Lost in the Shadow of Fame

by William E. Lemanski

  Even prior to their game collecting expedition in Africa, both TR and Kermit were avid and frequent hunters across North America. History has credited TR as a great American hunter, but aside from the advantages of being younger, Kermit was both the better hunter and sportsman. Besides, never having good eyesight, in his adult life, TR became totally blind in one eye with diminished sight in the other. Unlike the African hunting technique most favored today, the patient stalk to gain an in-close, accurate killing shot at the animal, TR continually stretched both his shooting skills and the rifle ballistics of the day on very long range shooting. His extremely poor eyesight only added to the problem, and his numerous misses along with the loss of wounded game didn’t seem to deter him from taking extreme potshots at distant targets. While encountering a large herd of topi one day, four to six hundred yards away on the open plains and unable to accurately range the distance, he said “…I fired more time than I care to mention before I finally got my topi – at just five hundred and twenty yards.”18 Another time he expended sixty-five cartridges at fourteen different animals with the average shot at a little over two hundred and twenty yards. On this occasion, one wounded animal got away. When hunting the Guaso Nyero, a river in equatorial Africa, after wounding and losing two Oryx Roosevelt fired at six others at four hundred yards and missing the shots exclaimed:

  “By this time I felt rather desperate, and decided for once to abandon legitimate proceedings and act on the Ciceronian theory, that abandon legitimate proceedings and act on the Ciceronian theory he mark some time. Accordingly I emptied the magazines of both of my rifles at the Oryx, as they ran across my front, and broke the neck of a fine cow, at four hundred and fifty yards.”19

  Besides ineffectually shooting at targets considerably beyond his skill level, TR was not averse to losing wounded game if tracking was inconvenient. When his hunting companion R. J. Cunningham wounded a bull elephant immediately following the shooting of another great, tusked beast, TR casually discounted any effort to secure the second animal commenting, “If we had been only after ivory we should have followed him at once; but there was no telling how long a chase he might lead us….”20 For the modern hunter, losing an elephant, or any game animal in this manner would be a sacrilege. Kermit was more apt to rely on his horse or the stealth of stalking in close to bag his quarry. Being very fleet of foot with much stamina as a former long-distance runner, he would on some occasions actually run down a wounded animal. He was a good shot with the benefit of youthful eyesight. The game was so prolific and the shooting opportunities were so great that when his right arm and shoulder were sore from shooting, he would fire left-handed and even took a gazelle and three topi with his left-hand.

  The Roosevelt safari trekked an enormous, circuitous route across British East Africa, Uganda, Sudan and up the Nile into Egypt. On foot, horseback and even boat when they crossed Lake Victoria Nyanza, they traversed savanna, dense scrub, desert, swamp and river sometimes doubling back on their track but always traveling north-northwest. While in the no-man’s land of the Lado enclave, TR and Kermit met with the professional elephant hunters who became notoriously famous for the short period of their ivory poaching and their evasion of border officials before this region was claimed as sovereign territory. TR noted:

  “They are a hard-bit set, these elephant poachers; there are few careers more adventurous, or fraught with more peril, or which make heavier demands upon the daring, the endurance, and the physical hardihood of those who follow them.”21

  The many months of wilderness travel began to take a toll on the white hunters and naturalists who, unlike the natives, were not accustomed to either the rigor of continuous bush travel or the many tropical diseases. Upon arriving in Gondokoro in January, 1910, Mearns, Loring and even the local district commissioner were seriously ill. A German missionary who dined with the party one evening died the next day of black water fever. Mearns treated an English sportsman who was close to death. Almost all were suffering from either fever or dysentery or a combination of both. Although TR bragged about his and Kermit’s robust health, Kermit was laid up for three days with tick fever and TR for five days with a recurrence of malaria that he contracted years before in Cuba.

