desire to be thorough and to
avoid slipshod methods. The tendency was to treat as not serious,
(12:47):
as unscientific, any kind of work that was not carried
on with laborious minuteness in the laboratory. My taste was
specialized in a totally different direction, and I had no
more ire or ability to be a microscopist and section
cutter than to be a mathematician. Alternate career paths were
starting to look more appealing. He finally had to make
(13:10):
a decision, am I going to be a natural historian
or am I going to be a politician? And that
was a tough decision for him to make at Harvard,
and it didn't happen until his senior year when he
finally decided that the kind of biology and natural history
that he was learning Lui Agassi and the tradition at
Harvard that was a lab based tradition, and he was
(13:32):
a field based kid, and his dad warned him about that.
He was ultimately inspired to get into politics by the
death of his father in eighteen seventy eight. The greatest
way to honor his father, Theodore felt, was to dedicate
his life to public service. He switched majors to history
and government, but he didn't abandon his interest in the outdoors.
Nature sustained him throughout his life. When his first wife,
(13:54):
Alice and his mother Mitty, died within hours of one another,
he retreated to the Dakota bad Lands to find solace.
When his political career in New York got to hectic,
he took breaks to live out his cowboy fantasies on
a ranch out west, but after entering the White House,
Theodore Roosevelt realized that nature could no longer be just
an escape for him. Instead, it became part of his
life's work. We'll be right back after this quick break.
(14:23):
Since the early days of his presidency, the American people
have associated Theodore Roosevelt with the outdoors. Just months after
President William McKinley was assassinated and he was sworn into
the White House, Roosevelt went on a hunting trip that
would saddle him with a nickname he could never shake.
It was two and tr was looking for a way
to smooth relations with the South. He had recently invited
(14:44):
African American leader Booker T. Washington to the White House,
angering segregationist voters. The invitation alone wasn't what caused to
stir Washington and Roosevelt often shared late night conversations about
politics whenever the activists came to town, but on this occasion,
Tira was double booked. He had planned to spend the
night with his children to celebrate his two youngest sons
(15:04):
finally moving into the White House, but he also had
an after hours meeting with Washington. He found a way
around the scheduling conflict by inviting Washington to join his
family for dinner. It was the first time in history
a black guest had been invited to dine at the
White House, according to Debora Davis and her book Guest
of Honor. When book Or T talked about the dinner
in years to come. It was the fact that tears
family was alongside him at the table, not his new
(15:26):
role as political advisor, that seemed to mean the most
to him, But not everyone applauded t R for the
progressive move tr got hammered for that. He accepted an
invitation to go hunt bears in the South, knowing that
there was some political liabilities, and also hoping that not
only could have some fun, but there were some political
(15:50):
things to be said there as well. The invitation came
from Mississippi Governor Andrew Longino whole Collier, a formally enslaved
Confederate cavalry that would be their hunting guide. He was
familiar with the land and according to legend, had killed
more than three thousand bears. With the plan in place,
TR headed south. He puts on his friends jacket and
(16:11):
heads down to the South to go on this sort
of ceremonial bear hunt. And even at the time he says,
you know, once you start adding more than two people
to a bear hunt, that's too many people. But he
went on this thing and it ended up being staged
and went badly, and a couple of his dogs were killed.
So he's got his Winchester ninety four is thirty. He's
(16:34):
supposed to kill this bear that they got tied up
to a tree, who's already wounded and killed the dogs,
and he just says he's not going to do it.
It's just not his idea of being a hunter, and
so he refused. He called it almost unsatisfactory, experienced, he
was embarrassed by it, and comes back Anna cars their cartoons.
