00:00:00 Speaker 1: M ultimately, you're dealing with a person who, because of the circumstances of his birth, should not have had the influence and impact that he did, and he did so because he refused to internalize all the messaging about who he was from outside. This week on the Bargrease podcast we're on our third and final episode in our series on the extraordinary life of the former slave, confederate soldier, bear hunter and Mississippi Native Hulk Collier. Many believe he deserves to sit in the saddle with the greats of American history, but his life is stacked deep in controversy, murder, fortunes won and lost, an unrivaled adventure. We've tracked the data points we have on hold, but like a boar bear being pursued by hounds, he's difficult to course. This episode is dedicated to his famous Ted bear hunt when he guided President Theodore Roosevelt, and will discuss Holtz lasting legacy. He lived in bold opposition to the trends of the age. He was a black man that overcame, endured and thrived in the south in a dangerous period. But even in the midst of victory, his life leaves us with a tragic aftertaste. The story of Holtz life exemplifies core bear grease. It's the finest renderings, the choice meat of the ACORN, the flash of the flashiest mule, the crescendo trill of the barred owl. It's the Black Panther of all Black Panther Stories, and I'm honored to tell it to you. I doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. And we rides into camp and he've got the bar tied in the back of his horse. He said, did the President Kill that baron? He said no, but if he had followed my instructions he would have. My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the bear grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land presented by F hf gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. He lived his life from day one all the way through as somebody you took seriously. White men sought him out in the deep South in that time for shought him out not only white men but the president United States, and I'll talk him on two hunts, not just one. If there's one thing we've learned about Hulk Collyer, it's that he was a man to be taken seriously on this third and final episode. For any of you hillbillies who are just getting here, here's the summary. Hulk Collyer was born a slave in Mississippi in eighteen forty six he fought in the confederate army. He killed two white men and shot another one after the civil war, but wasn't convicted. He worked as a cowboy in Texas. He served as a deputy sheriff. He gambled like a sailor. He never drank a drop of alcohol. He had three wives and at least fourteen children, which I hadn't told you yet. He had a baseball team named after him. He was incredibly loyal to his friends and he had close relationships with men of great power, and he spent thirty six years as a professional bear hunter in the Mississippi Delta. But his life wasn't all guns and roses. The backdrop of his life was the systemic racism of the day. Holt lived amid undeniable racial hierarchy, even though many were trying to remedy the human tragedy of slavery in its generational wake of destruction. I don't know how we got here, but this is just where we've been found, in the midst of the dirty story of humanity, and Holtz life is of great interest for examination and inspiration. Man Do I love this story. So Holt has been a professional market bear hunter since eighteen seventy. We learned that on episode two, selling meat to hungry labor markets in the south. But in eighteen ninety he became a sport hunting outfitter. In nineteen o two Holt was fifty six years old. Here's our old friend author, minor Ferris Buchanan, who wrote the only book on Holt Collier, called Holt Collier, and he's going to introduce us to the famous ninth Teeno to bear hunt with President Theodore Roosevelt. So he starts out doing this and he does this for thirty years until finally in the nineteen o two when Theodore Roosevelt is wants to go on a on a Delta hunt for a black bear through certain contacts of the Illinois Central Railroad contact of Le Roy personally, where a persony recommends, so they finally get whole. Caryer is going to lead this hunt. That's in addition to the hunting experience he had prior to eighteen seventy. Had thirty or two years of experience. He knew that Delta better than anybody and what's hard for us today to envision was the reputation that the south had for bear hunting with hound. The reason Theodore Roosevelt even knew about that this hunt existed was because in the eighteen nineties there are many magazines and publications that talked about southern hunting and Theodore Roosevelt read them all and he wanted to go on a deep south black bear hunt more than anything morning. He wanted to go to Africa, he wanted to go on one of these hunts, sisting on it. So he comes down in nineteen o two by train and they have a five day hunt. Who Ki you're when he killed his first bear right outside of Greenville? He was ten years old. He shot it off of the back porch. So that would have been eighteen fifty six. By nineteen O two, when Theodore Roosevelt comes down here to hunt. Who can't find any beary in Washington county's got to go all the way down to Sharky County, fifty miles away. He's got to go way out into the willerness on the Sunflower River, fourteen miles due east of the railroad track. It's it's a very difficult place to get to and that's where the hunt took places. Century they had killed out a lot of bears from the market hunting and market hunting and by then, you know, the area had been settled. You had railroads in here by nineteen o two, I think. I think recreational hunting had taken a lot of as well. The early nineteen hundreds were a grim time for North American wildlife, and old Americanus wasn't exempt. They were pushed to the remote interiors of their range. Roosevelt was keen to the diminishing southern Black Bear in this unique style of hunting and he wanted in before it was gone. Roosevelt had been on a transformative journey on his ideology of wild places and wild beasts. In eighteen eighty three he went on a bison hunt in Montana and it was said, quote, that he danced enthusiastically around the buffalo to celebrate his success. End of quote. This was