The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [329]
After the service, Roosevelt went horseback riding along Eagle Tail Creek, accompanied by Kansas’s two U.S. senators: Joseph Burton and Chester Long, both Republicans. When he was back in Sharon Springs, ready to board the train for Colorado, a little girl suddenly appeared with a two-week-old badger. Her brother Josiah had trapped it alive, and she wanted President Roosevelt to raise it as a White House pet.67 To the surprise of the attending dignitaries, Roosevelt roared in delight, saying he would add Josiah (as he named it) to the growing White House menagerie. During the coming weeks, Roosevelt would hand-feed Josiah from a baby bottle.68
With its grayish coat, flattened appearance, heavy body, and short tail, Josiah became a favorite of Roosevelt’s. At train depots the president would show the cute badger to schoolchildren, pointing out the conspicuous white stripe running down its back. Knowing that badgers were carnivorous, Roosevelt fed Josiah the best meat he could find, although for some reason it was rejecting the meat in favor of starches. “I have collected a variety of treasures, which I shall have to try to divide up equally among you children,” Roosevelt wrote home. “One treasure, by the way, is a very small badger, which I named Josiah, and he is called Josh for short. He is very cunning and I hold him in my arms and pet him. I hope he will grow up friendly—that is if the poor little fellow lives to grow up at all…. We feed him milk and potatoes.”69
In Denver, Roosevelt met with cowboys and delivered speeches on irrigation laws and good citizenship.70 Mayor Robert R. Wright, Jr., proclaimed the day of the presidential visit, May 4, a citywide holiday.71 A magnificent gold brooch was given to T.R. depicting the Rocky Mountains—he wore it on his winter coat for the rest of the trip. In Denver, he also connected with a former Rough Rider, swapping stories about Cuba. In his Yellowstone journal Burroughs noted how astounding it was that so many Rough Riders wrote to the president about their personal woes. Most were from the territories—Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico. Roosevelt was their spiritual counselor and adviser. One Rough Rider, Burroughs recalled, wrote to the president: “Dear Colonel—I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did not intent to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife.”72 What surprised Burroughs was that the president had such time for this nonsense.
After winning the hearts and minds of Denver, Roosevelt was off to the New Mexico Territory, where statehood was still pending. When Roosevelt had attended the Rough Riders’ first reunion in 1899 in Las Vegas, New Mexico, he hadn’t had time to visit the Old Spanish mission town of Santa Fe, which was off the beaten path. Originally, Santa Fe was meant to be a booming railroad stop on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe line, but the civil engineers instead chose Lamy, to its south. Now, after finally seeing the fascinating San Miguel chapel (oldest edifice in the United States), Loreto chapel, and La Fonda on the Santa Fe Plaza, Roosevelt better understood why the archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett (then age thirty-nine) wanted these sixteenth-century structures saved for posterity. Furthermore, to Roosevelt’s mind New Mexico was the pocket where many other prehistoric treasures were kept. Hewett was pushing for the timeworn ruins of the Pajarita plateau, in particular, to become a national park. Congressman Lacey had visited the Pajarito in 1902, with Hewett as guide. Forging a formidable league, Lacey and Hewett reported to Roosevelt that the pot hunters and artifact vandals had to be put out of business. Hewett started