The Teddy Bear Needs A Hug

In Louisiana, a fight is brewing over the country's most endangered Bruin. 

- Nick Weldon

“LOOK HERE, HOLT,” TEDDY ROOSEVELT SAID TO HIS GUIDE. “I’M BOUND TO SEE A BEAR THE FIRST DAY.”

The president, like me more than a century later, had high hopes for his maiden foray into the wilds of the Mississippi Delta except that, being Roosevelt, he wanted to see a bear in order to shoot it. In 1902, this qualified him as a staunch conservationist. His confidence perhaps stemmed from Holt Collier’s résumé: The former slave and Confederate soldier was the region’s most renowned bear hunter, with more than 3,000 kills to his name.

On day one of Roosevelt’s hunt, organized in Mississippi near the Louisiana state line, Collier delivered, using hounds to drive a bear out of thick canebrake and into a stream. After a struggle that left one of his dogs dead and the bear injured, Collier was able to snare the animal and tie it to a tree. Roosevelt was a prolific big game hunter who slew all manner of wild creatures, but evidently even he had his limits. He declined to shoot the defenseless bear. Roosevelt’s act, in an early 20th century sense, went viral. The Washington Post ran a cartoon of the scene titled “Drawing the Line in Mississippi”, and a candy maker in Brooklyn got the president’s permission to sell stuffed animals named “Teddy’s Bears.” A cultural sensation was born.