Speaker 1: Along with Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt was the American president
Speaker 1: most fascinated with nature and with the American West, and
Speaker 1: like Jefferson, Roosevelt transformed the region he loved. I'm dan Flores,
Speaker 1: and this is the American West, brought to you by
Speaker 1: Velvet Buck Wine, where the hunt meets the harvest. A
Speaker 1: portion of each bottle goes to support backcountry hunters and anglers.
Speaker 1: Limited supply available at Velvetbuckvineyards dot com. Enjoy responsible how
Speaker 1: you create a new West and a new America. He
Speaker 1: was a former President of the United States and might
Speaker 1: hold that office again. He was also an internationally known
Speaker 1: sportsman and advocate of adventurous living whose demise would have
Speaker 1: caused shockwaves. But descending the unexplored Rio da Duvida the
Speaker 1: River of Doubt in early nineteen fourteen, Teddy Roosevelt was
Speaker 1: injured and ill, and had watched his Great South American
Speaker 1: adventure with legendary explorer Candido Rondon almost disintegrate in the
Speaker 1: Brazilian jungle. No novelists could have written the scene better
Speaker 1: for him. We've reached a point where some of us
Speaker 1: must stop, he told his son Kermit. I feel I
Speaker 1: am only a burden to the party. It was classic
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt, a romantic hero who, despite his fame, was
Speaker 1: willing to sacrifice himself for his companions. The Party had
Speaker 1: none of it, of course, but the incident is a
Speaker 1: window on the characteristics that led Theodore Roosevelt to the
Speaker 1: life of accomplishment and adventure. He created. Few things Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt ever did, were easy. Maybe that is why he
Speaker 1: gloried so and challenge. By sheer force of will, he
Speaker 1: turned himself from a weak, sickly adolescent into a hearty
Speaker 1: and robust Harvard undergraduate who boxed and hunted, and eventually
Speaker 1: into a lifelong advocate of what he called the strenuous life.
Speaker 1: That same determination marked his administrations as President of the
Speaker 1: United States, enabling him to enact major progressive social policies,
Speaker 1: central to which was the first comprehensive environmental program in
Speaker 1: American history. Roosevelt's ideal image of an American was someone
Speaker 1: who knew the natural world, which was why conservation of
Speaker 1: an endangered nation was central to his accomplishments. As with
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, whose goals for the West enabled Americans to
Speaker 1: grasp its outlines, we shouldn't be surprised to discover a
Speaker 1: similar fascination with nature in the president who laid down
Speaker 1: America's and the West's environmental foundation. But in contrast to Jefferson,
Speaker 1: who sat on his mountain in Virginia and imagined the West,
Speaker 1: Roosevelt experienced the West and the world firsthand. Roosevelt was
Speaker 1: from one of the Eastern families of patrician elites so
Speaker 1: visible in the history of the West. His birth in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty eight almost made him a Civil War baby,
Speaker 1: but as his mother was a Southerner, the Civil War
Speaker 1: and reconstruction were always forbidden topics. Nature, wild animals, and
Speaker 1: the West, on the other hand, were the focus of
Speaker 1: law long discussions between Roosevelt's father, who was an early
Speaker 1: disciple of Darwin and a founder of the American Museum
Speaker 1: of Natural History, and an uncle who was a nationalist.
Speaker 1: When he was only ten, Roosevelt's family toured Europe, and
Speaker 1: despite young Teddy's frequent attacks of asthma, he and his
Speaker 1: father climbed Mount Vesuvius. Three years later, they were on
Speaker 1: a boat descending the Nile in Egypt, where, with a
Speaker 1: new shotgun, Teddy shot and collected more than one hundred
Speaker 1: birds for his own museum, as he called it. In
Speaker 1: a situation of many options, Teddy did not surprise his
Speaker 1: family when he announced that he wanted to train as
Speaker 1: a naturalist. Like a significant number though not all of
Speaker 1: nature obsessed Americans, Audubon was one, so were George Bird
Speaker 1: Grennell and Aldo Leopold Teddy. Roosevelt and his interest in
Speaker 1: nature began in a boyhood of observing, pursu pursuing, and
Speaker 1: hunting wild animals in wild country. His yearning to make
Speaker 1: natural history a profession was officially abandoned at Harvard. Though
Speaker 1: Teddy wanted a natural history career after the fashion of
Speaker 1: the great naturalists like Alexander von Humboldt or John James Ottoman,
Speaker 1: he wanted to explore exotic locales and hunt and collect
Speaker 1: new species. By his time at Harvard, natural history had
Speaker 1: become a Darwinian exercise of laboratory work. Teddy and a
Speaker 1: fellow ornithology enthusiast, instead worked on and published The Summer
Speaker 1: Birds of the Adirondacks, and by his junior year, Roosevelt
Speaker 1: had decided that the professional natural sciences was not going
Speaker 1: to be his career. Long interested in history, and in
Speaker 1: writing interest that turned out to be a way to
Speaker 1: explore and hunt and collect in the imagination. With a
Speaker 1: heart over degree in hand, Roosevelt turned to a book
Speaker 1: project about how the American frontier had advanced from the
Speaker 1: Eastern seaboard westward. Although much of his story was set
Speaker 1: east of the Mississippi, with men like Daniel Boone and
Speaker 1: Davy Crockett as its heroes. Roosevelt called the book The
Speaker 1: Winning of the West. By this time in his life,
Speaker 1: Roosevelt had made a series of trips to outback Maine,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen eighty he and his younger brother Elliott
Speaker 1: journeyed to Iowa and Minnesota, where, as was common at
Speaker 1: the time, they killed more than four hundred birds and animals,
Speaker 1: yet were disappointed with their take. To this point in
Speaker 1: his life, Roosevelt had not yet been to the actual West,
Speaker 1: where in his imagination it was still possible to experience
Speaker 1: the world of the frontier hunters he was writing about.
