It was in the summer of 1883 that he entered the then “wild and woolly”
town of Little Missouri, situated on the Northern Pacific Railroad,
in the very heart of the “bad lands” of Dakota. Little Missouri
contained at that time some of the worst “bad men” and outlaws to be
found outside the borders of civilization. But it was not in the town
that he expected to find the health and strength to carry him through
the strenuous life he, perhaps, had already mapped out, but in the
saddle, camp, and chase, by living close to nature and taking “pot
luck” with the rough and rugged men who became his companions, and who
understood him and whom he understood from the outset. During that
summer, with one man and a pack-outfit, he hunted over the country,
from Yellowstone Park to the Black Hills, from the Black Hills to the
Big Horn Mountains, through the Big Horn Basin to Jackson Hole and in
the majestic Rocky Mountains, back to Yellowstone Park, down Clark’s
Fork to the Yellowstone, the Big and Little Horn Rivers, through the
Crow Indian Reservation where General George A. Custer, the gallant
and lamented soldier, went to a heroic death. Back again to the “bad
lands” of the Little Missouri, went Theodore Roosevelt, having hunted
buffaloes, elk, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, bear, lion and the
smaller game of that country. He fished in the numerous mountain
streams, and lived the rough, hardy life of a frontiersman. For five
months, the heavens were his only canopy. He caught and killed game
for his own use, saddled his mounts, did his own cooking, was his own
scout, and performed his half of the night-work. The capacity to do for
himself and meet men upon an equal basis—self-reliance and personal
courage,—came to him as the fruition of this and similar experiences in
the Far West. I know that this democracy still influences him.