  When the wilderness adventure finally came to a close, TR and Kermit met with Edith and Kermit’s sister, Ethel, at Khartoum in March 1910 and continued on a months-long diplomatic excursion across Europe, meeting with heads of state and royalty. The time was spent with TR giving speeches, revisiting old sights from his former wanderings and representing the United States at the state funeral for the death of Great Britain’s King. When in England, he even spent time bird watching.

  Kermit had the unique opportunity to travel across Europe with the world’s leading and first international superstar a mere four years before that continent become embroiled in the great conflagration of World War I. While in Germany, he would ironically accompany on horseback, his father and Kaiser Wilhelm II to review the very troops that he would meet in combat a mere seven years later.

  The total bag of animals resulting from this famous hunting and natural history expedition resulted in an enormous collection of both large and small game, common birds, small furbearing mammals and reptiles. The final tally of animals numbered 296 for TR and 216 for Kermit, the numbers including multiples of some species for family group settings in the museum displays. They additionally collected Egyptian geese, yellow-billed mallards, spurfowl, and sand grouse “for the pot, and certain other birds for specimens.”22 The field naturalists harvested many hundreds of additional small animals and birds.*[5]

  Much to the chagrin of TR a majority of the animals ultimately ended up out of sight in museum storage with only a small number ever being placed on display. TR and Kermit kept a few of the animal mounts as personal trophies.

  Anticipating public criticism for the huge number of animals he and Kermit had hunted, TR justified the killing by claiming the trip was based upon scientific need: “I can be condemned only if the existence of the National Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are to be condemned.”23 A major critic of the Roosevelt approach to hunting was a clergyman and amateur naturalist and author from Connecticut, Dr. William J. Long who called TR a “game killer.” As both men jousted heatedly in the papers of the day on the habits and characteristics of various wild animals, TR retorted to Long’s name-calling by describing Long as a “nature faker,” a term that could be appropriately applied to many today.

  The federal land acquisition and the conservation efforts of President Roosevelt are well known. However, despite the enormous number of animals TR shot in his lifetime, he is also known as a modern supporter of managed game hunting during an era of huge waste in the commercial game market. He railed against the excesses of game slaughter and was the founder of the Boone and Crockett Club.24

  Following their prolonged shooting extravaganza, safari hunting changed forever. In the fifty to seventy-five years following this well-publicized adventure came many wealthy and famous personages who patterned their trip on the Roosevelt model: an extended shooting adventure requiring numerous support staff, complicated logistics and plush living in a harsh environment. From American business tycoons and movie stars to the royalty and aristocrats of Europe, Africa served up her magnificent wildlife and exotic ambiance in a seemingly endless supply. While on their trip, TR and Kermit’s acquaintances later became the genesis for a century of big-game sport hunting in Africa. Their friends, Leslie Tarlton, the Hills and Philip Percival, who 30 years later would guide British royalty and Ernest Hemingway and become the hero model in one of Hemingway’s novels, all crossed paths with the Roosevelt’s in Africa. Other famous hunter/explorer/ naturalists of the 20th century who link back to the Roosevelt safari are Carl Akeley of museum fame and the married film duo Osa and Martin Johnson.

  As his father’s age and declining health in the years following Africa and their Brazilian expedition
in 1914 along with the rigors of his ill fated campaign reduced TR’s ability to hunt in wild places, Kermit continued to engage in sport hunting and game collecting. The African adventure wetted his appetite for distant romantic places and adventurous travel. His future ramblings would merge exploration, hunting and the pursuit of natural history for many years to come and similar to his father, provide new information*[6] on game animals, geography and the customs of indigenous people in some of the most remote regions of the world.

  Beginning in 1914, Kermit would once again accompany his father on a long and momentous adventure into unknown and dangerous territory. The experience will change and diminish the former President for the remainder of his relatively short life while evoking an even higher degree of courage and endurance in both, beyond either war, politics or charging wild animals had in the past. Their new adventure would also alter the map of South America.