Speaker 1: But in September eighteen eighty three, after running his first
Speaker 1: political campaign and getting elected as an assemblyman to the
Speaker 1: New York Legislature, he finally boarded a train with connections
Speaker 1: to the real West to Roosevelt. Cultured men looked to Europe,
Speaker 1: but manly men looked to the West for their inspiration.
Speaker 1: So his destination was as far in the Dakota territory
Speaker 1: as trains would take him, and his mission was specific.
Speaker 1: Roosevelt wanted to engage in that most western of acts,
Speaker 1: shooting a buffalo, before such a thing was no longer possible.
Speaker 1: His younger brother, by then was hunting tigers in India
Speaker 1: and had faced a stampeding buffalo herd in West Texas.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew buffalo were almost gone by then, but there
Speaker 1: were a few, and a buffalo had on the wall
Speaker 1: of your study would convey where your sympathies lay. Until
Speaker 1: the late eighteen eighties, however, Roosevelt else seems not to
Speaker 1: effaced the issue of declining animal populations with much awareness.
Speaker 1: His soon to be friend in the conservation field, journalist
Speaker 1: George Bird Grenelle, was already developing a much more progressive
Speaker 1: credo Roosevelt's, and hints the country's ideas about the natural
Speaker 1: world we'd inherited were about to be shaped into a
Speaker 1: modern form. By this Western experience, buffalo had become the
Speaker 1: mammalian representative of America for all the world in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, but their story had now taken a much
Speaker 1: darker tone. Everyone knew that American market hunters were killing
Speaker 1: buffalo by the thousands on a daily basis. The Last
Speaker 1: of the Buffalo became a phrase that defined the eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties the way the Roaring Twenties would define a decade
Speaker 1: forty years later. It was the decade when William Hornaday
Speaker 1: collected bison specimens for the Nash Museum's diorama, in the
Speaker 1: belief that this might be the only way future Americans
Speaker 1: would get to see buffalo. The painter Albert Berstott finished
Speaker 1: his grand oil The Last of the Buffalo in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 1: The same year, a band of Lakota's was massacred by
Speaker 1: the Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Need for performing a dance
Speaker 1: to return Buffalo to the West. Grinnell also chose The
Speaker 1: Last of the Buffalo as the title for his widely
Speaker 1: read book From Scribners and Sons. The demise of America's
Speaker 1: most iconic animal was in the air, and many wondered
Speaker 1: what that meant. In eighteen eighty three, though for Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: a buffalo trophy represented America's ultimate prize. Stepping off the
Speaker 1: train in North Dakota, he hired a guide named Joe Ferris, who,
Speaker 1: in perfect symmetry for that decade, was from eastern Canada
Speaker 1: and had himself only been on the scene in the
Speaker 1: West for a year. They made the Maltese Cross Ranch
Speaker 1: their headquarters and set out on horseback on what turned
Speaker 1: into a fifteen day quest. The days of Audubon describing
Speaker 1: the sound of the vast herds in this same country
Speaker 1: as resembling continuous rolling thunder were now gone forever. That
Speaker 1: year of Roosevelt's hunt, the Fort Benton shipper I. G.
Speaker 1: Baker sent a grand total of five thousand buffalo hides
Speaker 1: down the Missouri River. The next year he shipped none
Speaker 1: at all. The bison story was already exemplifying that in
Speaker 1: the scope of world history, the United States had engaged
Speaker 1: in a more complete destruction of wild animals and a
Speaker 1: wider diversity of them than any modern country in existence.
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's bison hunt was a revelation to him. Initially, he
Speaker 1: wrote his wife Alice, that buffalo are too rare for
Speaker 1: me to hope to get one. Over the course of
Speaker 1: two weeks of horseback travel that took them into Montana territory.
Speaker 1: They found a handful. Roosevelt wounded one bison he never found,
Speaker 1: and missed shots at another pair before finally downing an
Speaker 1: unsuspecting bull barely fifty yards distant, a handsome animal whose
Speaker 1: glossy fall coat was in fine trim and shone in
Speaker 1: the rays of the sun. He said, the celebration became
Speaker 1: the stuff of Western romance. Teddy did a freestyle Indian
Speaker 1: dance and paid Ferris one hundred dollars on the spot,
Speaker 1: hooked on the curious, fantastic beauty of the bad lands,
Speaker 1: before he departed, he bought an interest in his first
Speaker 1: ranch there, the Maltese Cross. On a return trip the
Speaker 1: next year, eighteen eighty four, he bought a second property,
Speaker 1: he called the Elkhorn, along the Little Missouri, the nearest
Speaker 1: neighbor twelve miles away. These Western experiences were pivotal in
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's life. They gave him a base of operations in
Speaker 1: the West and put him in contact with individuals whose
Speaker 1: characters stood naked in that setting. He later commented that
Speaker 1: he learned how to evaluate people in those years, an
Speaker 1: affirmation of his evolving belief and strength directness and the
Speaker 1: will to make things happen. He also learned much more
Speaker 1: now about the Western animals he had read about from Elkhorn.
Speaker 1: He hunted deer and pronghorns, and farther west in the
Speaker 1: Big Horns and the Bitter Roots, grizzlies, elk and moose.
Speaker 1: He hunted mountain goats in the Curdelanes, and caribou in
Speaker 1: the Selkirk Range. Working on the grand history that became
Speaker 1: the Winning of the West, Roosevelt concluded that this kind
Speaker 1: of life, a life roaming the wilderness and hunting, was
Speaker 1: the very path that had allowed Europeans to become Americans.
