THE COWBOY PRESIDENT

by Michael F. Blake

  Many of the cattle did their best to find forage. They would scrape the ground with their noses, often leaving their flesh bloodied and raw, only to freeze over. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much grass to be found. What little there had been in the summer had been consumed, and with no summer rains to replenish the grass, very little remained to feed what was estimated to be more than two hundred thousand head of beef.

  The cruelest of ironies came in early December.

  An Indian summer, accompanied by a warm chinook breeze, swept over the land. In one day, the temperature rose to 50 degrees. The snow began to melt down to about six inches before Nature changed its mind. The evening temperatures dropped once again to subzero, quickly turning the mushy snow into a hardened crust of ice. The Little Missouri River glazed into a sheet of thick ice, providing wolves and coyotes a roadway to find prey—and there was plenty.

  As December wore on, the snow continued to fall, and the cold hung on like a tenderfoot on a bucking horse. Christmas Day the temperature stood at minus-35 degrees; seven days later, January 1, 1887, it hovered at 41 below zero.3 January offered no relief for man or beast. The wind blew the powder snow, filling in coulees and cuts. Cattle that had sought shelter in such places were buried alive, and the snow kept rising. Sage hens died in the drifts; rabbits and prairie dogs were smothered in their holes. Many coulees and gulches were filled in with snow that rose to one hundred feet. With the snow layering over itself, cattle nibbled on bark from tree branches that normally would be several feet off the ground. Conditions became so bad that some of the cattle began stripping off tar paper from cabins for some form of nutrition. Some cattle’s hooves froze in the ice, leaving the animal stranded, awaiting a miserable death.4

  The animals tried to find shelter wherever they could. One of the more unfortunate places was in the railroad cuts. In late November, a westbound train smashed into a herd between Belfield and Medora. “The engineer was compelled to keep a continual tooting while passing through these famous grazing lands but the blinding storm made it impossible for him to see the cattle until it was too late to stop. It was a wild and cruel night for the cattle of the Bad Lands,” the Bismarck Daily Tribune reported.5

  Cattle weren’t the only ones to die. Many men attempting to get supplies or check on a small herd found themselves victims of the blizzard, as did a few children, while more than one woman went “off her head.” Henry Jackson wrote to his friend Pierre Wibaux, who was out of town, that a cowhand killed another, while “your wife’s hired girl blew her brains out in the kitchen.”6

  Nature still wasn’t finished spreading her pain.

  On January 28, a blizzard that made the previous ones look like a summer rain let loose with a fury. The cattle, too weak to move on the range, simply fell over and waited for death. Stray animals that had sufficient strength made their way into Medora or outlying ranches. They banged their heads against doors or windows in mad acts to escape the cold. Windows and doors were boarded up to prevent the animals from breaking in, but their cries of agony were a haunting reminder of the death that was sweeping the Badlands.7

  As February gave way to March, Nature’s winter whirlwind released its grip. A chinook wind blew through, bringing warm temperatures. The snow and ice began to melt. The Little Missouri River began to break up its ice crust and was soon overflowing its banks to the cottonwoods and some points beyond. The engorged river took down trees standing in its way, ripping and smashing into anything that dared to stop it. It was as if the fierce river itself were angry over the death and desolation winter had wrought and sought to cleanse the land of its misery.

  The melting snow from the gullies and cuts fed into creeks, which spilled into the river. In doing so, it revealed a site of horror no one expected. Thousands of dead cattle populated the land, their stiff carcasses bobbing down the angry Little Missouri.8 Other bodies were found hanging in trees where they had gone to eat bark and twigs, only to die. As temperatures rose, coulees revealed hundreds and hundreds of dead cattle that had been buried in the snowdrifts. This went on for weeks as the losses to the various cattle ranches became a grim reality. Some ranchers had their cowboys gather up the carcasses and set them on fire, while others simply left them where they lay, fodder for the wolves and coyotes.

  The heady dreams and days of the Badlands cattle industry had come to an end.

  The newlyweds arrived in New York City on March 27.