(16:56):
Poor a little bear tied to a tree and tr
holding his winchester, not shooting it. That's where the Teddy
bear deal comes from. After the incident, the nickname Teddy
caught on, much to the president's chagrin. As a strict
rule follower who appreciated formality, he felt the name was
too personal to be used by the public. It's also
what his late wife, Alice called him, and it was
(17:18):
likely a painful reminder of her. The public ate up
the image of gruff manly Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot
a bear, though he did order it put out of
its misery and a member of the party dispatched it
with a knife. In Morris's words, but his environmentalist principles
were less popular when he tried putting them into law
at the start of the twentieth century, natural resources were
(17:38):
seen as something to be tamed and exploited, not to
be conserved for future generations. Still, there were some policies
in place to protect the environment at this time. The
Rivers and Harbor's Appropriation Act of made it illegal to
dump waste into bodies of water without a permit, and
the Forest Reserve Act allowed US presidents to preserve forests
on public land. By the time tr took off as presidents, Harrison, Cleveland,
(18:02):
and McKinley had set aside roughly fifty million acres of
public forest under the law. Benjamin Harrison also used his
power to protect wildlife, and even entered an international dispute
in an effort to save the First Seal. But these
laws weren't enough to match the rapid development taking place
at the turn of the century. With hunting, mining, and
deforestation left unchecked, the resources Americans took for granted were
(18:22):
on track to disappear for good. Thanks to his uncle,
Roosevelt had long known that America's wilderness was precious and vulnerable.
He had taken his own steps to preserve wilderness, co
founding the Boone and Crocket Club After proposing the idea
at a dinner in his New York City home. In
seven the B and C Club advocated for ethical hunting
practices and established wildlife preserves for big game like bison, elk,
(18:45):
and antelope. As president, tierre knew he had more power
than ever to protect the wild lands he cherished, but
with no precedent for the kind of comprehensive conservation laws
he had in mind, he wasn't sure how to move forward,
so he turned to a friend from the Museum of
Natural History for guidance. What he had done is poland
Frank Chapman, again from the American Museum of Natural History.
(19:09):
So he sits down with his lawyers and with Chapman,
what's the most important thing I can do today to
make a difference. The American Ornithologist Union had made several
attempts to purchase a small island off the coast of
Florida from the government. The island was called Pelican Island
because it was the last rookery of brown pelicans on
the east coast of the state. The ao US goal
(19:30):
was to turn it into a bird preserve, but in
order to buy the land, they needed to survey it,
which would open the land up to homesteaders planning to
use it for agriculture. The AO used status as a
conservationist group would automatically send them to the bottom of
the application pile. But when they asked her to use
his executive power to make Pelican Island a nature preserve,
he actually listened, tr looks around and talks to his
(19:53):
lawyers in lands, and he said, do I have the
power to actually do that? And the legal advice is
that's a big step for a president, but you don't
explicitly not have the power to do it. So if
you want to make that move to go one step further,
all you have to do is say I so will it.
(20:16):
And by saying I so will it, you can turn
that into law. The President was on board by pushing
the executive order through the U. S d A. It's
snuck by Congress without causing a fuss. In three Pelican
Island was established as the first ever national wildlife refuge
in the United States. Also sort of redefined a modern presidency.
(20:37):
If I'm not explicitly, by law not able to do it,
that means I will do it. I so will it.
Then I think that was the cornerstone moment and his
presidency and his career. On a camping trip he took
that same year, Tier realized there was even more he
could be doing to save the environment. The president spent
three days in California's Yosemite with naturalist John Muir. They
(21:00):
height in the shadow of the Granite Sentinel Dome and
camped under the towering sequoia trees of Mariposa Grove. Tr
with forty wold blankets to keep him warm, but it
wasn't a pleasure trip from your He was determined to
convince his friend to use his power to protect the
incredible place. Mir made his case around the campfire and succeeded.
Tr left California humbled by the natural beauty he saw,
(21:22):
and he vowed to preserve it. When writing about Yosemite
a few years later, he said, there can be nothing
in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite. The groves
of the giant sequoias. Our people should see to it
that they are preserved for their children and their children's children,
with a majestic beauty, all unmowed. When theater returned home
(21:45):
from the camping trip, he was inspired to pass new
laws preserving America's wilderness, often using the iso will it
approach that worked for him With Pelican Island Congresston shared
TR's environmentalist goals, though so he went over their heads
on many occasions, using executive orders to craft the conservation
policy he wanted for the nation. He has a Speaker
of the House, Joseph Cannon, during his presidency that famously
(22:07):
says that he will not appropriate one sent for scenery.