Speaker 1: Living it, he felt, as he put it, absolutely free
Speaker 1: as a man could feel. But experiencing the West of
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties was accompanied by a sadder realization. In
Speaker 1: a violation of his Western fantasies, Roosevelt was discovering that,
Speaker 1: in fact, there is not much game. Buffalo were gone,
Speaker 1: elk and deer, and grizzlies weren't far behind. When it
Speaker 1: shot his buffalo, he knew full well that it was,
Speaker 1: as he put it, part of the last remnant of
Speaker 1: a doomed and nearly vanished race. Yet he had still
Speaker 1: shot his bull. That had to have been on his
Speaker 1: mind when he began to realize that, in fact, everything
Speaker 1: seemed to be disappearing. This onslaught on Western nature was
Speaker 1: being delivered by what Roosevelt now referred to as skin
Speaker 1: hunters and greasy nimrods, all of them products of greed
Speaker 1: and self interest. The wild, wild West afforded remarkable freedom
Speaker 1: that was evident, but frontier anarchy without restraint was devouring
Speaker 1: the world with no regard whatsoever, either for its perpetuation
Speaker 1: or for future generations. This was unexpected and depressing, so
Speaker 1: was losing both his wife and his mother almost simultaneously
Speaker 1: that decade, which set him into an emotional spiral, calling
Speaker 1: on the sunshine and champagne air of the West. To
Speaker 1: help overcome these tragedies. Roosevelt turned to writing articles for
Speaker 1: a magazine called Outing, and working on a book he
Speaker 1: would title Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, which appeared in
Speaker 1: print in eighteen eighty five. By the time the Winner
Speaker 1: of eighteen eighty six eighty seven ruined his ranching operation,
Speaker 1: he had enough material for another pair of hunting books,
Speaker 1: Life and the Hunting Trail in eighteen eighty eight and
Speaker 1: The Wilderness Hunter in eighteen ninety three. These were the
Speaker 1: books that established Roosevelt's reputation as someone who knew the
Speaker 1: West and understood what was happening to it. They also
Speaker 1: brought him into contact with people who were about to
Speaker 1: push him much farther along the road to environmental thinking.
Speaker 1: Roosevelt met Grennell, editor of a famous conservation themed magazine
Speaker 1: called Forest and Stream, following Grennell's quite critical review of
Speaker 1: hunting Trips of a Ranchman, bursting into Grenell's office demanding
Speaker 1: to know why the journalists had been underwhelmed, Roosevelt ended
Speaker 1: up impressed with his fellow ivy leaguer's knowledge of the
Speaker 1: state of the West and its fast declining wildlife. With
Speaker 1: Grennell's coaching and friendship over the next fifteen years of
Speaker 1: his career, Roosevelt launched the intellectual journey that was ultimately
Speaker 1: transform America and bring it into the twentieth century. Their
Speaker 1: organization of elite hunters, the Boone and Crocket Club, along
Speaker 1: with Grennell's automn Society, provided platforms that translated their Western
Speaker 1: experiences into a rethinking about freedom and nature. The particular
Speaker 1: epiphany that became the foundation for this rethinking wasn't an
Speaker 1: easy one, but for those who loved American nature, the
Speaker 1: evidence for it was everywhere. Pure self interests of the
Speaker 1: Adam Smith sort, which had driven capitalism for most of
Speaker 1: American history, was growing close to leaving nothing for the future.
Speaker 1: Largely through witnessing the loss of the wild animals he loved,
Speaker 1: Roosevelt was coming to an undergirding principle for the political
Speaker 1: revolution known as progressivism. Capitalism's excesses, it turned out, we're
Speaker 1: going to have to be curbed and regulated, and the
Speaker 1: lesson then being offered by railroad and oil company domination
Speaker 1: of state governments meant to Roosevelt and progressives that the
Speaker 1: only entity truly powerful enough to regulate capitalism was the
Speaker 1: federal government. In search of a word that might symbolize
Speaker 1: what he had in mind, Roosevelt borrowed the term conservation
Speaker 1: from British governance of India. To conserve something meant to
Speaker 1: save it, to ensure its perpetuation. As an American, Roosevelt
Speaker 1: saw conservation in democratic terms. He would develop programs wherein
Speaker 1: the federal government would conserve American nature for what he
Speaker 1: called the greatest good, for the greatest number, and for
Speaker 1: the longest period of time a great country and a
Speaker 1: great civilization, Roosevelt believed needed to understand Danned itself. The
Speaker 1: first step involved taking some sort of action to curb
Speaker 1: the market hunt for wildlife that for three centuries had
Speaker 1: systematically destroyed everything from deer, turkey, great auks, passenger pigeons,
Speaker 1: and plume birds like snowy egrets in the East, to
Speaker 1: a near obliteration of Western wildlife, most shamefully America's iconic animal,
Speaker 1: the bison. Until nineteen hundred, the US federal government had
Speaker 1: stood by and allowed unregulated capitalism to have its way
Speaker 1: with wildlife. But in that year an Iowa congressman named
Speaker 1: John Lacy stepped forward with a plan to engage Washington
Speaker 1: in halting these abominations. Lacey acquired his status with the
Speaker 1: new wildlife activists following a series of celebrated incidents in
Speaker 1: Yellowstone Park in the early eighteen nineties. US Army game
Speaker 1: warden Ed Wilson had tested a notorious park poacher, whom
Speaker 1: a local judge promptly released, citing a lack of any
Speaker 1: law to prosecute him. A few weeks later, Wilson vanished
Speaker 1: without a trace. Other wardens found Wilson's hidden remains. A
Speaker 1: year later, that story brought a forest and Stream reporter
Speaker 1: to Yellowstone, who soon elicited from another poacher that his
Speaker 1: own arrest and release had involved the massacre of eighty buffalo,
Speaker 1: most of the bison still left in the park at
Speaker 1: that point, Lacey introduced and secured passage in Congress of
Speaker 1: the eighteen ninety four Yellowstone Park Protection Act with one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars fines for killing wildlife. Six years later, Lacey
Speaker 1: decided to take on the biggest monster of them all,
Speaker 1: a practice that since colonial days, could have made fair progress,
Speaker 1: filling the Grand Canyon with the bodies of all the
Speaker 1: American birds and animals killed for money. White haired, bearded slender.