  Reporters were quick to note how happy Theodore looked as he walked off the Etruria ’s gangplank. Edith, unbeknownst to the press, was in the early stages of pregnancy. Theodore informed the press that he intended to divide his time between writing books and ranching, not politics. This was before he received the letter from Ferris and Merrifield, still tallying the damage in the Badlands, urging him to come out as quickly as possible. During his European travels, Theodore had heard vague reports about the blizzard, but nothing substantial. Anxious now to leave for Medora, he had to wait until April 4 to handle a delicate family issue. As he and Edith settled in at Sagamore Hill, Theodore had to inform Bamie that Edith wanted Baby Lee to live with them. While Bamie accepted Edith’s decision as the correct one, it left an unspoken discomfort in the relationship between the two women.9

  “You were mighty lucky to leave when you did. This spring I should have had to rustle pretty hard to pay your fare back,” Theodore wrote Bill Sewall on his way to the ranch. It was indeed fortunate that the Sewalls and Dows left when they did, especially with two young babies who may not have survived that winter. A few months later, Sewall received another letter from Theodore, describing the devastation. “Well, you cannot imagine anything more dreary than the look of the Bad Lands when I went out there. Everything was cropped as bare as bone, the sagebrush had been eaten down until the stems were as thick as my two fingers . . . In almost every coulee there was dead cattle,” he noted.10

  Losses for most ranches were devastating. Lincoln Lang stated that their losses were about 80 percent. Other ranches had losses just as high, or higher, and many investors quickly sold off whatever remained. Sir John Pender, the backer for the Langs, quickly departed. The Langs were left to fend for themselves, which they did. To their surprise, their small herd of horses had survived the winter, and so they began to raise horses, along with the small herd of cattle that remained. By the end of the 1880s, rearing horses would become a new industry within the Badlands.11

  As for Theodore’s losses, there has never been an official accounting. Records for Maltese Cross Ranch show they branded 475 new cattle in 1886, and that only 106 were counted in 1887. One reason Theodore’s losses may have been lower than others was partially due to the wooded bottoms of both the Maltese Cross and the Elkhorn, which offered some shelter from the harsh winter. It is surmised that his losses were about 65 percent of his holdings, and his net loss, by 1899, was $20,292.63 (not including lost interest).12 Even though he didn’t suffer as greatly as his fellow ranchers, Theodore was emotionally disappointed. “I am bluer than indigo about the cattle,” he wrote Bamie. “It is even worse than I feared; I wish I was sure I would lose no more than half the money ($80,000) I invested out here. I am planning on getting out of it.”13

  Theodore didn’t get out of the cattle business right away. He turned the management of the Elkhorn herd over to Merrifield, who moved them to Maltese Cross Ranch. Theodore continued to maintain his small herd, selling stock when he could to lower the loss of his investment. The Little Missouri Stockmen’s Association held a meeting on April 16, where they agreed that a spring roundup wasn’t worthwhile. Theodore attended the Montana Stockmen’s yearly meeting in Miles City three days later, which was an equally bleak affair. Only 100 of the 337 registered members bothered showing up.

  Theodore returned to Elkhorn Ranch in November, for a month. It would now serve as a hunting lodge. However, the game he once hunted was now either gone or scarce. The harsh winter had not led to the disappearance of game, but prolific hunting. Riding alone
through the Badlands and the prairie, Theodore observed firsthand what unrestricted hunting had done.

  He would return every fall to the Elkhorn from 1888 to 1896 to hunt and camp, usually alone, for two to four weeks. (He never came in 1895.) In 1890, Edith and Bamie accompanied him to the ranch for four days in September before taking a side trip to Yellowstone. Returning east, the women stayed for an additional thirteen days at the Elkhorn. It was the only time Edith ever visited the ranch. Theodore made his last trip to the Elkhorn in late August 1896, camping and hunting for twenty days. He never again returned to his cabin. The emptiness of it, and the lack of game, left a void within him. On December 7, 1897, Theodore wrote Sylvane Ferris that he should sell off what remained of his cattle, and asked Pierre Wibaux to purchase his herd. (Wibaux, who had bought out many ranchers who were quick to sell, went on to own one of the biggest cattle ranches in the area for many years.)