That's Tyler caliberta education technician. At Roosevelt's Long Island home,
Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, where on one floor there
hangs a painting of Roosevelt and Cannon arguing, and that
was the attitudes of a lot of people that these
were natural resources to be used. This is how people
make their livelihood, and why should we bar them from
(22:28):
using them, or as Roosevelt had a conservationist idea, where
they're the people's resources and we can manage how many
of them are used. Some of TR's most influential management
came from the Antiquities Act of six With the Act,
Theodore Roosevelt had the power to establish national monuments on
federal land. If he felt there was an area in danger,
(22:48):
he could grant it permanent protection without having to get
permission from Congress. First, here's Real Shaffroth, president and CEO
of the National Park Foundation, whose great grandfather was involved
with the creation of the Antiquities Act. I mean it
was a very different time in our country. You know,
the population that it was dramatically less, and the West
was relatively undiscovered, that the Homestead Act was still in place,
(23:09):
and you know, as people realize, wow, these places about
some value. Let's use them for economic benefit. The Antiquities Act,
which was formerly passed in the nineteen o six, was
a law that was created to provide the President of
the United States with the flexibility the authority to establish
(23:29):
national monuments. Sometimes a president will need to have essentially
kind of an emergency authority to set aside lands because
Congress is not acting or is taking too long to act,
so that the particular resources of concern can be protected
in a short period of time and for the long term.
(23:50):
The goal of the Antiquities Act wasn't to shut people
away from the nation's natural wonders. With these protections put
in place, tier ensured national monuments would be preserved for
more citizens to enjoy, whether by studying them, in a
scientific capacity, reflecting on their history, or just appreciating their beauty.
The first site designated a National Monument was Devil's Tower
in northeastern Wyoming. Anyone who's seen close encounters of the
(24:13):
third kind knows this rock formation. The eight hundred and
sixty seven foot tall butte juts out from the horizon
with cliffs lined with hundreds of parallel cracks, leading to
a flattish summit. The Antiquities Act was also used to
preserve places of cultural significance. Immediately following Devil's Tower, El
Moro and Ancient Pueblo in New Mexico, and Montezuma Castle,
(24:33):
a pre Columbian structure built into an Arizona cliff face,
were added to the Register of National Monuments. The Antiquities
Act was really put to the test on January eleven.
That's when President Roosevelt upgraded the Grand Canyon from a
game preserve to a National monument. Well that happened. It
was like, okay, this was the full scope of the
(24:54):
Grand Canyon of something like eight hundred thousand Anakers, i
think at the time, and that was a big deal
for the government to do that, and it established a
precedent for other presidents do something that bold in their
own way. The Grand Canyon, already a major tourist attraction,
may have started to resemble a theme park without federal protection,
or maybe it would have fallen victim to copper and
(25:14):
zinc mining interests. Instead, Theodore Roosevelt paved the way for
the Grand Canyon to become a full fledged national park
in three years after the National Park Service was established.
The National Park Service, alongside other government agencies, would be
tasked with protecting these lands. Before the environment was a
top issue with voters and before climate change was a
(25:35):
regular part of the news cycle, Theodore Roosevelt saw the
importance of conserving the country's resources not just for his constituents,
but for future generations of Americans. T R. Gave a
speech titled Conservation as a National Duty. In it, he
said that we have become great in a material since
because of the lavish use of our resources, and we
(25:58):
have just reason to be proud of our growth. But
the time has come to inquire seriously, what will happen
when our forests are gone, When the coal, the iron,
the oil, and the gas are exhausted, When the soils
shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams,
(26:18):
polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation. These
questions do not relate only to the next century or
to the next generation. One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized
men is foresight. We have to as a nation exercise
foresight for this nation in the future, and if we
(26:41):
do not exercise that foresight, dark will be the future.
Tier did as much as he could to protect the environment,
perhaps more than any other president before or since. By
the end of his presidency, he had established on fifty
national forests, on federal bird reserves, for national game preserves,
five national parks, and eighteen national monuments, a total of
(27:05):
two and thirty million acres of public land. Oh they're
protected status to him. As Brinkley puts it, that's almost
half the size of the Atlantic Coast states from Maine
to Florida, or almost half the landmask Thomas Jefferson had
acquired from France in the Louisiana purchase of eighteen oh three.
This feels like a good place to take a quick break.