Speaker 1: Lacey was about to turn sixty in history and in
Speaker 1: his career. The time had come calling on the federal
Speaker 1: government's constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. Lacey drew up
Speaker 1: an act he called the wild Birds and Game Preservation
Speaker 1: Act that at last landed a body blow on the
Speaker 1: wild animal's economy. At long last, a federal law stopped
Speaker 1: the shipping of slain birds, animals, and their body parts
Speaker 1: from states where market hunting was still legal to states
Speaker 1: where it wasn't. It was already too late for passenger
Speaker 1: pigeons and wild bison. It verged on too late for
Speaker 1: snowy egrets, Carolina parakeets, and a lengthening list of others.
Speaker 1: But the Lacy Act finally put a long hesitant US
Speaker 1: federal government in play. His speech describing the bill before Congress,
Speaker 1: Lacey referenced both passenger pigeons and bison, but he proclaimed
Speaker 1: that all was not lost, that there still remains much
Speaker 1: to preserve. As he put it in truth, the Laciact
Speaker 1: put the burden for enlightened laws on the states. Following
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court case that ruled that wildlife was the
Speaker 1: property of the states where the animals resided. States now
Speaker 1: began creating what they called game departments and enacting policies
Speaker 1: on behalf of at least some of their wild animals.
Speaker 1: For guidance in that endeavor, they looked to the New
Speaker 1: US Biological Survey, headed up by another Ivy leaguer, C.
Speaker 1: Heart Miriam. In nineteen oh one, when an assassin's bullet
Speaker 1: cut down President William McKinley early in his second term,
Speaker 1: his vice president was a forty two year old former
Speaker 1: New York congressman and city mayor who Republican Party operatives
Speaker 1: referred to as that damned cowboy. Teddy Roosevelt, the youngest
Speaker 1: man ever to serve as president, with a prodigious, manic,
Speaker 1: depressive personality, had the chance to transform America fall into
Speaker 1: his lap. Here was a stunning opportunity to take on
Speaker 1: the issues that had dominated his life since childhood. If celebrated,
Speaker 1: individual freedom was the very cause of the destruction of
Speaker 1: America's animals, not to mention its forest, its grasslands, its fisheries,
Speaker 1: its archaeological sites. Then expanding government power to regulate such
Speaker 1: freedom was the only course that could preserve the country.
Speaker 1: What he and his policymakers called conservation became his personal
Speaker 1: campaign to save the animals and landscapes he believed had
Speaker 1: created Homo Americanus in the first place. The whole standpoint
Speaker 1: of the people toward the proper aim of government, Roosevelt
Speaker 1: would write, were brought out first by this conservation work.
Speaker 1: The proper aim of government, he was now convinced, was
Speaker 1: to moderate the selfishness and thoughtlessness inherent in human nature.
Speaker 1: What conservation and progressivism would do was set America on
Speaker 1: a different path a sharp detour from the three century
Speaker 1: attempt to make the US a clone of the countries
Speaker 1: of Western Europe. The idea was to create a nation
Speaker 1: that stood separate and new. Nothing in Roosevelt's programs said that,
Speaker 1: quite like his enthusiastic endorsement once he became president of
Speaker 1: the existing public land system, Roosevelt's massive additions to this
Speaker 1: distinctly American form of land ownership and public access, in
Speaker 1: the form of new national parks, national forests, wildlife and
Speaker 1: bird refuges, and national monuments amounted to a wholesale reset.
Speaker 1: I'll have more to say in the next episode about
Speaker 1: the origins and direction of America's public lands. One of
Speaker 1: our very best contributions to world ideas and policy. But
Speaker 1: it was Teddy Roosevelt who took that embryonic system and
Speaker 1: made it a badge of American uniqueness. Histories of the
Speaker 1: presidency tend to label Roosevelt's conservation programs as one of
Speaker 1: the nation's grand transformative policy triumphs, and that claim is
Speaker 1: no exaggeration. Conservation's successes were breathtaking. To begin, Roosevelt oversaw
Speaker 1: the creation of six new national parks, a form of
Speaker 1: preserved wildlands America had invented with Yellowstone and Yosemite three
Speaker 1: decades earlier, with Pelican Island in Florida, which he designated
Speaker 1: by executive order in nineteen o three as a reserve
Speaker 1: and breeding ground for native birds, and continuing with a
Speaker 1: pair of National Bison Ranges in Oklahoma and Montana to
Speaker 1: rescue our iconic mammal. Then on through his Lame Duck period,
Speaker 1: when new bird reservations, a total of fifty one of them,
Speaker 1: seemed to precipitate like rain from the heavens, Roosevelt created
Speaker 1: a national wildlife refuge system that preserved millions of acres
Speaker 1: of prize bird and mammal habitat. The forest reserves that
Speaker 1: he and Grenell celebrated in the eighteen nineties were at
Speaker 1: forty two million acres when Roosevelt assumed the presidency. Renamed
Speaker 1: National Forests by Roosevelt's Chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, they swelled
Speaker 1: to one hundred and seventy two million acres, including Tongas
Speaker 1: a seventeen million acre monster in Alaska by the time
Speaker 1: Roosevelt left office. Using the New Antiquities Act of nineteen
Speaker 1: oh six to protect America's archaeological sites, and to set
Speaker 1: aside landscapes of unique geological importance. He proclaimed another extensive
Speaker 1: body of preserves from the public lands in the form
Speaker 1: of eighteen National monuments, a new conservation category. Devil's Tower
Speaker 1: in Wyoming, one of many scores of nature spots Christian
Speaker 1: Americans had assigned a Satanic association, became the first of these,
Speaker 1: but the Grand Canyon itself was another of those early
Speaker 1: national monuments. In just eight years, Roosevelt removed more than
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty million acres of General Land Office
Speaker 1: holdings from private entry, retaining them in public ownership, setting
Speaker 1: aside more public lands than any other president, and transforming
Speaker 1: the future of the country in the process. Us Providing
Speaker 1: refuges for America's big mammals and birds was a primary
Speaker 1: reason he did almost all of it. Douglas Brinkley's Wilderness Warrior,
Speaker 1: probably the best recent biography of him, lays that triumphant
Speaker 1: story out in point by point detail. But Roosevelt was human, and,
Speaker 1: as are we all, a product of his time and place.
