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Leather postcard featuring a drawing of Theodore Roosevelt with a gun walking and showing off a bear on a leash with a muzzle. Text on the front of the postcard indicates Roosevelt is showing off the bear he recently captured. A handwritten note on the reverse says “I Will Put your name on here next week.”
Unknown
Ben Lilly describes his hunting adventures to Theodore Roosevelt, noting the names of mountains, valleys, rivers, and canyons in Mexico and New Mexico where he hunts and kills bears and lions. Lilly lists the measurements of the front and hind paws which he uses to track the bears. Lilly is planning to go to Alaska in April and asks if Roosevelt knows of a magazine or paper who would pay for Lilly’s expertise for hunting game in Mexico.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-09-05
John W. Osborn enjoyed seeing Theodore Roosevelt last March, but is disappoint Roosevelt will not join him for a bear hunt in November. Osborn hopes Kermit Roosevelt might come and that Roosevelt will also come. Osborn and his wife have had another little girl making four girls and two boys in his family.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-09-01
President Roosevelt is not happy with his son Kermit’s “black marks.” He also reports that he was unsuccessful on his bear hunting trip and probably will not hunt again while President.
1902-11-24
President Roosevelt is very glad to hear from John Willis, and while it is impossible for him to travel west at the present moment, he promises to go bear hunting with him whenever the opportunity arises. In the meantime, he invites Willis to dine at the White House if he ever travels to Washington, D.C.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1901-09-28
George B. Cortelyou thanks Philip Battell Stewart for the letter and invites him and his wife to stay at the White House when they come east. Cortelyou intends to take the bear and cougar hunt a year from next spring and hopes to get Secretary of War Elihu Root to join their party.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1901-09-14
Gifford Pinchot is traveling in Alaska and believes their position is correct. It was a mistake to exclude the shore of Controller Bay from the National Forest.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-11
J. D. McMillan of the Greenwood Hunting Club invites Theodore Roosevelt to join the Club in black bear hunting in November or December.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-11
Charles Sheldon thanks Theodore Roosevelt for his letter. Sheldon describes his second book Scribner will publish next spring including several hunting experiences on Pacific Coast Islands and Alaska. Sheldon shares his opinions on Roosevelt’s Concealing Coloration pamphlet and what other’s have written to him about it.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-03
George B. Clark informs Theodore Roosevelt that he saw Kermit Roosevelt at Elbow Camp on the Nepisiquit River in New Brunswick, Canada. Kermit was enjoying the camp and working hard on his hunting. The weather was very cold and there was a snow storm. Grant killed a moose and black bear on his trip.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-09-27
Clifford I. Millard asks Theodore Roosevelt if he would be interested in a bear hunt in the Dismal Swamp, noting reports from woodsmen and farmers that bear activity is unusually high and causing damage to crops and livestock.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-09-11
A political cartoon depicting President Theodore Roosevelt and lawyer Francis Heney comparing hunting kills. Roosevelt’s two dead bears identify him as a boodler and a land thief, and Heney’s bears are labeled grafter and U.S. Senator.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-03-25
Dr. Lambert writes to President Roosevelt about arrangements for an upcoming bear hunt in Colorado. He also talks about the weapons he plans to use.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-01-25
Dr. Alexander Lambert writes to President Roosevelt about a patient he treats by the name of Thomas Lyons, from Silver City. Lambert recognized that the man was the hunter whom Secretary of Commerce Metcalf was working with to set up a bear hunt. Lambert described in detail how Lyons was successful in capturing the bears. Lambert asked the president if there was anything that Roosevelt wanted him to ask Lyons.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-12-27
President Roosevelt eats dinner with several men dressed in country attire with knives and pistols. The main course is a bear, placed at the center of the table. In the background, another bear peers into the room, “Gee! No faking there.” William Loeb hides underneath the table. A picture frame with the words “Dr. Long” is hung on the wall.
Under President Roosevelt, more than any other president including Thomas Jefferson, there was a catholicity of interests, experiences, and professions at White House social events and dinners. The president was not catering to diverse interest groups, but rather his meetings, receptions, and dinners reflected the polymath that he was.
Uncle Sam eyes “Wall St.,” J. Pierpont Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller holding up a large “financial panic” rock. The man labeled Wall St. says, “It’s o.k. We have it safe.” President Roosevelt also looks on, holding a bear under his right arm and a rifle in his left hand.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-10-24
President Roosevelt stands on the back of a train as he is sent off by several men at the train station and a group of four bears in the canebrakes. The bears say, “Dey-dey. You’re all right,” “You’re a jolly good fellow–but–we’re glad we’re not in the trusts,” “Tra-la. We’ll play tag again,” and “Bye-bye. Come again.”
On the very day that President Roosevelt departed Stamboul, in Louisiana’s “Cajun Prairie” in East Carroll Parish, where he had hunted black bears for two weeks, cartoonist Joseph H. Cunningham imagined the event. A small group of men waving from across the tracks; a small sleuth of bears waving their good-byes from the tall and thorny canebrakes.
Several men drag bears to be tied to stakes as reporters wait in the canebrakes for President Roosevelt to arrive at his tent.
This cartoon was published before or during President Roosevelt’s descent into the dark, dangerous and almost mysterious canebrakes of Louisiana in October of 1907. In the two middle weeks of an extensive speaking tour through the Midwest and South, Roosevelt hunted black bears, not so much for a vacation (his summer vacation in Oyster Bay that year had been longer than most of his presidency) as a quest to fulfill his frustrated goal in the same general area of bayous, swamps, dense growth, snakes, panthers, wild boars, and several varieties of black bears. That 1902 trip resulted, at least, in a legend that inspired the teddy bear. But in 1907 Roosevelt would not be put off.
A group of bears march toward President Roosevelt holding a rifle on his right shoulder in the canebrakes. The bear in the front holds a sign, “We want federal regulation of bear hunters.”
President Roosevelt’s two-week hunting trip after black bear in the Louisiana canebrakes in October of 1907 inspired many cartoonists to explore the obvious themes presented by the inveterate hunter engaging in a Golden Fleece, if not a hide, since he failed to bag more than a legend (the teddy bear) in the region several years earlier.
The first vignette depicts President Roosevelt and his dogs marching into the canebrakes to find a bear. The second vignette shows a lot of downed trees and the sun high in the sky. The third vignette shows Roosevelt in his tent and a tired dog outside the tent with the moon in the background.
Cartoonist Ralph Wilder quotes a newspaper headline, or plausible rumor, about President Roosevelt’s hunting dogs being exhausted during the two-week tracking of black bears in the Louisiana canebrakes. In fact the bayous and canebrakes — tall and dense, rather like bamboo — and the boggy bayous were inhospitable to hunters and their hounds alike.