The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [414]
97. TR to B, June 23, 1884 (TRB); TR.Wks. 1.152.
11: THE COWBOY OF THE PRESENT
1. TR.Wks.I.150. The following account of TR’s solo expedition is taken from his own narrative, “A Trip on the Prairie,” first published in Hunting Trips of a Ranchman in 1885. Supplementary details from TR. Pri.Di. June 17–22, 1884, and other sources cited passim.
2. TR.Wks.I.307–9; 1.2; II.54.
3. Ib.
4. See p. 27.
5. TR.Wks.I.150; 308; 309–10.
6. Apparently TR saw no live buffalo on his peregrinations through the Badlands in 1884. He comments in TR.Pri.Di. only on the countless skulls and skeletons to be seen everywhere. In other words, the future president of the American Bison Society must have killed one of the very last buffalo in Dakota on his hunt the previous fall.
7. TR.Wks.I.149–51; TR to B, June 23, 1884 (TRB); TR.Wks.I.151–2.
8. Ib., 329.
9. Ib., 153–5, 154–7, 158, TR to B, June 23, 1884.
10. TR.Wks.I.161-2.
11. Ib.
12. Put.457; TR to B, June 23, 1884.
13. This commitment raised TR’s total investment in Dakota to $40,000, or 20% of his capital. The contract was signed on June 12, 1884.
14. TR.Wks.I.164; Put.457.
15. He had arrived on the night of June 9, and ridden immediately to his ranch.
16. Put. 452; Twe.111. The hotel is still operating under the name “Rough Riders Hotel.” Medora, garishly restored and commercialized, is now a major tourist destination in North Dakota. Chateau de Morès survives intact as a state historical site, and the giant chimney of the Marquis’s packing plant still looms over town.
17. Mor.73.
18. Bad Lands Cowboy, Jan. 5, 1884; Hag.RBL.79, 120; Brown, Dee, Trail Driving Days (Scribner’s, 1952) 186; Goplen, Arnold O., “The Career of the Marquis de Morès in the Bad Lands of North Dakota,” North Dakota History, Jan.-Apr. 1946, 40; Twe.69, 71; Brown, Trail Driving, 187.
19. Twe. passim; Goplen, “de Morès”; Trail Driving, 185; Put.362.
20. Goplen, “de Morès,” 47.
21. Ferris and Merrifield had refused to allow one of the Marquis’s herds to graze on the range opposite Maltese Cross, which according to frontier law “belonged” to their ranch. The Marquis had offered them a $1,500 bribe, which they refused. Hag.RBL. 84–6; Put.451.
22. Hag.RBL.127; Put.460–1.
23. See Gar.79 ff. for Lodge’s tribulations and torment after Chicago.
24. Bad Lands Cowboy, qu. HAG.Bln.
25. The Cowboy office soon became a favorite haunt of TR when he was in town, along with those others who “liked to smell printer’s ink and feel civilized.” Arthur T. Packard in Saturday Evening Post, Mar. 4, 1904.
26. Bad Lands Cowboy, qu. HAG.Bln.
27. TR.Wks.271; Hag.RBL.188; HAG. Bn.; Lan.80.
28. Hag.RBL.149; Put.456–7; TR. Auto. 97–8; Sew.18–19. This site, returned to nature, is now the North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park. A diorama re-creates it at the Museum of Natural History in New York.
29. TR.Auto.96; photos by TR in TRC; TR.Wks.I.10-11.
30. Put.459; Mor.73.
31. Sew. 12.
32. Ib.
33. Ib., 13–4; Sewall in HAG.Bln.
34. Put.459.
35. Hag.RBL.147; Put.461.
36. HAG.Bln. See Hag.RBL.139–147 for an account of Granville Stuart’s vigilante movement, also Mattison, Ray H., “Roosevelt and the Stockmen’s Association” in North Dakota History, XVII.2–3 (Apr.-July 1950). This rough-and-ready form of justice sometimes had unfortunate consequences, as when the vigilantes strung up an innocent man. Their leader did his best to apologize to the widow. “Madam, the joke is on us.” Albert T. Vollweiler in Quarterly Journal of U. North Dakota 19 (Oct. 1919) 1.
37. St. Paul Pioneer Press, July 2, 1884.
38. COW.
39. The family had acquired Alice Lee’s habit of calling him by his college nickname. Although the word understandably pained him, it took them some time to relearn the word “Theodore.” See Robinson/Cowles/Alsop correspondence, passim.
40. Sew. 14–15.
41. TR to B, June 23, 1884 (TRB).
42. Put.463–5; COW.
43. Anna Bulloch Gracie to Archibald Bulloch Sr., May 14, 1884 (TRP).
44. Merrifield in HAG.Bln.; Hag. RF.11.
45. Nev.154.
46. Gar.79 ff; Put.464–5.
47. See N.Y.