Speaker 1: While he could explain the tragedy of wildlife loss with
Speaker 1: lovely analogies, the destruction of the wild pigeon and the
Speaker 1: Carolina parakeet has meant a loss as severe as if
Speaker 1: the catskills or the palisades were taken away. He wrote,
Speaker 1: when I hear of.
Speaker 2: The destruction of a species, I feel just as if
Speaker 2: all the works of some great writer had perished. But
Speaker 2: despite that, he resisted drawing the conclusions from Darwin that
Speaker 2: many disciples thought the great naturalists intended. Roosevelt had grown
Speaker 2: up verse in Darwin read Darwin himself when he was
Speaker 2: a young teenager floating the Nile, believed from that point
Speaker 2: onward that humans were indeed primates that had evolved from
Speaker 2: earlier forms. Nonetheless, the animals he hunted did not, perhaps
Speaker 2: for him, simply could not become evolutionary near ken of humans.
Speaker 2: While Roosevelt was president, his writer friend John Burrows precipitated
Speaker 2: a public controversy about the accuracy of a popular new genre,
Speaker 2: a form of literary natural history that attempted to provide
Speaker 2: insight into the lives of wild animals. Most of the
Speaker 2: new authors of animal stories were not scientists, but many
Speaker 2: of them, notably John Mure, Jack London, and Canadian writer
Speaker 2: Ernest Thompson Seaton, had extensive outdoor experience and employed scientific methodology. Setan,
Speaker 2: ironically enough, won the John Burrows Medal for his Comprehensive
Speaker 2: Lives of Game Animals book.
Speaker 1: William T. Horneby praised Setan's work. Looking back on this
Speaker 1: nature Faker controversy, labeled so by Roosevelt from today's vantage,
Speaker 1: what seems apparent is that its practitioners were trying to
Speaker 1: take on the big implications of Darwinism in the world
Speaker 1: around them. Theirs was a response, and it strongly appealed
Speaker 1: to the reading public to the bleak nature read in
Speaker 1: Tooth and Claw conclusions that Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and
Speaker 1: Alfred Lord Tennyson drew from evolution. Instead of finding humans
Speaker 1: condemned because we'd turned out to be mere animals, nature
Speaker 1: writers like Seaton looked for examples among birds and mammals
Speaker 1: of traits Humans admired compassion, cooperation, loyalty, and ability to
Speaker 1: reason and to transfer cultural learning across generations, and most
Speaker 1: of all, self awareness and individuality. In one of Setan's
Speaker 1: stories and Scribner's in nineteen hundred, a captured female coyote
Speaker 1: named Tito Sits chained in a ranchyard observing the technique
Speaker 1: Stockmann are using to wipe out the coyote kind. When
Speaker 1: she escapes and has litters of her own, she passes
Speaker 1: on her knowledge about how to avoid traps in poison, which,
Speaker 1: in Seatan's telling, was why coyotes were surviving when so
Speaker 1: many other creatures were not. In his famous wolf story
Speaker 1: Lobo King of Corompa, Seatan wrote about a canny New
Speaker 1: Mexico wolf with one fatal flaw his fidelity to his mate.
Speaker 1: As he put the matter in Wild Animals I have known.