  NOTES:

  1 My Brother Theodore Roosevelt, pg. 256, Corinne Roosevelt

  2 African Game Trails Forward, Theodore Roosevelt

  3 New York Times, August 28, 1908

  4 Edmund Heller papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives

  5 African Game Trails, pg. 5, Theodore Roosevelt

  6 Ibid., pg. 17

  7 African Game Trails Forward, Theodore Roosevelt

  8 New York Times, July 19, 1909

  9 African Game Trails, pg. 62, Theodore Roosevelt

  10 Ibid., pg. 129

  11 Ibid., pg. 42

  12 Ibid., pg. 42

  13 New York Times, August 25, 1910

  14 African Game Trails, pg. 84, Theodore Roosevelt

  15 Ibid., pg. 90

  16 Ibid., pg. 78,

  17 Ibid., pg. 84

  18 Ibid., pg. 161

  19 Ibid., pg. 275

  20 Ibid., pg. 252

  21 Ibid., pg. 395

  22 Ibid., pa. 468

  24 TR was not the only Roosevelt to defend the nation’s wildlife by founding the Boone & Crockett Club; the first game conservation organization in the United States. His uncle, Robert Barnhill Roosevelt was an early hunter-naturalist and conservationist and beginning in 1862, published three books on the topic: Game Fish of the Northern States of America and British Provinces, Superior Fishing and The Game Birds of the Coasts and Lakes of the Northern States of America. TR’s nephew and future President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, when a state senator in New York was chairman of the state’s Forest, Fish and Game Committee.

  Chapter III –

  Stumbling Through Misery

  on the River of Doubt

  “My last chance to be a boy”

  (Theodore Roosevelt commenting on

  his expedition to the Rio Da Duvida)

  Living a life of loneliness and isolation in a land far from home may have been praying on Kermit’s sensitive emotions and innate sense of despair. During his months of railroading and bridge building in Argentina, Kermit maintained a flirtatious correspondence with his former acquaintance from the Sagamore Hill summer of 1912, culminating in a written marriage proposal to Belle Willard in October 1913. A more inopportune time from a more inconvenient and distant location could not have been chosen for proposing a life commitment to a person he hardly knew beyond a summer’s jaunt. Now, a new emerging commitment to his father with the possibility of unknown dangers coupled with yet additional isolation for the coming months may have imposed on him a sense of foreboding and desperate urgency. Despite Belle’s immediate acceptance of the long-distance proposal, a new adventure for Kermit along with his father would further delay and ultimately threaten any plans of a marriage ceremony.

  The emerging Roosevelt-Zahm Expedition later metamorphosized into an adventure that was potentially destined for doom long before the twenty-two man party1 dipped their first paddle into the dark, threatening waters of the Rio Da Duvida, the River of Doubt. This threatening-jungle enclosed water course so named because of its extreme isolation and unknown length or end. The unmapped, mysterious body of water was located in remote jungle in the Amazon basin so far from any settlement that at that time its existence had only been recently discovered and was unmapped and un-travelled by any white man. In the words of the expedition’s originator, “For, strange as it may seem, South America is still more of a terra incognita than darkest Africa, and many parts of it are today less known than they were three hundred years ago.”2 The ill-selected and poorly provisioned crew was surprisingly imbalanced in knowledge and experience for this wilderness trip by having the greatest Amazonian explorer teamed with an aged, inexperienced Catholic priest and a former failed Arctic explorer. This poorly staffed eclectic group, separated by different languages and backgrounds entered one of the most inhospitable and least known regions of the world. Added to this was the questionable safety of the world’s most famous leader, who in middle age was suffering poor health.

  The Genesis of the Adventure

  The idea for a South American journey began percolating in Roosevelt’s mind during his presidency in 1908 by a suggestion from an old friend, Father John Augustine Zahm. Zahm piqued Roosevelt’s eclectic curiosity from his publication of, “Evolution and Dogma” a theological work arguing a compatibility between the opposing views of religion and evolution. He and Roosevelt also shared a keen interest in the works of Dante and the field of science. Short and slight of build, the scholarly Zahm was a Catholic official at Notre Dame University and amateur scientist. He was also known as an explorer but in reality, he explored more as a sightseeing tourist with a penchant for comfort rather than a hardened wilderness traveler inured to danger and privation.

