Along with serving two terms as the President of the United States between 1901 and 1909,
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt also had a laundry list of supremely manly escapades throughout
his life, such as the time he was shot in the chest in an assassination attempt, but
went ahead and gave a lengthy speech he'd planned anyway before seeking medical attention.
(See our video on the subject linked below) Another such story he was often fond of telling
came from his brief stint as a deputy sheriff for Billings County, North Dakota.
Originally Roosevelt only travelled to what were then the badlands of North Dakota to
hunt buffalo in 1883, but the future president became so enamoured with frontier life and
the beauty of the natural landscape that he decided to build himself a log cabin, buy
a few cows and tend to the herd as a way of escaping the monotony of everyday life in
New York City. Since we're talking about Teddy Roosevelt,
a man who never did things halfway, when we say he "bought a few cows" to serve his new
hobby of ranching, we of course mean that he bought several hundred. These cows were
left under the care of the Chimney Butte ranch, of which Roosevelt bought a considerable stake.
Roosevelt being Roosevelt reportedly loved being a cowboy and he threw himself into any
and every job the ranch required whenever he visited.
When Roosevelt casually bought a few hundred more cows a year later in 1884, he established
the Elkhorn Ranch so that he'd have a place to store them all. As for why Roosevelt doubled-down
on his little ranching hobby, it's believed it was as a result of the fact that Roosevelt’s
wife, Alice, died of undiagnosed kidney failure shortly after giving birth to their daughter
Alice in 1884. This was on the same day and in the same house that his mother died of
typhoid fever, just 11 hours earlier. In response, he simply put a giant X in his journal and
wrote one sentence under it: “The light has gone out of my life.”
Perhaps seeking escape, Elkhorn Ranch was born.
It was during his tenure as a rancher that Roosevelt also decided to try his grizzled
hand at being a lawman, and although the post of deputy sheriff didn't offer any pay save
for remuneration on any travel costs incurred while on duty and a small stipend for any
arrests made, Roosevelt nonetheless dedicated himself to this job with the trademark go-getting,
no-nonsense attitude that would later become synonymous with his presidency.
In particular, Roosevelt felt that he had a moral duty to ensure criminals should receive
a fair trial at the hands of the law and he was absolutely dogged in his determination
when it came to pursuing those who'd committed any act of wrong doing, something he was only
too happy to prove in March of 1886 when he was informed that the only boat on his ranch
(and for many miles around) had been stolen. The boat in question was what Roosevelt used
to cross the Little Missouri River to hunt and tend to his cattle. According to Roosevelt,
“We had no doubt as to who had stolen it; for whoever had done so had certainly gone
down the river in it, and the only other thing in the shape of a boat on the Little Missouri
was a small flat-bottomed scow in the possession of three hard characters who lived in a shack,
or hut, some twenty miles above us, and whom we had shrewdly suspected for some time of
wishing to get out of the country, as certain of the cattlemen had begun openly to threaten
to lynch them. They belonged to a class that always holds sway during the raw youth of
a frontier community, and the putting down of which is the first step toward decent government...”
The thieves, who were described by Roosevelt as "a well-built fellow named [Michael] Finnigan",
"a half-breed, a stout, muscular man" called Burnsted and "an old German, whose viciousness
was of the weak and shiftless type" called Pfaffenbach, had each been implicated in a
number of crimes including cattle rustling, murder and, oddly less forgivable at the time,
horse theft. The thieves had apparently stumbled upon Roosevelt's boat while absconding from
a nearby crime scene, reasoning that nobody could follow them down the river which was
currently almost impassable due to a combination of a storm and severely icy weather resulting
in much of the river being frozen. Although the boat itself was of relatively
little value, only being worth about $30 ($750 today), and the weather was dangerously bad,
Roosevelt felt that by not pursuing the thieves, he would be ignoring his moral obligation
as a lawman to pursue any criminal. Further, he reasoned,
“In any wild country where the power of law is little felt or heeded, and where every
one has to rely upon himself for protection, men soon get to feel that it is in the highest
degree unwise to submit to any wrong…no matter what cost of risk or trouble. To submit
tamely and meekly to theft or to any other injury is to invite almost certain repetition
of the offense, in a place where self-reliant hardihood and the ability to hold one’s
own under all circumstances rank as the first of virtues.”