Speaker 1: Seatan's theme will use we and the beasts are ken
Speaker 1: given the perspective of contemporary twenty first century bird and
Speaker 1: mammal research, with its emphasis on self awareness, tool use,
Speaker 1: theory of mind, perceptions of fairness, cultural transmission, grief over
Speaker 1: the loss of mates, and individuality, all those things these
Speaker 1: writers seemed to be working with all that seemed to
Speaker 1: be lacking In the best writings of the Seaton London
Speaker 1: your genre were double blind, replicable experiments. But at the
Speaker 1: time the well respected Burrows, furious at what he saw
Speaker 1: as chicanery, went on the attack. Non human animals, Burrows thundered,
Speaker 1: were purely creatures of instinct, nothing more. That drew Roosevelt
Speaker 1: into the fray. Simply enough, the nature fakers were misleading
Speaker 1: their readers, he told the public. In a private communication
Speaker 1: to the editor of Collier's magazine, Roosevelt went further. He
Speaker 1: echoed the lines in Darwin's The Descent of Man when
Speaker 1: he wrote the editor, I believe that the higher mammals
Speaker 1: and birds have reasoning powers which differ in degree rather
Speaker 1: than kind, from those of humans. But he continued, he
Speaker 1: meant different in degree from the lower reasoning powers of,
Speaker 1: for instance, the lower savages. In other words, if we
Speaker 1: can take this astonishing comment literally, Roosevelt believed the resonances
Speaker 1: and parallels between animals and humanity did not really apply
Speaker 1: to modern first world humans, only to tribal indigenous peoples
Speaker 1: who were lower in their evolutionary progress. Obviously, Roosevelt had
Speaker 1: not absorbed the lessons of Colombian anthropologist Franz Boaz, who
Speaker 1: was already arguing against Western ethnocentrism by positing that all
Speaker 1: humans were equally evolved, but with cultures that followed very
Speaker 1: different trajectories. Jack London at least would eventually get a
Speaker 1: measure of revenge, telling Colliers readers that the truth was
Speaker 1: that President Roosevelt does not understand evolution, and he does
Speaker 1: not seem to have made much of an attempt to
Speaker 1: understand evolution. That sentiment surfaced in a particularly troubling way
Speaker 1: in Roosevelt's public endorsement of a book by fellow Ivy
Speaker 1: leaguer and conservationist Madison Grant Grants. The passing of the
Speaker 1: Great Race, with its advocacy of eugenics, made enough of
Speaker 1: a white nationalist case to impress Adolf Hitler while getting
Speaker 1: ridiculed in f. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The first
Speaker 1: time I visited the American Museum of Natural History, I'll
Speaker 1: confess to doing a double take of the staff of
Speaker 1: Teddy outside the main entrance. It presented Roosevelt as the
Speaker 1: classic great man on horseback looking out over Manhattan Central Park,
Speaker 1: innocent enough until you realize that he was being flanked
Speaker 1: and escorted by both Native and African Americans on foot
Speaker 1: on either side of him. The effect in modern New
Speaker 1: York was jarring enough that in January of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: the statue was taken down. John Muir got in a
Speaker 1: twist of the knife two, making a case for protecting
Speaker 1: a much bigger piece of Yosemite, including the Twoalomy Canyon,
Speaker 1: soon to be the target of a dam Muir, and
Speaker 1: the President spent three nights camping in Yosemite without bodyguards.
Speaker 1: That gave the legendary writer activists No Shrinking Violet himself
Speaker 1: a chance to confront Roosevelt around their campfire. Question was
Speaker 1: something many had wondered about, but only the Scottish Poetico
Speaker 1: Trampo was willing to broach. Mister Roosevelt, when are you
Speaker 1: going to get beyond the boyishness of killing things? Author
Speaker 1: of numerous books and magazine articles on hunting, probably already
Speaker 1: planning the African safari he would take as soon as
Speaker 1: he was out of office. Roosevelt's response was an evasive mure,
Speaker 1: I guess you're right. Roosevelt then went on to support
Speaker 1: the O'Shaughnessy doawm in Yosemite Park, and in an eight
Speaker 1: month expedition to Africa in nineteen oh nine, proceeded to
Speaker 1: shoot five thirteen mammals, four hundred and forty three birds,
Speaker 1: and two three hundred and twenty two reptiles and amphibians,
Speaker 1: all for science and the Smithsonian's cabinets. Of course, so then,
Speaker 1: like everyone else who lived in the past, roosevelt worldview
Speaker 1: did not always conform to our sense of right and
Speaker 1: wrong in the present. But Teddy Roosevelt still works for
Speaker 1: me as an American hero. The country lost something of
Speaker 1: incalculable value when, as the author of yet another book
Speaker 1: he titled The Strenuous Life, Teddy Roosevelt stepped away from
Speaker 1: the presidency in nineteen o nine after serving only one
Speaker 1: full term, then went on his safari in Africa, followed
Speaker 1: by his exploration and mapping of the least known remaining
Speaker 1: source tributary of the Great Amazon River. Back home, the
Speaker 1: most nature obsessed president since Thomas Jefferson had turned the
Speaker 1: country over to his successor, portly William Howard Taft, whose
Speaker 1: passion about outdoor endeavor was for the rugged and manly
Speaker 1: sport of golf.
Speaker 3: Dan At the beginning of this episode, as I was
Speaker 3: reading through the script, one thing really struck me, and
Speaker 3: I think, when all the real famous anecdotes about Teddy
Speaker 3: Roosevelt come to mind, he sort of has this boyish
Speaker 3: quality to him, And as I'm reading this script, you
Speaker 3: realize just how young he was when he's doing a
Speaker 3: lot of this stuff. Like he goes when he goes
Speaker 3: to hunt the Last Buffalo, he's twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: And you think about when he bursts into George Bird
Speaker 3: Grenell's office to argue with him. He's still in his twenties,
Speaker 3: that's right, and that sort of behavior all of a
Speaker 3: sudden starts to make a little more sense. Obviously he
Speaker 3: carried that with him, but even the Boone and Crockett Club,
Speaker 3: he's less than thirty years old when he establishes that.
Speaker 3: And that really struck me in the first part of
Speaker 3: this episode was how active he was from finishing at
Speaker 3: Harvard up until you know, his early thirties.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean he becomes president when he's forty two,
Speaker 1: and that's in nineteen oh one. So those those scenes
Speaker 1: in the beginning of this particular episode happened in the eighties,
Speaker 1: you know, and so it's like he, as you said,
Speaker 1: he's in his twenties, and so he's a very young man.
Speaker 1: He's you know, and he's sort of got what almost
Speaker 1: certainly one would argue as a kind of a manic,
Speaker 1: depressive kind of personality. And fortunately for America and the world,
Speaker 1: he's in the manic stage for most of his life.
Speaker 1: I mean, he certainly has some moments of depression. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's a very young guy, and he's you know,
Speaker 1: and he's ambitious, and of course he comes out of
Speaker 1: this kind of patrician, elite New York family that enables
Speaker 1: him to kind of view the world as his oyster.
