Teddy Roosevelt's Buffalo Hunt and The Great Die-Up: Two Tales from the Unforgiving American West

        For many Americans, the West conjures up Hollywood produced ideals of freedom and ingenuity amidst stunning natural backdrops. This is the place where a man could, for at least a time, make something of himself, procuring a fortune from the land with the sweat of his brow. I find myself often getting swept up in these romantic notions, often as a result of something as simple as seeing horses in a pasture on the side of the highway. As my life stands today, I will never be a cowboy. My public school teaching, Midwestern soft hands would never stand up to the abuse of mending fences and the swinging of a lariat. Stories set in the American West draw me in nonetheless, allowing my mind to drift off and conjure up fantasies of sweaty denim and cattle drives on the open range. That romanticism typically runs into the brick wall of historical reality whenever I read scholarly work on the subject. The fact was and still is today that life in the West is fundamentally different than what many Americans are used to, particularly at a time before modern infrastructure has softened the edges of the harsh world. Flatly stated, life is hard. The landscape is unfriendly, unforgiving, and devoid of the comforts that the eastern woodlands offered so many settlers throughout our history. When confronted with a hostile
environment, some humans (not me) take the imposing hostility as a challenge to be conquered. Jack Nicholson, via his character Frank Costello in Martin Scoresee’s The Departed, stated, “I don’t want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.” That attitude has shaped the history of the American West and altered the landscape unabated since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Two small stories, both featuring a future American president, perfectly exemplify the impact that attitude has had on the lives of Americans visiting or living in the West.

The first of these anecdotes places a twenty-four year old Theodore Roosevelt on a train to the Dakota Territory, looking to engage in a series of hunts for some of America’s most spectacular big game species. One of those, perhaps the crown jewel of the North American big game, was the bison. Roosevelt was tickled at the prospect of bagging such a magnificent creature, one that had been part of Americans' views of the West since words were written about it. Yet by 1883, when the future president embarked on his journey, the picture of unending herds of bison stretching across the plains was no longer the reality. Decades of mass removal, in the name of agriculture, infrastructure, Indian subjugation, and consumerism had reduced the once thirty million animals to a mere few thousand left standing. Whether Roosevelt was aware of the scope of the great reduction, I am not sure, yet it is clear by his letters home to his wife Alice, the hunt was no picnic. Nine grueling days into the hunt, featuring rattlesnakes and a lack of water, Roosevelt finally placed eyes on a bull. The fact that it took Teddy Roosevelt nine days to even see a bison demonstrates the scale of the slaughter that had occurred. The cause of human development and environmental exploitation had nearly wiped the animal, like many other game animals, off the American landscape. Despite the harshness of life in the West, the bison as a natural resource had been instrumental in propping up human civilizations in the region, acting as the lifeblood for countless Native American tribes and American settler communities alike. Roosevelt had quite literally killed one of the last remaining bison in North America, when compared to their absolute dominance of the continent in the centuries prior. By reading his letters home, one does not get the sense that Roosevelt was cognizant of the significance of his harvest, as he does not dwell too long on the difficulty of the hunt but rather on celebrating the success. Considering that he is considered as one of the most prolific champions of conservation in American history, this story may come as a bit of a shock. Why would Roosevelt have pursued an animal that had been so decimated? Certainly, attitudes towards conservation have changed since his era. Roosevelt was a young man, who may not have taken time to think about the symbolic nature of his act. These are just guesses, as we do not have any evidence to suggest that Roosevelt felt anything other than elation after his kill. However, his recognition that the government, corporations, and people of the United States had been negatively reshaping the landscape of the country, specifically the west, was clear during his presidency. The fact that he played a small part in its destruction is an ironic aspect of the West’s massive reshaping throughout the 19th century. 

The second story that illustrates the harshness of the West acts in some ways as an example of “nature’s revenge”, coming from the winter of 1886-87. Ranching is as synonymous with the West as the bison, and yet the relationship between the two is not one of harmony but rather zero sum. As more land was invaded, fenced, irrigated, and settled in the name of animal husbandry, the bison lost countless acres of habitat. Cattle rearing was big business requiring a lot of land, as these were the days before concentrated feed lots were in existence. Eastern businessmen drooled at the possibilities the West offered, particularly as ecological advancement, coupled with ever increasing demand, made the market for goods like wheat or beef skyrocket. Where a possible bonanza is seen, speculators are sure to come. The twenty sixth president was one such investor, buying two herds of cattle with implied permission to graze them on federal lands in western Dakota. Roosevelt took on the identity of a ranch hand in an effort to drown the sorrow he felt as a result of his wife Alice’s death in 1884. He wrote to his sister “I feel as absolutely free as a man could feel.” That sentiment would change in a hurry, when tragedy struck the plains in the form of a brutal winter season. A dry summer had weakened the cattle herds in 1886, and then came November, which typically featured only light snow. An intense blizzard featuring driving winds and temperatures dropping to forty below zero kicked off a winter unlike any American had experienced in the West. As New Years came, intense storms and deep snow made life for overwintering cattle unbearable, and left few options for ranchers to intervene. There are stories of the animals freezing into the ground where they stood, herds taking shelter in a draw being buried alive by drifting snow. The thaw of spring was the first time in which the destruction was able to be fully observed. Rivers gushed forth with the bodies of now bloated cattle, quite literally spreading evidence of death across the landscape. Some bison would have undoubtedly perished as well, but the vast cattle herds were clearly unable to survive the harsh winter without shelter and feed throughout the cold months. The American march West that featured settlement and subjugation had run into nature’s fury in a devastating way. Fortunes were lost and lives changed forever. Roosevelt was no longer seriously entertaining the idea of becoming a full time rancher. Companies folded and banks failed, the territory of Wyoming being hit particularly hard. Life persisted in this harsh environment, but no one left that winter unchanged. 

I still like to fantasize about what the West represents to many Americans, the freedom and opportunity that is seemingly in grasp for all who want it. However, I have to remind myself just how much of our own creation the American west is. It is not a place where anyone is supposed to be able to thrive, without the requisite knowledge and  the skill of living in that environment for generations. It is delicate, easily influenced by our actions, and yet at the same time incredibly unforgiving. The respect it deserves is not always received, but it occupies a place in our history that is special to our identity as Americans.