So as soon as he became aware of the theft, he called on his two most trusted ranch hands,
Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow and informed them that they were going to hunt the thieves down;
a bold claim considering the thieves had stolen his only viable means of transport for such
an endeavour and that the ranch was currently in the middle of an ice storm that had already
killed 60% of the cows Roosevelt owned. Catching up to the thieves on horseback in that weather
simply wasn't an option. Roosevelt and his companions spent the next
three days building themselves a brand new boat with which to pursue the thieves down
the icy river. Yes, Roosevelt built himself a new boat just to track down and arrest the
men who'd stolen his other boat, even though it would be at great risk to his own life
from the combination of the weather, potentially hostile Native Americans in the region, and
that the men he was hunting were well armed and would have little qualms about simply
shooting him and leaving his body where no one would ever find it.
Using his skills as an expert hunter, Roosevelt was able to easily track the thieves down
river and find their camp, which he happened to stumble upon while two of the thieves were
gone hunting. Given that the thieves had not expected any pursuit, having stolen the only
boat for many miles around and that catching up by horse in that weather would have been
impossible, they were lax, allowing his group to easily ambush the third member of the posse.
As Roosevelt said, "The only one in camp was the German, whose weapons were on the ground,
and who, of course, gave up at once..." They then,
“made him safe, delegating one of our number to look after him particularly and see that
he made no noise, and then sat down and waited for the others. The camp was under the lee
of a cut bank, behind which we crouched, and, after waiting an hour or over, the men we
were after came in. We heard them a long way off and made ready, watching them for some
minutes as they walked toward us, their rifles on their shoulders and the sunlight glinting
on the steel barrels. When they were within twenty yards or so we straightened up from
behind the bank, covering them with our cocked rifles, while I shouted to them to hold up
their hands – an order that in such a case, in the West, a man is not apt to disregard
if he thinks the giver is in earnest. The half-breed obeyed at once, his knees trembling
for a second, his eyes fairly wolfish; then, as I walked up within a few paces, covering
the centre of his chest so as to avoid overshooting, and repeating the command, he saw that he
had no show, and, with an oath, let his rifle drop and held his hands up beside his head.”
Rather than shooting or hanging the men on the spot, which he was entirely within his
rights to do, Roosevelt vowed that each man would receive a fair trial.
Originally Roosevelt's group had planned to float down river with the thieves to the nearest
town, Dickinson, (going upriver wasn't an option with the swift current) but this plan
soon had to be abandoned as the river was simply too frozen over for the journey to
be completed. At first, they thought to wait it out to see if the ice would break up enough
to again allow for travel. Roosevelt noted, “The next eight days were as irksome and
monotonous as any I ever spent: there is very little amusement in combining the functions
of a sheriff with those of an arctic explorer. The weather kept as cold as ever.... We had
to be additionally cautious on account of being in the Indian country, having worked
down past Killdeer Mountains, where some of my cowboys had run across a band of Sioux
– said to be Tetons – the year before. Very probably the Indians would not have harmed
us anyhow, but as we were hampered by the prisoners, we preferred not meeting them;
nor did we, though we saw plenty of fresh signs, and found, to our sorrow, that they
had just made a grand hunt all down the river, and had killed or driven off almost every
head of game in the country through which we were passing.”
Low on supplies, they decided to split up, with Roosevelt breaking off from the group
so he could personally escort all three prisoners to the nearest town, on foot, before they
ran out of food. Since he was the only member of his party
left, Roosevelt didn't sleep for the duration of the almost 40 hour journey across partially
frozen, occasionally "ankle deep", sludge, reportedly keeping himself awake at night
by reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina while still pointing a shotgun at his prisoners
so they couldn't sneak away or kill him and then be happily on their way.
What makes this more impressive is that none of the prisoners were cuffed or bound in anyway
during their transport. You see, the weather was so cold that Roosevelt was worried they
would succumb to frostbite if he tied them up at night, so he simply decided to keep
ever vigilant while escorting the three prisoners, who were no doubt looking for any opportunity
to overpower their lone captor, the last stretch of the journey.
After travelling (from the start) some 300 or so miles across the roughest terrain imaginable
in bitterly cold weather, Roosevelt was, to quote, "most heartily glad when we at last
jolted into the long, straggling main street of Dickinson, and I was able to give my unwilling
companions into the hands of the sheriff. Under the laws of Dakota I received my fees
as a deputy sheriff for making the three arrests, and also mileage for the three hundred odd
miles gone over – a total of some fifty dollars."
It should also be noted that by choosing to not just shoot the prisoners on the spot when
he found them, as he was well within his rights to do and what many lawmen in the same scenario
probably would have done at the time, Roosevelt gained the begrudging respect of the gang's
ringleader, who later wrote to Roosevelt from prison thanking him for being such a peerless
sentinel of justice. Roosevelt similarly refused to press charges against Pfaffenbach, stating
that he didn't "have enough sense to do anything good or bad.", something Pfaffenbach was only
too keen to thank Roosevelt for as well. Roosevelt would later go on to write about
this escapade in one of his many excellent books, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.
