THE COWBOY PRESIDENT

by Michael F. Blake

  As much as he loved his new residence, Theodore did not spend much time in it. The spring roundup of 1885 was about to begin.

  The fifteen hundred head of cattle Theodore had purchased shortly after his return from New York, arrived in Medora on May 6. Theodore sent five hundred head to Maltese Cross Ranch, while the rest were driven to the Elkhorn. It took six days to get the cattle to the Elkhorn, mainly because of the swollen river and an unexpected snowstorm, which forced Theodore to move the cattle inland, away from their water source.

  Cattle, as cute as they may look with their brown eyes, can be cantankerous animals. One moment they are as gentle as lapdogs, then the next, they suddenly get a notion and become anything but gentle. Even cattle without horns can be dangerous. When their sense of fear is triggered, they will stop at nothing to get away, knocking down sturdy fences, tipping over a fully loaded chuck wagon, and plowing up the ground to the extent that it takes months to rejuvenate. One of the greatest fears for a cowboy was a stampede—especially at night. It was a grim sight to find a colleague after he had been run over by several hundred head of cattle.

  A stampede generally happened when the herd was uneasy or thirsty. Any type of noise could set them off—a couple of tin pans clanging together, a clap of thunder, even a cowboy sneezing. That was why riding “night herd” was so important. Two riders, working a two-hour shift, would circle the herd in opposite directions, singing a tune softly to calm the cattle. If the herd broke out, these two riders were in the thick of it. They would yell “Stampede!” and, with luck, be on either side of the running herd. The yell of that dreaded word quickly awakened other riders, who grabbed their horses and joined in. To stop a stampede, riders on both sides of the running herd would position themselves next to the lead runners and start to turn the cattle into themselves, as if forming a circle. This would cause the animals to stop, but it was no guarantee they would settle down, because anything could set them off again.

  Theodore’s first stampede happened as he was moving the cattle to the Elkhorn. He and another rider took the first shift of riding night herd. They had gotten the herd bedded down for the night, when the stock got it in their mind to move. Theodore knew their only hope was to keep the herd together and not let them scatter.

  I kept on one side, and the cowboy on the other, and never in my life did I ride so hard. In the darkness I could but dimly see the shadowy outlines of the herd, as with whip and spurs I ran the pony along its edge, turning back the beasts at one point barely in time to wheel and keep them in at another. The ground was cut up by numerous little gullies, and each of us got several falls, horses and riders, turning complete somersaults. We were dripping with sweat, and our ponies quivering and trembling like quaking aspens, when, after more than an hour of the most violent exertion, we finally got the herd quieted again.4

  Despite the stampede, Theodore brought in all one thousand head of cattle to the ranch. With this completed, he dashed off a letter to his friend Henry Cabot Lodge on the eve of the spring roundup.

  I have just come in from taking a thousand head of cattle up on the trail. The weather has been very bad and I had my hands full, working night and day, and being able to take off my clothes but once during the week I was out.

  The river has been very high recently and I have had on two or three occasions to swim my horse across it. A new experience to me. Otherwise I have done little that is exciting in the way of horseman-ship; as you know I am no horseman, and cannot ride an unbroken horse with any comfort. The other day I lunched with the Marquis de Morès, a French cavalry officer; he had hunted all through France, but told me he never saw in Europe such stiff jumping as we have on the Meadowbrook hunt.5

  The Little Missouri Stockmen’s Association spring roundup started at the mouth of Box Elder Creek and the Little Missouri River. (According to Lincoln Lang, it was about fifty miles south of their ranch.6) The spring roundup would brand all new cattle, including newborns, and take a tally of the stock that survived the winter. (The fall roundup would gather the steers, which were sent to market.) The spring roundup, which would take one to two months, was looked upon by cowboys and cattle owners as a social gathering despite the workload.