We'll be right back. It's hard to find a surface
(27:35):
of theatre. Roosevelt's Sagamore Hill estate that isn't adorned with
something that used to be alive. The walls display trophies
of big horn, sheep and moose, while the tanned skins
of big cats are draped over chairs and placed on floors,
their faces frozen in permanent snarls. In the north room
the saber and hat from Tierras days is a rough
rider hanging the antlers of an elk, one of two
(27:56):
in the room, which are situated across from two bison heads.
There's a dinner chime made of elephant tusks in the foyer,
beneath the head of a water buffalo. In his upstairs library,
there's a bizarre looking chair made with the horns of
longhorn cattle and a hippo foot that was transformed into
an Inkwell, though not all the animals there were bagged
by tire, the former president's home is a testament to
(28:17):
his love of big game hunting. A lot of the
hunting trophies that you see, they are the rugs on
the floor, they're most of them in the house of
vast majority of them are hunted by him, So he
is an avid big game hunter. That's Tyler caliberta. He's
trying to display animals from all over the country, and
I would say it was his goal to try to
get as many as he could of a certain animal,
(28:39):
So it was important for him to be able to
hunt every animal. Many of the trophies at Sagamore Hill
came from a hunting trip Tier took after leaving office.
Like many ex presidents, he celebrated the end of his
tenure with a much needed vacation. But instead of relaxing
on some beach, he set off on a safari in
the East African wilderness. Tierra. Embarked from New York on
March and arrived in Mombassa on April one. He was
(29:04):
accompanied by a team of explorers and his son Kermit.
This wasn't a typical post presidency vacation. The expedition was
sponsored by the Smithsonian and it was organized for the
purpose of collecting specimens for the National Museum of Natural History.
The former president took this job seriously. He entered Africa
with rifles, a shotgun, a barrel of salt for preserving hides,
(29:24):
a trunk of pigskin, pound books, and a gold mounted
rabbit's foot for good luck. The party returned home with
more specimens than the museum could have hoped for. Between them,
Kermit and Theodore shot and killed five dred and twelve animals.
That's not including the hundreds of creatures the other party
members collected, or the many birds the Roosevelts didn't telly.
Most specimens were donated to the National Museum of Natural
(29:45):
History and the American Museum of Natural History, though the
pair did keep a few trophies for themselves. It took
the Smithsonian eight years to catalog every item it received.
Some of the smallest specimens the party pocket had ended
up in the u S Tick Collection, a mass of
catalog of ticks from around the world that scientists used
to study tickboard illnesses. Some criticized here for the excessive
(30:06):
amount of slaughter that took place in the trip, but
even after shooting hundreds of animals in the span of
eleven months, he insisted it was done in the name
of science. He told the press, I can be condemned
only if the existence of the National Museum, the American
Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are
to be condemned. Any self described environmentalist president killing one
(30:29):
lion let alone nine as tr did would be a
massive scandal today, But a conservationist hunter wasn't an oxymoron
in the early twentieth century. If you wanted access to
an animal in Roosevelt's day, you had to have it,
and a lot of times I meant killing it. If
you wanted to study a burb you wouldn't want to
put it in a trap and put in cage, because
(30:50):
you want to take a part and we learn something
about it, so you shoot it. He and other conservationists
at the time, and other people are interested in natural history.
They are all their subjects. That includes ornithologist John James Audubon,
another outdoorsman naturalist that Roosevelt was obsessed with when he
set off to create a life size guide to All
the Aviens in America, which would become The Birds of America,
(31:12):
a book so large that it required its own furniture
just to look at it. He didn't capture the level
of detail and it's vibrant and lifelike painting solely by
studying live birds through a pair of binoculars. His work
required him to hunt. He shot his specimens, articulated them
with wires, and then painted them. Here's David Hurst Thomas.
Somebody liked Audubon. He carried a paintbrush, but he also
(31:36):
carried a gun. He collected everything that he could, in
part so that could paint them and understand them. And
one of his tax deervisism. When who taught tr how
to do that? There wasn't any distinction. As tr was growing,
Uper set off on another expedition, this time to the
Amazon Rainforest. Originally meant to be a lectra tour of
(31:57):
South America, he turned the trip into a scientific mission
by collecting specimens for the American Museum of Natural History.