  Just prior to his initial meeting at the White House with Roosevelt, Zahm had recently returned from a trip through the Andes Mountains and a journey down the Amazon River. He excitedly proposed the idea of mounting a joint expedition with the President into the interior of South America. However, at that time, Roosevelt had his sights set on an African shooting safari and delayed any future consideration of the idea. Zahm left the nation’s Capitol disappointed but decided to bide his time for a future South American trip with Roosevelt.

  American members of the ill-fated expedition to explore the River of Doubt: (left to right) Anthony Fiala, George Cherrie, Father John Augustine Zahm, Theodore Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt, Frank Harper, and Leo Miller.

  Years after his meeting with Zahm, following the doomed Progressive Party primary loss and his disastrous presidential election loss of 1912, Roosevelt aimlessly drifted into seclusion at Sagamore Hill and once again slumped into a restless despair. He knew that his election loss to Wilson coupled with his cleaving of the Republican Party by the Bull Moose debacle may be his last opportunity to once again gain the White House. His wife Edith and his close associates knew that he needed travel and preferably another dangerous and exotic adventure to steady his mind and clear his emotions of the recent embarrassment and disappointment of his political losses.

  Fate provided this opportunity as the South American adventure began to develop anew in the spring of 1913 when the governments’ of Argentina, Brazil and Chile invited the restless ex-president to give a series of lectures at their institutions of learning. Specifically, he received an invitation from the Museo Social in Buenos Aires to lecture before it on the topic of Progressive Democracy.3 The offers enabled Roosevelt to garner a handsome honorarium with the additional advantage of embarking on another adventure. Naturally, stepping again into the public spotlight would provide the opportunity to expound on his notion of democracy in the Western Hemisphere, and besides, this also would provide him an opportunity to visit in South America with his long-absent son Kermit and survey a portion of the world only vaguely familiar to him.

  His initial plan was typical of Roosevelt’s life-long interest in natural history; following his academic and political commitments to the Latin American governments then conduct a leisurely specimen collecting expedition through the middle of the continent north into the Amazon.
In the beginning of the twentieth-century, the huge land mass of the Amazon basin in central South America with its endless miles of dense jungle, scrub plains and winding rivers were little known and vast regions were barely explored and generally unmapped. The trip would provide for a perfect Rooseveltian excursion:

  “…it occurred to me that, instead of making the conventional tourist trip purely by sea round South America, after I had finished my lectures I would come north through the middle of the continent into the valley of the Amazon….” 4

  The American Museum of Natural History in New York City would be his choice for sponsoring the expedition. Roosevelt had a longstanding personal relationship with the institution. His father was one of the original founders of the museum in the 1860s and he was a personal friend of museum head, Henry Fairfield Osborn. The museum was at that time the preeminent natural history and exploratory institution in the world. Despite his prodigious knowledge of natural history, as an amateur Roosevelt knew he would need the specialized skills of trained scientists to study and document the expedition’s findings. He also recognized that any trip into a distant wild land, even a somewhat benign and previously traveled region required the knowledge of experienced hands.

  As fate would dictate, when attending a luncheon meeting at the museum with ornithology curator Frank Chapman to begin planning the venture, Zahm arrived at the same time with the same intentions. The result was a collecting trip up the 1,500 mile long Paraguay River through the Mato Grasso region into the valley of the Amazon. As concept originator of the South American expedition many years before and his previous sojourn down the Amazon, Zahm became the unofficial trip coordinator and logistician. This assumed role would later prove to be a disastrous oversight by Roosevelt when a major change in both the trip itinerary and level of effort transformed into a dangerous enterprise of enormous proportions.