  Roundups were divided into sections by the cattlemen’s association ahead of time. The ranches in each section would meet at a designated location to begin their roundup, and over the next several weeks, they would gradually move from one end of their chosen section to the other. The section that included Theodore’s ranches encompassed over 150 miles, from Beaver Creek, east of the Little Missouri River, to Little Beaver Creek, in the west.7 Each cattle outfit brought along its own chuck wagon, while smaller cattle ranches would join another ranch and share expenses. Each outfit brought four to six cowboys, along with a string of eight to ten horses for each rider. Two men, known as horse wranglers, were assigned to handle the string of horses and create a rope corral to keep their horses from joining another outfit’s remuda. Arriving at the meeting place, the outfit would make camp, cowboys dropping their sleeping gear and claiming their preferred spot, while the cook started making the first meal. Ranchers outside the divided section would send four men as representatives to take any cattle from their ranches that may have strayed.

  Once all outfits had gathered at the meeting area, they would report to the “captain” of the roundup, a ranch foreman chosen for the job. He would assign various tasks, whether it was riding out to drive in the cattle, roping cattle and calves, or smoothing off the rough edges of some horses. Morning began early, at three a.m. A cup of coffee, biscuit, beans, and a couple slices of bacon was breakfast. The cowboys would select a horse from the remuda for the morning’s work, and if a cowboy was smart, he’d place the metal bit of his bridle under his arm for a few minutes to warm it. A horse was more willing at that hour to accept a bit if it wasn’t cold. Once the rider stepped into the saddle, he might find his mount to be a bit frisky, or just plain uncooperative. “Topping him off ” was a cowboy term for letting the horse buck until he calmed down. Eventually, the horse would settle down, and the two companions would be off on their daily mission.

  During this roundup, Theodore found himself with a horse that simply did not want him on his back. “He [the horse] would balk and then throw himself over backward: once, when I was not quick enough, he caught me and broke something in the point of my shoulder, so that it was some weeks before I could raise the arm freely.”8 With no doctor nearby, Theodore had to let the break heal itself and live with the pain.

  As the cowboys moved out to gather loose cattle from the various coulees and washes, the chuck wagons and the remudas would move to the next spot, setting up by midday. “It is rather picturesque to see the four-horse teams filing down at a trot through a pass among the buttes— the saddle-bands being driven along at a smart pace to one side or behind, the teamsters cracking their whips, and the horse-wranglers calling and shouting as they ride rapidly from side to side behind the horses, urging on the stragglers by dexterous touches with the knotted ends of their long lariats that are left trailing from the saddle,” Theodore reminisced.9

  Most cowboys have certain ways of driving cattle or horses. Some simply use a whistle, while others will make a clucking sound, and others shout out a hee-yah or a git-git-git. It becomes rather repetitive and second nature for the rider. But the men riding with Theodore one day were more than surprised when he yelled, in his high voice, “Hasten forward quickly, there!” It was all his men could do not to laugh at their boss. When the men became bored with their usual calls, one would break the monotony with a yell of “Hasten forward quickly!” They had a good laugh at Theodore’s expense, but he saw the humor in it, taking it as a sign of acceptance by his men.

  Normally, the boss of the outfit always had first pick of a horse for the morning’s work. Theodore accepted no favors, choosing to draw straws with the men when it came to selecting a mount. The cowboys of his outfit, and the others, were impressed that this dude f
rom the East pulled his own weight, saddled his own horse, and did whatever was asked of him. Because of his poor eyesight, Theodore did not participate in roping or cutting out the cattle, but he was very involved in the branding. He did have his quirks during the roundup: He shaved every day, used a toothbrush, and brought along his rubber bathtub.

  Lacking the practical experience of working a roundup, Theodore’s willingness to try anything earned him the respect of the cowboys and owners. John Goodall, foreman of the Marquis’s ranch, stated that “he was game to the core,” while Lincoln Lang noted that Theodore “was right on the job, holding his own with the best of them.”10

  “These long, swift rides in the glorious spring mornings are not soon to be forgotten. The sweet, fresh air, with a touch of sharpness thus early in the day, and the rapid motion of the fiery little horse, combine to make a man’s blood thrill and leap with sheer buoyant light-heartedness and eager, exultant pleasure in the boldness and freedom of the life he is leading,” he recalled of the morning’s work.11