Speaker 1: He can do anything he wants to do. He can
Speaker 1: be any kind of person he wants to be, and
Speaker 1: what he decides he wants to be from a very
Speaker 1: early age. Just he wants to be a naturalist. He
Speaker 1: wants to sort of be Alexander von Humboldt or you know,
Speaker 1: John James Ottoman, someone like that who gets to go
Speaker 1: out into the world and have adventures and hunt, and
Speaker 1: he hunts throughout his life everywhere he goes, even on
Speaker 1: that Brazilian adventure on the Real to Do, I mean,
Speaker 1: he takes time out to go in a jaguar hunt
Speaker 1: and he gets himself a jaguar on that particular trip too.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of he's a person who had every
Speaker 1: opportunity to do whatever he wanted to do in life,
Speaker 1: but he knew from a very early age what it was,
Speaker 1: and I mean he went for it with a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of energy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Think another point that stood out to me in this
Speaker 3: chapter is you emphasize how his conservation ethos fit within
Speaker 3: this broader progressive stage in American political development. And I
Speaker 3: think that's unless you've studied progressivism and you're familiar with
Speaker 3: it as a movement at the turn of the century,
Speaker 3: it sort of gets left out of our understanding of conservation.
Speaker 3: But I wonder if you can talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about what you mean when you when you refer to
Speaker 3: the progressivism of the Roosevelt era and sort of what
Speaker 3: shape that took and what impulse has guided it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a useful question to be sure, to provide
Speaker 1: some context. I mean, what I did with the script
Speaker 1: for this particular episode was to couch progressivism for Roosevelt
Speaker 1: primarily in conservation, and that's I think that's the natural
Speaker 1: direction from which he comes to it. But progressivism was
Speaker 1: a kind of a bigger movement an American life in
Speaker 1: those years, a political movement. It was a movement that
Speaker 1: prevailed in both parties, both the Republican and the Democratic parties.
Speaker 1: And I mean Roosevelt was a Republican, but he was
Speaker 1: certainly strongly influenced by progressivism, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: an argument at the turn of the century that capitalism,
Speaker 1: particularly big corporate capitalism that was emerging in those days,
Speaker 1: was a pretty scary force in American life and it
Speaker 1: needed to be corralled and rained in some and the
Speaker 1: argument became in the conservation realm and in several other
Speaker 1: realms that the federal government was the primary player in
Speaker 1: doing that, although many of the states had strong progressive
Speaker 1: kind of political developments as well. But the idea was
Speaker 1: to insert the government, whether at the state level or
Speaker 1: the federal level, into the economic life of the country
Speaker 1: in order to do things like regulating drugs that were
Speaker 1: sold in pharmacies and having the government began to intervene
Speaker 1: in making sure that the food that was sold in
Speaker 1: grocery stores was healthy, and it extended to child labor
Speaker 1: laws and a variety of different things. What I try
Speaker 1: to do in this particular script, as I mentioned a
Speaker 1: minute ago, is to counch what Roosevelt's particular passion about
Speaker 1: progressivism is in the conservation movement that establishes very much
Speaker 1: the beginnings of the whole environmental movement in the United States.
Speaker 1: And this, of course is one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago that this happens. But much of what becomes
Speaker 1: the kind of framework of conservation and environmental thinking in
Speaker 1: America comes out of this particular period, and it does involve,
Speaker 1: as Roosevelt said, a different role for the government than
Speaker 1: had been the case in American life up to this point.
Speaker 1: So if you're a fan of, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: the anarchy of the wild wild West, this is the
Speaker 1: point at which Americans, in particularly someone like Tady Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: who thinks that he says, a great civilization and a
Speaker 1: great country needs to understand itself that you have to
Speaker 1: step in and say, Okay, you know that level of
Speaker 1: freedom is great, but we're going to have to regulate
Speaker 1: things and make sure that just kind of pure selfishness
Speaker 1: doesn't prevail to the detriment of the future.
Speaker 3: Especially And the other sort of intellectual thread that shapes
Speaker 3: Roosevelt's world view is, as you point out, that of Darwinism,
Speaker 3: and you also point out that he fit within a
Speaker 3: ongoing debate between what the implications of Darwinism were and
Speaker 3: how that I mean, I think it's interesting to to
Speaker 3: to point out that you can look at a wild
Speaker 3: animal and think of it in two very different ways
Speaker 3: through the lens of Darwinism. Yeah, as you did in
Speaker 3: this in this chapter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I tried. I tried to do this in
Speaker 1: a way to provide a kind of a fresh look
Speaker 1: at that sort of famous nature faker controversy where Roosevelt
Speaker 1: and William Burrows in particular, charge these writers like Jack
Speaker 1: London and John Muir and Ernest Thompson Seaton with with
Speaker 1: faking the animals that they were writing about, and h
Speaker 1: the truth is, with the perspective of another one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five years of research, it looks as if
Speaker 1: actually the people who were getting it right were probably
Speaker 1: the writers themselves, you know. And I think Roosevelt stepping
Speaker 1: into the fray, which he, of course he couldn't resist doing.
Speaker 1: Or one thing, this was a subject dear to his heart,
Speaker 1: and for another thing, he's you know, he inhabits the
Speaker 1: bully pulpit as the president, and he tends to sort
Speaker 1: of step into every debate that's out there. And I
Speaker 1: think that what you get out of that story, as
Speaker 1: I told it in this particular episode, is probably a
Speaker 1: fresh look at how this played out and who in
Speaker 1: fact probably had the better notions about the relationship that
Speaker 1: people and other animals have. I mean, you know, I've
Speaker 1: always loved that line that Ernest Thompson Seatan uses in
Speaker 1: Wild Animals. I have known where he says, we and
Speaker 1: the beasts are ken, and that's what these writers are
Speaker 1: trying to convey. But Burrows and Roosevelt in particular pushed back.