Bonus Facts: • After graduating college, Roosevelt saw
a doctor about his frequent heart problems. The doctor recommended that Roosevelt seek
a career behind a desk and avoid any strenuous activities in his life. Roosevelt obviously
did not heed this recommendation, regularly boxing, playing tennis, hiking, rowing, playing
polo, horseback riding, among other regular exercises. This actually probably helped extend
his life, rather than shorten it, though he did eventually die of heart failure. He also
went blind in one eye thanks to boxing several times a week and in one instance having his
retina detach after a punch to the eye. After that happened, he decided to stop boxing and
took up judo, (earning a third degree brown belt).
When he wasn’t doing all of that, Roosevelt frequently liked to skinny dip in the Potomac
River, even in the winter… • Being the daughter of perhaps one of the
manliest men of all time, Roosevelt’s daughter Alice was known for “unladylike” habits
of smoking, gambling, promiscuity, late night parties, and keeping a pet snake. She also
reportedly had a quick wit and was fond of constant rule breaking. Roosevelt once commented
on his daughter’s frequent practice of interrupting state meetings to speak with him, saying “I
can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.”
Among her many escapades, when the Roosevelt’s moved out of the White House, Alice buried
a voodoo doll of the new President’s wife, Nellie Taft, in the front yard. Alice’s
lone child, Paulina Longworth, was also actually not from her husband, Nick Longworth, but
the daughter of Senator William Borah who she had a long lasting affair with. Nick Longworth
himself may have had children by women not Alice, as he was known to have had numerous
affairs throughout their marriage, which had become an unhappy one after Alice had campaigned
against him... • Unlike many of his era, Roosevelt was
a strong supporter of black American rights, including being the first President to invite
a black man to have dinner at the White House, Booker T. Washington. This was after a meeting
with Washington had run late, at which point Roosevelt invited Washington over for dinner
on October 16, 1901.
News of the controversial dinner traveled along the Associated Press wires throughout
the night. The morning newspapers were generally positive in the North, but many Southern papers
took a different tact. They proceeded to attack both Roosevelt and Washington with fervor.
For instance, the next afternoon, the Memphis-Scimitar reported: “The most damnable outrage which
has ever been perpetrated by a citizen of the United States was committed by the President,
when he invited a n****r to dine with him at the White House... It would not be worth
more than a passing notice if Theodore Roosevelt had sat down to dinner on his own time with
a Pullman car porter, but Roosevelt the individual and Roosevelt the President are not to be
viewed in the same light.”
A U.S. Senator from South Carolina, Ben Tillman, proposed a retaliatory measure: "The action
of President Roosevelt in entertaining that n****r will necessitate our killing a thousand
n****rs in the South before they will reach their place again."
Soon after the dinner, Roosevelt received an honorary doctorate from Yale University,
along with famed novelist Mark Twain. Booker T. Washington was also present at this event.
Roosevelt spoke to Twain and asked the novelist for his opinion on the controversial matter.
Twain replied "that a President was perhaps not as free as an ordinary citizen to entertain
whoever he likes."
A few days later, Roosevelt made a public statement about the "infamous" dinner. True
to his no-nonsense style, he simply said, "I shall have him to dine as often as I please."
As for his general opinion of black Americans, Roosevelt would sum his thoughts up: “…the
only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each
white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows
himself worthy to have.” • As you might imagine, for much of his
adult life, Roosevelt was incredibly strong thanks to a regular regiment of heavy exercise.
However, towards the end of his life, he did for a time become obese after being shot in
the chest. The bullet was in too deep to get out safely, so was left in, causing him considerable
pain for the rest of his life and stopping him from being able to do many of his normal
exercises, but he continued to eat the same as when he did do those exercises, causing
him to gain considerable weight. He did lose a good amount of this fat while on his famous
“River of Doubt” expedition where he lost 55 pounds after becoming severely ill with
infection and “tropical fever”. Roosevelt injured his leg on the River of
Doubt expedition after jumping from his own boat and attempting to stop with his own strength
two of his crewman’s boats from crashing into the rocks. This leg injury became infected
and he soon also contracted “tropical fever”. He attempted to get the rest of his expedition
to leave him to die on several occasion, but they refused, despite his illness drastically
slowing their progress; he needed constant medical attention was often delirious. He
never fully recovered from this, with the last decade of his life having frequent flare-ups
of leg inflammation and various sicknesses as a result, as well as dealing with the pains
from the bullet lodged in his chest.