At age fifty five, he knew that his adventuring days
were limited. He called the journey his last chance to
be a boy. On the expedition, Tier and his team
famously charted the Amazon's River of Doubt, a feat that
almost killed the former president. The trip is also notable
(32:18):
for helping to shape the public's perception of piranhas. Tear
came back with stories of children being devoured alive, a
man losing a total a piranha, and one story that
seems straight out of a B movie, a seemingly stunned
parana nearly biting a man's tongue off, so to be
fair to the piranha, that the guy did put it
in his mouth. These scenes have been recreated in pop
culture countless times thanks to Theodore's account of it. His
(32:41):
description of the fish itself also helps them in its
terrifying reputation in the public imagination. He wrote, the head,
with its short muzzle, staring malignant eyes and gaping cruelly
armed jaws, is the embodiment of evil ferocity, and the
actions of the fish exactly match it's look. Whether he
was watching a flock of birds or spreading tales about
(33:03):
the piranha. Theodore Roosevelt loved nature. As Caliberta explains, he
expressed his respect for wildlife by hunting. It something that's
difficult for people to wrap their heads around today. Hunting
isn't just shooting an animal. Hunting is spending time out
in the wilderness, sometimes for a week or many days,
or even longer than that. Hunting is cooking out in
(33:24):
the open. Hunting is testing yourself, testing your abilities, and
these things all attract Roosevelt to hunting. Harvesting animals from
museum collections doesn't happen in such large numbers today. It's
strictly regulated and there are ethical guidelines, but when it
does happen, there's often public outrage. One scientist who collected
or rarely seeing bird received death threats afterwards. I know
(33:45):
what I'm about to say is not going to be popular,
but hear me out. Scientific collections are essential. Specimens collected
in the past help scientists solve scientific mysteries and make
new discoveries that can actually help save wildlife in the
late ninety in sixties. In early nineteen seventies, when peregrine
falcon populations were mysteriously declining, scientists compared contemporary falcon eggs
(34:06):
two decades old specimens at several museums and private collections
around the country. They noticed the fresh egg shells were
much thinner than the old ones and determined that the
pesticide d d T was to blame. Another example, by
comparing the old feathers of seabirds to new feathers, scientists
could show that the amount of mercury in the world's
oceans was rising. Who's to say what future scientists might
(34:28):
learn from specimens being collected today. Hunting can even be
used as a conservation strategy in Midwestern States hunter's bid
in auctions or enter lotteries to obtain the tags needed
to hunt big horn sheep, with the proceeds going to conservation.
These hunting tag programs, along with reintroduction efforts, have helped
the once endangered big horn sheep make a dramatic comeback.
(34:48):
Here's David Hurst Thomas Well, I've taken museum cruise out
for years and years and years working at twelve thousand
feet in areas where Native Americans were hunting big horn sheep.
We can see all the archaeological evidence for that they're
not there anymore, except the last time we went back there.
There are big hornback. And the reason they're back is
(35:11):
because of the hunters what they've done. He has gotten
together and see themselves as a prime movement of conservation.
By raising money and reintroducing antelopen elk and big horn
in former environments and having some kind of limiting hunting
season on them, they're actually making a pretty positive difference.
(35:32):
And I see that as a legacy where tr was
coming from it. Theodore Roosevelt's legacy may have looked much
different if it wasn't for his time spent in the
bad lands in two year old headed west in search
of bison to hunt and display. There was nothing like
the bad Lands Painted canyon back east, The hilly vista
would have rolled on for miles before him, the colors
(35:55):
of the rock formations varying in intensity depending on how
sunny it was outside or if it had rained that day.
The Lakota people dub the terrain Maco Ska or land
bad because it was barren and unforgiving, but to tr
it was paradise. Bad luck followed him the whole trip.
He and his hunting guy discovered that the great herds
of bison that had once roamed the region were now
(36:15):
hard to find. He was also plagued by bad weather,
but nothing could dampen his mood. They woke up one
morning and it had been raining, and he was lying
in a puddle. And he woke up and said, by Godfrey,
this is fun, when most other people would say, lest
(36:36):
just go home. It's hot, it's wet and nasty out here.