Speaker 1: They were resistant to that, and so it makes for
Speaker 1: a kind of an interesting take on Roosevelt. I mean,
Speaker 1: we tend to think of him, you know, in pretty
Speaker 1: heroic terms, but sometimes he wasn't right about things, and
Speaker 1: I think this may have been one of those times.
Speaker 3: And at the beginning you link him and maybe again
Speaker 3: at the end you link him to Jefferson as the
Speaker 3: two you know, chief executives who are most interested in
Speaker 3: the West. And Jefferson I think, you know, they both
Speaker 3: have a curiosity about animals and landscapes. But when it
Speaker 3: comes to their legacy, sort of thing about Jefferson as
Speaker 3: redrawing the bound and then Roosevelt is sort of reorganizing
Speaker 3: internally what the West would look like in terms of
Speaker 3: public lands and and all that. So, yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: often think of the two of them in the same
Speaker 3: in the same breath. But it's an interesting, Uh, it's
Speaker 3: an interesting pair to just sort of consider the similarities
Speaker 3: between the two.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, you know, and I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 1: when I began associating Jefferson and Roosevelt, although the West
Speaker 1: is a common denominator for both of them. Uh, And
Speaker 1: in a podcast like this, I mean, we sort of
Speaker 1: started back in some of the early episodes with Jefferson
Speaker 1: and Lewis and Clark and the expedition up the Red
Speaker 1: River into the Southwest. So there's a there's a kind
Speaker 1: of a natural combination there, I think. But at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, in my thinking over the years, I began
Speaker 1: to sort of look at American presidents and say, okay,
Speaker 1: so among them, who were the ones who are sort
Speaker 1: of interested in the kind of values that I'm interested
Speaker 1: in in nature, in wilderness, in landscapes and wild animals.
Speaker 1: And the two, of course who immediately pop to the
Speaker 1: top of that list are Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: And you know, and since Roosevelt, it's difficult to really
Speaker 1: find another American president. I mean, for one thing, we
Speaker 1: don't have very many presidents coming from the West, where
Speaker 1: as a result of the lifestyle we get to have
Speaker 1: in the American West that you know, it's probably more
Speaker 1: possible for someone to be interested in those kinds of subjects.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's almost as if Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson are the almost the only ones who have that
Speaker 1: kind of concern, and so that makes them kind of
Speaker 1: particular heroes of people who are interested in Western history.
Speaker 3: And last question here, which dovetails nicely with that answer,
Speaker 3: we do often think about Roosevelt as a hero. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, he's one of these figures, as you
Speaker 3: point out the big controversy over his statue outside of
Speaker 3: the American Museum of Natural History, And he's one of
Speaker 3: those figures where I think he's obviously you can read
Speaker 3: things that he's written, and he espouses viewpoints and values
Speaker 3: they're at odds with my own viewpoints and values. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, you can't help but acknowledge the tremendous
Speaker 3: amount of good he did for wild places, wild animals
Speaker 3: and all that. And so I don't know, I don't
Speaker 3: know if there's necessarily a question there, but he's sort
Speaker 3: of like an uncle where you don't really agree with
Speaker 3: everything he says, but you don't dismiss him out of
Speaker 3: hand for for what some might chalk up todays like these,
Speaker 3: these horrible you know, racial views things of that nature,
Speaker 3: especially when you lump them in with characters like Madison
Speaker 3: Grant and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it was unfortunate that he he blurbd
Speaker 1: in Madison Grant some book of Course, which is a
Speaker 1: book that a lot of people regard as an unfortunate
Speaker 1: production from someone in the United States who shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been thinking in those terms. But you know what I
Speaker 1: will say, and I said it in the script here,
Speaker 1: is that you you know, as someone who's interested in history.
Speaker 1: And I know Randall you know this too, because we
Speaker 1: used to talk about it in graduate classes. You have
Speaker 1: to think about people in terms of the times they
Speaker 1: live in. And I mean you can't look at someone
Speaker 1: like Teddy Roosevelt and say, okay, so this guy, he
Speaker 1: should be smart enough to understand the way we think
Speaker 1: in in the twenty twenties. I mean, the truth is
Speaker 1: a century from now, we have no idea what thoughts
Speaker 1: and expressions and values that we have that might be
Speaker 1: regarded as completely unsatisfactory to somebody living one hundred years
Speaker 1: in the future, and so I have a difficult time
Speaker 1: looking back on people like that and divorcing them from
Speaker 1: their time and the period they're living in and trying
Speaker 1: to evaluate them based on how we would look at
Speaker 1: them today. It doesn't mean I'm not willing to say
Speaker 1: things as I did in the script about the particular
Speaker 1: statu I mean, that wasn't Teddy Roosevelt. That was you know,
Speaker 1: other people using the Roosevelt image. But he did do
Speaker 1: the Madison Grant thing, and he did say some unfortunate
Speaker 1: things about what groups of people, you know, might actually
Speaker 1: share the cultures and abilities of wild animals, And it
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, Western humanity and his view. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the people who sat around the dinner table with him.
Speaker 1: In other words, So I think that you can be
Speaker 1: critical and understand somebody in the past, but also try
Speaker 1: not to, you know, to just completely dismiss them. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's an unfortunate thing that we've been doing recently,
Speaker 1: and I'm encouraged a little bit by the fact that
Speaker 1: I think we're getting to get over that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there does seem to be a bit of a
Speaker 3: bit more pause.
Speaker 1: I think there's a bit more pause, and I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we're trained as historians to think
Speaker 1: in terms of history, and historicism is about doing that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, understanding that people occupy a particular point
Speaker 1: in time, and you have to understand their time to
Speaker 1: fully appreciate who they are.
Speaker 3: Well, Dan, thank you. Always fun to chat Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: It is indeed no kidding used to music music