In his account of Roosevelt as an outdoor man Henry Beach Needham
furnishes this interesting picture of Theodore in his college days:
“It was a bout to decide the lightweight championship of Harvard.
The heavyweight and middleweight championships had been awarded. The
contest for the men under 140 pounds was on. Roosevelt, then a junior,
had defeated seven men. A senior had as many victories to his credit.
They were pitted against each other in the finals. The senior was quite
a bit taller than Roosevelt and his reach was longer. He also weighed
more by six pounds, but Roosevelt was the quicker man on his feet and
knew more of the science of boxing. The first round was vigorously
contested. Roosevelt closed in at the very outset. Because of his bad
eyes he realized that infighting gave him his only chance to win. Blows
were exchanged with lightning rapidity, and they were hard blows.
Roosevelt drew first blood, but soon his own nose was bleeding. At the
call of time, however, he got the decision for the round.
“The senior had learned his lesson. Thereafter he would not permit
Roosevelt to close in on him. With his longer reach, and aided by his
antagonist’s near-sightedness, he succeeded in landing frequent blows.
Roosevelt worked hard, but to no avail. The round was awarded to the
senior. In the third round the senior endeavored to pursue the same
tactics, but with less success. The result of this round was a draw,
and an extra round had to be sparred. Here superior weight and longer
reach began to tell, but Roosevelt boxed gamely to the end. Said his
antagonist: ‘I can see him now as he came in fiercely to the attack.
But I kept him off, taking no chances, and landing at long reach. I got
the decision, but Roosevelt was far more scientific. Given good eyes,
he would have defeated me easily.’”
In the summer of 1883 Roosevelt, struggling through a more than usually
serious attack of asthma, “went West,” in the hope that outdoor life
in Dakota would restore him to strength.
Medora, the place to which fortune directed him, was a little prairie
settlement barely inhabited except on pay day, when the cowboys
galloped in from the surrounding ranches to spend their well-earned
money in the saloons.
Roosevelt had selected Medora as a possible haunt of buffalo-hunters,
and he inquired eagerly of the inhabitants as to how he could find a
guide for a bison-hunt.
One of the owners of the Chimney Butte Ranch, Joe Ferris, chanced to be
in town that day, and while his companions were eyeing the spectacled
“tenderfoot” with amusement or suspicion, Ferris, attracted by the
newcomer’s friendly and honest looks, invited him to his ranch.
Roosevelt gladly accepted this opportunity to know ranch life at first
hand. After a drive of twelve miles, Ferris led him up to a crude ranch
house. When Roosevelt entered its door he found its furniture quite as
primitive as was the building.
The place was owned by Joe Ferris and his brother, Sylvane, who were
in partnership with one Joe Merrifield. The young Easterner handled
himself in a way that won the esteem of these hardy, keen-eyed
“cow-punchers.” They took him on a trying trip through the desolate
“Bad Lands” in search of bison, but Roosevelt endured the hardships
without flinching and in the end got what he went after--a bull buffalo.
When the trip was over Roosevelt found himself in love not only with
his comrades, but also with their cattle and ponies and crude outfit.
He bought the ranch; left Merrifield in charge as his foreman; and came
East to enter upon another vigorous term in the Legislature.
Two years later, Roosevelt found himself sick of politics, and at odds
with life itself. His adored mother had died, and, a few hours after
her passing, his wife had also died in giving birth to his daughter
Alice. Leaving the child in the best of care in New York, he went back
to Dakota, resolved to devote himself to ranching.
He selected a site for his new ranch house at Elkhorn, and his favorite
companions, Sewall and Wilmot Dow, Sewall’s nephew, who came West to
join him, had a great deal to do with the building of this house.
Sewall states that Roosevelt at the time intended to take up
cattle-raising as a permanent business, having heard that there was
“money in it.”