  “You spoke of bidding on them yourself, but before you do so I want you to be sure you are not undertaking something more than you can handle,” he cautioned Sylvane.14 In the end, Theodore sold the remaining herd to Sylvane.

  Theodore Roosevelt’s days as a Dakota cowboy and rancher had come to an end.

  The blizzard of 1886–87 became known as “The Great Die-Up.” The cattle ranchers and their herds were not the only ones to suffer. The blizzard spelled the end of Medora. Even before the massive storm, the small town had been showing signs of decline.

  The abattoir run by the Marquis had been destined to fail. Although his plans had sounded promising, even logical, the Marquis underestimated the Chicago beef trust. The Chicago interests were not about to sit by and let some newcomer—especially a foreigner—squeeze them out. They used all their influence and connections to make it as difficult as possible for the Marquis to get ahead, including advertising. Ads depicted scrawny cows that were identified as grass-fed versus a robust cow that was labeled corn-fed.15 That alone did more damage to the Marquis than anything else. The public, aided by a deceptive visual ad, claimed to prefer the beef that was corn-fed.

  By October 1886, the Marquis had left for France. His abattoir would shut down in November for the winter, even though it had little or no business. An article in the New York Tribune indicated that there had been “a serious disagreement” between the Marquis and his father-in-law, Louis von Hoffman, over his investments in the beef industry, and von Hoffman had withdrawn his “financial support.”16 With the failure of the cattle business, not to mention the busted Medora–Deadwood stage line, von Hoffmann had had enough of pouring money into losing propositions. It was estimated that between them, the Marquis and his father-in-law had invested over a million dollars, with little to show for it. The chateau remained occupied by staff, who kept it ready for the return of the Marquis in the spring of 1887. When he did arrive, it was only because he was passing through on a worldwide trip. The Marquis informed reporters that his intentions were to stay in the Dakotas, but it was a lie. He never returned. His abattoir never reopened. The chateau was closed up, with the furniture and other items left in place. John Goodall, the ranch foreman, sold off the remaining stock for the Marquis before moving to Dickinson.

  Others joined in the exodus.

  E. G. Paddock dismantled his buildings, including the Pyramid Park Hotel, and placed them on a flatcar to relocate in Dickinson. A. T. Packard moved the Bad Lands Cow Boy offices down to the cantonments, but he did not stay long. His office burned to the ground on January 12, 1887. It was the end of Medora’s newspaper and its editor, who left with his new wife. Joe Ferris remained, running his general store for the few remaining ranchers, including his brother and Bill Merrifield.

  The Medora many had known four years earlier was now nothing but a memory.

  Only the Badlands remained.

  New Horizons

  We cannot do great deeds unless we are willing to do the small things that make up the sum of greatness.

  NO ONE KNOWS WHEN THEODORE HAD HIS MOMENT OF EPIPHANY.

  It could have been one day during his long rides in the Badlands in November 1887, seeing the territory bereft of the wild game that was once so plentiful. Perhaps it was when he commented that he was sad to see sections of forests chopped down. One thing was certain: His time in the Badlands had impressed upon him that as with other resources on Earth, there was not a never-ending supply of game.

  However, he himself never stopped hunting. In Montana, he took home three mountain goat heads and skins. In his defense, he easily could have killed more if he had wanted to, but Theodore was never one to hunt to excess, or for the sheer thrill of killing something, only to leave it behind. True, he did kill animals, taking the hide and head as a trophy for the walls of his home. He also took some of the animal’s meat, leaving the rest for the coyotes, wolves, and other scavengers of the wild.

  Returning to New York City that December of 1887, Theodore made a decision to do something. In typical fashion, he jumped right into action. He formed the Boone and Crockett Club, named after his two frontier heroes, to protect big game and their environment. As his father had done before him, Theodore contacted influential friends to assist. George Bird Grinnell was invited to be a cofounder, using his Forest and Stream magazine to help spread the word to the public. By bringing in Grinnell, Theodore displayed the talent he would use throughout his life in various efforts to achieve important goals: seeking valued help from those who were leaders in their respective fields.