That's Eileen Andy's chief of interpretation in public affairs at
Theatore Roosevelt National Park. Even after he bagged his bison,
Tier wasn't quite ready to leave the bad Lands behind completely.
He had fallen in love with cowboy life and decided
to invest in a cattle ranch in North Dakota called
the Maltese Cross. Later he'd buy another, which he dubbed
(36:58):
the Elkhorn. There was nothing glamorous about being a rancher
in that part of the country. Fuel, food, and water
were all hard to come by. In the summer, temperatures
exceeded a hundred degrees, and in the winter the snow
piled up so high that cattle were found in trees.
Though challenging, the hardships he faced out west were refreshing
change from what tr experienced in New York. I think
(37:20):
he had some freedom out here that he didn't have
when he was back east, and when he came out here,
he didn't have the same kinds of responsibilities. So it
was a romantic life for him. He spent the next
few years traveling back and forth between North Dakota and
his New York home, but it was in the badlands
(37:41):
where he built his rugged persona. He took his iconic
buckskin suit. There picture, a buttery fawn colored garment with
long fringes trimming nearly every scene. To t R it
was a symbol of the Old West at its peak.
He also found it practical. The neutral color camouflaged him
in the woods and the soft material will allowed him
to sneak through the brush quietly, But most working cowboys
(38:04):
at the time were not impressed. Here's caliberta It's interesting.
Roosevelt went out to the Coda Territory, went to be
a cowboy, but he was very wealthy. Cowboys aren't wealthy.
So he gets these very nice kind of finery, easily
gets a rifle with things engraved on it. He gets
a knife from Tiffany that he sticks at his belt.
He has a buckskin suit because Davy Crockett had a
(38:27):
buckskin suit, but no one's wearing buckskins suits in the Dakotas.
So he had this idea of what a cowboy was,
and he decided he was just going to go for it.
And when he gets out there, he gets made fun
of him. One of his most iconic portraits shows him
wearing the get up and what appears to be a
forest with a rifle resting in his lap. Labeled CEO
Roosevelt as Hunter. The photograph was actually shot in Manhattan.
(38:49):
As Andy's explains, Tiers time in North Dakota also helped
shape his stance on conservation well. The first time, when
he came out and it was so hard to find
a bison, that was an indication that the great herds
of bison were pretty much gone. He could see that
for himself when he came out here and was a rancher.
(39:12):
He saw the effects of overgrazing. He saw diminishing wildlife population.
So it wasn't just hearing about it. He saw it
for himself, and he started to think probably more clearly
about conservation and what needed to be done, and his
ideas started to crystallize, and he was able to do
(39:37):
that out at the Elkhorn, kind of like thorough did
at Walden Pond. It gave him space to think, but
he also saw things, and he also saw the need
for habitat, which we all know now that without habitats
you can't save species unless they have a place to live.
It seems logical, but that's not always been a known thing.
(40:00):
Twenty years after trekking to the bad Lands to kill
his first bison, Theodore Roosevelt used his power as president
to help them. He became the Honorary President of the
American Bison Society at the Bronx Zoo In with Tier support,
the organization transported bison out west in an effort to
repopulate the Great Plains. There were less than a thousand
wile bison living in the US in the late eight hundreds,
(40:22):
and there are roughly three fifty thousand of them today.
Theodore Roosevelt's time in the Dakotas is what inspired him
to live a life of significance and adventure with little
room for compromise when it came to changing the world
for the better. On his time there, he proclaimed, I
have always said I would not have been president had
it not been from my experience in North Dakota. It
(40:45):
was here that the romance of my life began. History
Versus is hosted by me Aaron McCarthy. This episod ode
was written by Michelle dead Check and researched by me,
with fact checking by Austin Thompson. Field recording by John
(41:06):
Mayer and Tyler Clang. Joe Wigan voiced tr in this episode.
The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang.
The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited
by Dylan Fagan and Lobra Anti. Special thanks to David Hurst,
Thomas Tyler, Caliberta Will Sha Froth, Eileen Andy's, and North
(41:26):
Dakota Tourism. To learn more about this episode and Theodore Roosevelt,
visit mental fluss dot com slash History Versus. That's mental
flush dot com. Slash h I S t O R
y vs. History Versus is a production of I Heart
Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
(41:53):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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