A Comparison of Roosevelt's Visits to Yellowstone and Africa

Theodore Roosevelt’sJohnston quest for wilderness: a comparison of Roosevelt’s visits to Yellowstone and Africa Jeremy Johnston Abstract This paper will compare and contrast Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential visits to Yellowstone in 1903 and eastern Africa in 1909. I will examine the reasons why Roosevelt chose to visit these regions, his experiences from both trips, his observations regarding ungulates and predators, and his visions for the future of these two wildlife reserves. In both visits, Roosevelt wanted to experience a wilderness adventure similar to his early experiences on the western frontier. Roosevelt intended to hunt dangerous game in both visits, but due to the threat of bad publicity and the protective game laws of Yellowstone, Roosevelt did not hunt in Yellowstone as he did in Africa. Despite the obvious difference between his activities during both visits and the varied ecosystems of both areas, Roosevelt took great interest in comparing the African landscape, its residents, and its wildlife with their western counterparts. In both instances, Roosevelt greatly focused on wildlife, including human–wildlife encounters, predator–prey relationships, and the effects of protective game laws on animal populations and their behavior. In his written accounts of these visits, Roosevelt expressed his vision for game reserves and game laws for both Africa and the United States. By examining Roosevelt’s visits and his impressions of both Yellowstone and Africa, one can better understand the role Roosevelt played in both national and international conservation movements. Researchers can also compare the similarity and differences of early twentieth-century conservationists’ perspectives of and goals for Africa and Yellowstone. Introduction A bronze equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt stands at the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Depicted standing beside the mounted Roosevelt is a Native American and an African. Although the artist’s intent was to represent Roosevelt’s visits to the American West and Africa, this statue is sometimes viewed by those unfamiliar with its context as representing the racist ideology of the Progressive Era, when Native Americans and Africans were viewed as being socially inferior to the dominant white Roosevelt towering above them. However, in the minds of Theodore Roosevelt and many of his contemporaries, the lands and the wildlife of Africa and the American West shared one very important charac- teristic, the ability to provide an exciting wilderness experience. Theodore Roosevelt’s visits to Yellowstone in 1903, and to eastern Africa in 1909, illustrate his continual quest for an ideal wilderness experience. On both visits, Roosevelt wanted to experience a wilderness adventure similar Proceedings 149 Theodore Roosevelt’s quest for wilderness to his early experiences on the western frontier, which had come to typify Roosevelt’s ideal vision of a wilderness experience. Roosevelt intended to hunt dangerous game during both of these visits, but due to the threat of bad publicity and Yellowstone’s protective game laws, Roosevelt did not hunt in Yellowstone as he did in Africa. Despite the obvious differences between his activities during both visits, as well as the varied ecosystems of both areas, Roosevelt took great interest in comparing the African landscape and its wildlife with their western American counterparts in Yellowstone. Roosevelt was strongly focused on wildlife, including human–wildlife encounters, predator–prey relationships, and the effects of protective game laws on animal populations and their behavior in each of these distinct ecosystems. In his greatly publicized written accounts of these visits, Roosevelt also expressed his vision for the future of game reserves and game laws in both Africa and the United States. The American West, Africa, and a teenage boy, 1872 In 1872, three separate events, occurring far apart, would form a lasting impact on the historic development of both the American West and Africa. On March 3, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill setting aside Yellowstone National Park as “pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoy- ment of the people.” This act protected and removed from the homesteading process a vast area containing great scenic and geothermal features then- recently revealed to the American public through government-sponsored scientific expeditions. At the time, no one would guess that this region, originally intended as a “pleasuring ground,” would also evolve into what Theodore Roosevelt described as a “wilderness reserve,” serving as a refuge for a variety of species of western wildlife that were threatened with extinc- tion in other western regions. On September 8, 1872, only a few months after the creation of Yellowstone National Park, Henry Morton Stanley was presented to Queen Victoria for finding Dr. David Livingstone in East Africa. Livingstone, an English mis- sionary and famed explorer, became stranded in his quest to find the then- unknown headwaters of the Nile