  The club’s membership was limited to one hundred members, and Theodore served as the club’s president until 1894. (The club had an associate member field which was limited to fifty.) With Theodore’s influence, such notables as artist Albert Bierstadt, generals William T. Sherman and Philip H. Sheridan, author Owen Wister, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Carl Schurz joined, as did many scientists, explorers, and politicians.1

  One of the first things the club acted upon was to provide much-needed support in protecting the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone. Established in 1872, the park was a victim of poachers, souvenir hunters, and miners. The Northern Pacific Railroad was very persistent in its desire to build tracks across the park; others simply wanted to whittle down the acreage. The Boone and Crockett Club quickly set up a committee that opposed such actions, and even encouraged enlargement of the park’s boundary. Naturally, Theodore came out swinging, stating that the park should be enlarged and legislation adopted to appoint the military to enforce the laws and punish wrongdoers. Theodore and Grinnell were also very vocal in demanding the protection of the herds of buffalo inside the park from hunters.2 Passage of the Yellowstone Game Protection Act on May 7, 1894, allowed the government the ability to arrest and prosecute poachers and others in court, as well as allow the US Army to protect the park from timber harvesting and mineral extraction.3 The club’s additional lobbying efforts in Washington proved to be effective with the enactment of the Forest Reserve Act on March 3, 1891, allowing the president to set aside “any public land bearing forests . . . entirely or in part . . . whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations.”

  Theodore Roosevelt’s crusade as a conservationist had just begun.

  His plan to write a single book of Western history soon developed into a four-volume opus. In March of 1888, Theodore signed a deal with G. P. Putnam’s Sons to author The Winning of the West, delivering the first two volumes by the spring of 1889. It is doubtful he realized, as he sat in his library at Sagamore Hill on May 1 and began writing, that his literary task would take seven years to complete. Theodore wasn’t as diligent in working on this project as he should have been, due to the siren call of politics. Although he had claimed politics held no future for him, Theodore campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison. His loyalty and duty to the party caused him to fall severely behind in his writing, completing only half of the first volume by early October. After the elections, Theodore returned to his desk, finishing the first volume by Christmas. He starte
d on volume two in January 1889, delivering it to Putnam by mid-April. The two volumes, released in June, were highly praised by critics; the first run sold out in one month.4

  Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, released in December 1888, was Theodore’s second book based on his experiences in the West. He assembled and revised the six articles he had previously penned for Century magazine, adding an additional six chapters to the book, which was lavishly illustrated by Frederic Remington. Reviews were very complimentary, with The Book Buyer stating, “To a most readable style of writing Mr. Roosevelt adds a thorough familiarity with his subject, happily combining accuracy with entertainment.”5

  In the lore of Western fiction and in movies, a stranger rides into a lawless town and pins on the badge with the intention of bringing law and order. “A new marshal in town” became a common term in such works, eventually growing into an appellation in popular culture that continues to this day. During the next eight years, Theodore became “the new marshal” in two positions in which he did his best to bring law and order. He relished bringing forward new ideas, pitting him against a political party machine and those who benefited from its corruption.

  Having actively campaigned for Benjamin Harrison, who won the presidency, Theodore was offered one of three civil service commissioner positions. It was a low-paying job, $3,500 a year, and his old friend Henry Cabot Lodge was certain he would decline it.

  Theodore leapt at the opportunity.

  During this period in our history, civil service jobs were often handed out as payment for a favor to political allies, friends, and relatives. Those applying for a job needed to pass a written examination that eliminated the less qualified but, in many instances, questions were given in advanced to favored candidates. Positions were bestowed on people who had minimal, if any, experience. Civil service commissioners lacked the ability to fire the incompetent or those caught breaking the law. Their only recourse was to recommend termination to the specific Cabinet officer, who held the power to either fire the person, or ignore the problem. Reforming the civil service was an issue that garnered a lot of verbal support and press, but when it came time for action, things became eerily quiet.