  By noontime, each man rode in to exchange his horse for a fresh one, grabbing a quick lunch of beans, bacon, biscuit, and a cup of coffee. At this point, it was time to cut the cattle from the herd. Bunching the cattle together, cowboys and their mounts would form a ring around them. A few men from each ranch looked over the group for their respective brands and cut them out from the herd. This is very difficult work because the herd does not simply stand still, but moves around in its tight circle. Cowboys who do this work need a horse they can rely on, known as a “cutting horse.” A cowboy would rope a perspective target around the horns or neck. (Roping around the horns was the preferred choice, because a lariat around the neck of a cow, especially one that does not want to comply, could end up strangling the animal.) With the rope around the horns, the cowboy quickly wrapped the other end of the lariat around his saddle horn (called “dallying”). “A good horse takes as much interest in the work as does his rider,” Theodore wrote, “and the instant the noose settles over the victim wheels and braces himself to meet the shock, standing with his legs firmly planted, the steer or cow being thrown with a jerk.”12 (A rider or horse that is not prepared for the hard jerk of the rope can easily be yanked to the ground.) In cases in which a brand could not be easily spotted, two cowboys would rope a bovine, with one throwing his rope over the horns, while the other roped the back legs, allowing them to inspect the brand. (Today, this exercise is a very popular contest in American rodeos, known as team roping.)

  The chosen cow, steer, or calf would be dragged to the fire for branding. A fire was built, with the outfit’s branding irons placed deep into the flames. Two cowboys would hold the animal down, one grabbing its front legs and placing his knee on its neck. The other cowboy grabbed the top hind leg and stretched it out, while bracing his other foot against the other hind leg. In this type of position, the animal can do nothing but wail in its unhappiness. The yell of “Hot iron!” serves as a warning that a branding iron is on the way. The cry of the animal being marked would fill the air, along with the pungent smell of burning hair and flesh.13 (If the calf happened to be a bull calf, it would also be castrated at this time.) The animal was released and quickly joined the others who had suffered the same indignities. Cattle without markings were called “mavericks,” and were divided up evenly among the outfits. Those that did not need to be branded were cut loose, returning to the area the cowboys had already ridden through.

  Outfits would continue this process of gathering cattle, branding, and letting them return to the range as they made their way through their section. “The cowboys look forward eagerly to the round-up, where the work is hard, it is true, but exciting and varied, and treated a good deal as frolic,” Theodore later noted. “There is no eight-hour law in cowboy land: during round-up time we often count ourselves lucky if we get off with much less than sixteen hours; but the work is done in the saddle, and the men are spurred on all the time by the desire to outdo one another in feats of daring and skillful horsemanship.”14 When there was free time during a roundup, cowboys held horse races, foot races, or wrestling matches, as well as the occasional card game. They also played practical jokes on each other.

  Even though the cowboys respected “Mr. Roosevelt,” as they called him, they couldn’t resist playing a prank on him. Knowing his penchant for hunting, even while on a roundup, they concocted a story that a few of the cowboys had spotted a herd of a dozen pronghorns about five to six miles back from their current camp. Theodore took the bait and quickly left to find them. Once he was gone, the cowboys prepared themselves for his return from what they expected would be a wild goose chase. Several hours later, Theodore rode into camp with two pronghorns behind his saddle. He shot them a quarter-mile from where the cowboys had claimed to have spotted them.15

  As May gave way to June, the roundup moved its way to Garner Creek, two miles south of Maltese Cross Ranch.* June 2 proved to be muggy, with dark clouds forming in the west as the sun began to make its final departure for the day. A storm was in the offing. The outfits had gathered a large herd of cattle and settled the animals in a meadow near Chimney Butte. Sensing the approaching storm, the cattle grew uneasy. As the evening progressed, the rain began, eventually becoming a downpour. Then came the thunder and lightning.

  The lightning struck right by the herd, and away all the beasts went, heads and horns and tails in the air. For a minute or two I could make out nothing except the dark forms of the beasts running on every side of me, and I should have been very sorry if my horse had stumbled . . . Then the herd split, part going to one side, while the other part seemingly kept straight ahead, and I galloped as hard as ever beside them. I was trying to reach the point—the leading animals—in order to turn them, when suddenly there was a tremendous splashing in front. I could dimly make out that the cattle immediately ahead and to one side of me were disappearing, and the next moment the horse and I went off a cut bank into the Little Missouri.