River. After years of isolation in Africa, many of Livingstone’s family members, friends, and the general populace of England feared him to be dead. Stanley, sponsored by a New York newspaper publisher hoping to increase newspaper sales with tales of adventure from the “Dark Continent,” surprised the world by finding Livingstone still alive. Upon meeting Livingstone for the first time, Stanley uttered the famous words that came to symbolize the European conquest of the African continent, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” Stanley’s famous expedition brought considerable attention to Africa, and many explorers followed Stanley’s footsteps to map and claim eastern Africa for the European colonial powers. In 1872, most people predicted that within a few years of Stanley’s famed expedition, East 150 Beyond the Arch Johnston Africa would be settled by a variety of Europeans, and would become another “civilized” land contributing to the growing European empires. At this time, if anyone had predicted that Africa would become a “wilderness reserve,” serving as a refuge for vast herds of African wildlife for future generations to enjoy, they would have been viewed by many of their contemporaries as being of unsound mind. In the summer of 1872, young Theodore Roosevelt celebrated his four- teenth birthday and received his first hunting rifle. Roosevelt described his first gun with a sense of nostalgia in his autobiography, “My gun was a breech- loading, pin-fire double-barrel, of French manufacture. It was an excellent gun for a clumsy and often absent minded boy. There was no spring to open it, and if the mechanism became rusted shut, it could be opened with a brick without serious damage. When the cartridges stuck they could be removed in the same fashion. If they were loaded, however, the result was not always happy, and I tattooed myself with partially unburned grains of powder more than once” (Roosevelt 1926, 20:20–21). Roosevelt also received taxidermy lessons from John G. Bell, a profes- sional taxidermist who previously worked under John J. Audubon during his western trips collecting wildlife species. Hoping to acquire hordes of new species with his rifle to practice his taxidermy skills, Roosevelt discovered the need to correct his weak eyesight after constantly missing his intended targets. Shortly after receiving a pair of spectacles, Roosevelt quickly built up a large collection of mounted bird specimens. Undoubtedly, this adolescent boy dreamed of hunting unusual species of wildlife in the far western lands surrounding the newly created Yellowstone National Park. Young Roosevelt most certainly also followed the news cov- erage of Stanley’s expedition and became fascinated with adventure tales from Africa and descriptions of its unique species of wildlife. In the winter of 1872–1873, young Roosevelt did visit Africa, and enjoyed a cruise up the Nile River on a dahabeah, an Egyptian yacht, with his family. Roosevelt’s sister, Corrine, later described her brother’s first African hunting expedition, “When not walking through quivering bogs or actually shooting bird and beast, he, surrounded by the brown-faced and curious sailors, would seat himself on the deck of the dahabeah and skin and stuff the products of his sport. I will remember the excitement, and be it confessed, anxiety and fear inspired in the hearts of the four young college men who, on another dahabeah, accompanied us on the Nile, when the ardent young sportsman, mounted on an uncontrollable donkey, would ride unexpectedly into their midst, his gun slung across his shoulders in such a way as to render its prox- imity distinctly dangerous as he bumped absent-mindedly against them” (Robinson 1921, 57). If any one of the four college students who witnessed the young Roosevelt hunting on the banks of the Nile River predicted that Proceedings 151 Theodore Roosevelt’s quest for wilderness this young teenage boy would one day be recognized as one of America’s most respected sportsmen and an expert on western American and African wildlife, his counterparts more than likely would have scoffed at him. Theodore Roosevelt the hunter–naturalist Theodore Roosevelt’s fascination with wildlife began at a young age after he discovered a dead seal in a fish market on Broadway. Roosevelt wrote in his autobiography, “That seal filled me with every possible feeling of romance and adventure” (Roosevelt 1913, 14). Young Theodore eventually obtained the seal’s skull and began the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History” in his room until family members’ complaints regarding the stench originating from the “museum’s” collections caused Roosevelt to move his material into a back hallway out of sight and of the range of smell. Receiving a rifle and taxidermy lessons shaped Roosevelt’s childhood fascination with animals into a more serious study of natural history. Using his rifle and his taxidermy skills, along with the benefit of eyeglasses, Roosevelt collected a wide variety of wildlife specimens, from his family’s summer retreat in Long Island to the Nile River, to add to his growing collection.

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