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By Root 3856 0

’s limited natural resources. Like cavalry officers on a mad charge, Roosevelt and Grinnell often went to Washington, D.C., to demand congressional action on behalf of wildlife. Their message was as clear as a bell. Shame fell upon senators who tried to cross words with Roosevelt and company. “Those who used to boast of their slaughter are now ashamed of it,” a triumphant Grinnell declared in 1889, referring to the club’s success, during its first year, in convincing Americans about the need for regulated hunting and for federal parks; “and it is becoming recognized fact that a man who wastefully destroys big game, whether for the market, or only for heads, has nothing of the true sportsman about him.”16

II

While Grinnell used Forest and Stream to promote the Boone and Crockett Club during 1888, Roosevelt subtly did the same in Century magazine.17 The six long articles T.R. wrote for Century about conservation, ranching, and hunting were expertly illustrated by Frederic Remington, who recalled the landscape of the Badlands from a trip there in 1881. If Custer could take his own photographer along with him to the Black Hills in 1874, Roosevelt saw no reason not to have Remington illustrate his Dakota exploits for posterity. Roosevelt wanted his likeness to exude dignity, stoicism, and righteousness. Despite all his frenetic activity and the difficulty he faced daily, pouring out words as quickly as ideas came to him, Roosevelt preferred being portrayed by Remington (and later by others) as coolheaded and manly—a modern fictional counterpart would be Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Reporters enjoyed covering Roosevelt’s bombastic side, but he himself felt that his most impressive quality was fundamental decency.

Remington would soon become nearly as famous Roosevelt. By the time Roosevelt had recruited him, Remington, a native of Canton, New York, had sketched cavalrymen, bronco busters, mountain trappers, desert rats, cowboys, and Indians. (In fact, he had just finished illustrating Elizabeth Custer’s Tenting of the Plains, to modest acclaim.18) Like Roosevelt—and Buffalo Bill, who in 1887 was performing in Great Britain to capacity crowds—Remington knew how to strike a mythic note when portraying the settlement of the American West.19 Yet, to his credit, Remington, not a particularly talkative man, wasn’t interested in the bogus myths of the West such as El Dorado or the Northwest Passage. Like Roosevelt, he wanted to present the Rockies, the Great Plains, and Southwest in a factually accurate way, sketching with enterprise and precision whatever he saw. Belief in Darwin and the science surrounding that belief—humans evolving from apes, natural selection, and survival of the fittest—were also an important component of Remington’s artistry.

Although they collaborated brilliantly on the articles for Century, Remington didn’t personally care for Roosevelt, who was known to mock sheep farmers (Remington had once herded sheep in Kansas). “No man,” Roosevelt claimed, “can associate with sheep and maintain his self-respect.”*20 This rift over sheep was rather silly, for on the face of it, the two men had much in common: an Ivy League education (Remington had gone to Yale); a belief in the strenuous life and Darwin’s and Huxley’s biology; and, of course, a shared interest in wildlife, ranching, cowboys, and the American West in general. Neither of them enjoyed fake western stories about jackelopes, bigfoots, or ring-tailed roarers. But Roosevelt’s blue blood rankled the scrappy, middle-class Remington, who was often stone broke and begging for freelance assignments.21

Frederic Remington’s Buffalo Hunter Spitting a Bullet into a Gun (ink wash and watercolor on paper, 1892) was a Roosevelt favorite. This illustration was created for an edition of Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail.

Frederic Remington’s Buffalo Hunter Spitting a Bullet into a Gun. (Courtesy of the Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York)

Inherited privilege, in fact, annoyed Remington no end. And to Roosevelt, Remington was just a gun for hire,