  I bent away back in the saddle, and though the horse almost went down he just recovered himself, and, plunging and struggling through water and quicksand, we made the other side. Here I discovered that there was another cowboy with the same part of the herd that I was with; but almost immediately we separated. I galloped hard through a bottom covered with big cottonwood trees, and stopped the part of the herd that I was with, but very soon they broke on me again, and repeated this twice.

  Finally toward morning the few I had left came to a halt . . . I got off my horse and leaned against a tree, but before long the infernal cattle started on again, and I had to ride after them. Dawn came soon after this, and I was able to make out where I was and head the cattle back, collecting other little bunches as I went. After a while I came on a cowboy on foot carrying his saddle on his head. He was my companion of the previous night. His horse had gone full speed into a tree and killed itself, the man, however, not being hurt. I could not help him, as I had all I could do to handle the cattle.16

  Returning to camp with the cattle he found, Theodore ate a hasty breakfast while another cowboy saddled him a new mount. Gulping down coffee, he quickly mounted his fresh horse and rode out to find more of the scattered beasts. Ten hours later, he returned to switch mounts and went back out until nightfall. “By this time I had been nearly forty hours in the saddle, changing horses five times, and my clothes had thoroughly dried on me, and I fell asleep as soon as I touched the bedding . . . Nobody ever gets enough sleep on a round-up,” he commented.17

  The following morning, at four a.m., Theodore was up to start that day’s work.

  By the second week in June, the roundup was completed. On June 20, Theodore signed a deal with Sewall and Dow, giving them eleven hundred head of cattle (worth $25,000 in 1885 dollars). The two men would hold on to the cattle for three years, returning Theodore’s original investment, and Theodore would keep two-thirds of any increase, with Sewall and Dow splitting the other third.18

  The following day, Theodore boa
rded a train for New York, eager to see the publication of his new book. Reporters who met Theodore as he came east noticed a change. He was no longer the reedy young man with wan skin. “Rugged, bronzed, and in the prime of health . . . There was very little of the whilom [former] dude in his rough and easy costume,” a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press noted.19

  * An endpaper map of the Little Missouri River–Badlands area in Hermann Hagedorn’s book, Roosevelt in the Badlands (1922), lists it as Gardiner Creek.

  Deeds, Not Words

  I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.

  HUNTING TRIPS OF A RANCHMAN, RELEASED IN JULY 1885, BOASTED A FIVE-hundred-copy print run with an astounding price of fifteen dollars. The New York Times stated that Theodore’s book would “take a leading position in the literature of the American sportsman.”1

  George Bird Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream magazine, commented, “Mr. Roosevelt is not well known as a sportsman, and his experience of the Western country is quite limited, but this very fact in one way lends an added charm to this book . . . We are sorry to see that a number of hunting myths are given as fact, but it was after all scarcely to be expected that with the author’s limited experience he could sift the wheat from the chaff and distinguish the true from the false.”2

  To say Theodore was hurt by the less-than-flattering review is an understatement. He was very familiar with Grinnell and his magazine, which had previously praised his legislative work in halting the damming of streams that spilled into the Hudson River. In typical fashion, Theodore went to Grinnell’s office to speak to him. Instead of a shouting match, the two men spent many hours talking about his book, as well as conservation.

  Grinnell, a native of Brooklyn, New York, had been born in 1849 to a wealthy family. As a boy, he became friends with John James Audubon’s widow, who introduced him to the world of birds. He obtained a bachelor’s degree and PhD in osteology from Yale University. While assisting at the Peabody Museum in 1874, he was selected as the naturalist to accompany the Black Hills Expedition, led by Lt. Col. George A. Custer. The army officer enjoyed Grinnell’s company and invited him on his ill-fated June 1876 campaign, but the young man declined, citing his workload at the museum. He was part of the exploration team that visited Yellowstone Park and the surrounding area in 1875, cataloging 40 mammals and 139 species of birds. The most important aspect of his Yellowstone report was documenting the poaching of buffalo, deer, and elk for their hides. This led Grinnell to become a champion for conservation, founding the first Audubon Society and organizing the New York Zoological Society. Forest and Stream magazine, for which he served as editor from 1876 to 1911, provided him an outlet to inform the country about conservation issues.