after he'd killed a Buffalo, but on a later bison hunt in eighteen eighty nine, when the herds dwindled to extremely low numbers, he wrote. Quote. For several minutes I watched the great beast as they grazed. Mixed with eager excitement of the hunter was a certain half melancholy feeling as I gazed on these bison, themselves part of the last remnant of a doomed in nearly vanished race. Few indeed are the men who now have, or evermore shall have, the chance of seeing the mightiest of American beasts and all his wild vigor, surrounded by the tremendous desolation of his far off mountain home. End of quote. Roosevelt exemplified the irony of the hunter's heart. He was compelled to pursue and kill these animals, but a deeper priority and conviction to save these beasts in their habitat arose. In the end, Roosevelt's radical conservation ideology proved to be an act of what some people have called American genius. Where an animal has cultural value to the common man through hunting, that animal and his habitat will be preserved. This has worked for the last hundred and twenty years and our prayer is that it will continue to work. We all live in the wake of Teddy Roosevelt's boldness. That's some deep watered a way through this Lee, but I bet you a possum tattoo that holds stories of the Dwindlinge Mississippi Black bears fueled Roosevelt's desire to protect wildlife. Here's Hankberd and our buddy from the past several episodes, telling us about Roosevelt arriving in Mississippi. It's real close to smedes landing where Roosevelt got off the train. This was a secret trip. The first time they planned it, Roodovelt Fred was gonna turn into a picnic. So he he canceled the first trip and was able to put together another one and came down on most the size of them fishes. Eleanor Central Railroad train got off its smedes landing ready to hunt, ready to go, and there were newspaper reporters that were there that were not allowed to go out to camp, which was ten fifteen miles inland. into the swamp. One or two of them was allowed to go and there was about a whole carload of secret service policeman protecting the president. But when he got down they got ready to go. Hold Tread No, no, no, no, I'M gonna be in one in charge of taking care of the president. Rood of them said he's safer with me than with all the policeman in Washington D C. So they all stayed at the landing. So it was right close in. Roosevelt and Holt just took off into the wilderness together. The first thing Rhodovelt said to hold collier that he came over of that train and went straight to that black man and his hunting gear with his hand outstretched, and he said you must be holp. I hears you as a great ball hunter, and they shook hands and with the closest of friends from that point on. It was said quote. Were it not for his highbrow and the distracting brilliance of his smile, Theodore Roosevelt would unquestionably be an ugly man. He had small ears, heavy jowls, large wide spaced eyes of Pale and he wore rimless glasses. His most celebrated feature where his dazzling white teeth. Even an ugly president in nineteen o two shaking a black man's hand wasn't normal. It might have been a savvy political move, but I believe Roosevelt was just being a normal human honoring another human that he respected because of the fruit of his life. Roosevelt would send Holt Christmas cards and personal letters multiple times over the years. He would later give hold a gun as a gift. On the first night of their hunt, Roosevelt instructed everyone to call him Colonel Roosevelt and dropped the president. He was a socially progressive leader and he took some heat from some sectors of the press for Hob nobbing with a former slave. Later in his presidency, Leroy Percy, who was on this hunt, would consult with Roosevelt at the White House about how Percy planned to effectively rebuild the south and give social ladders to the black and vehemently opposed the rising power of the Clue Klux Klan. This gives you some insight into the kind of men that Holt considered friends. This was more than a bear hunt, though he was genuinely there to kill a bear. I think Roosevelt wanted himself to be seen giving honor to a man of African descent. Here's minor with the details of the hunt that would become known as the Teddy Bear Hunt. Roosevelt is gonna go fourteen miles out onto the banks of the little sunflower river, where he's gonna stay for five days. President United States is gonna disappear, literally disappearing to the ozone for that length of time. And the press, they want to go out there to be on the campsite with him, but they won't allow that. In fact, they armed several black men to corn off this this hunt site and uh and they wanted to go but they were denied, so they had to find a place to stay. So any newspaper report will have to be sent out by Telegraph, and the press are allowed out to the hunt site. Certainly wants a day to get to interview people and Whatnot. We need to understand the players on this hunt and the press is a major player. It's important to understand the role because they would be communicating with the country eagerly watching their president every single day. A second player was Holt's favorite fice dog. Here's Hank introducing them to us. Holt's favorite dog was a little squirrel dog, a little fice dog named Jocko. Probably didn't weigh fifteen pounds. He could not run with the big dogs because he wasn't a big dog. He won't a trailing dog or anything like. Hey, here a little face dog, he let's quarrel dog, but hold a door him and he played an integral part. And every bear whole killed with Jocko was around, and the way that hold would do it. You don't just run into a bath that your big dogs are on with a knife. That bad gonna red view. Well, when you're a bear, bade after your trailing dogs had bade the bear and the bad turn around. The right buzz is as old now. We've been to fight this and the dogs catch dogs. Some album would go in and attack the bear. That's when hope would turn jocko loose. Jocko was carried on his saddle and a little burlap bag with a string tight around it with Jocko's head out and he would tied around the Saddle Horn. Jocko saw all action. He knew what was going on and when hope would turn Jocko loose and these are inhold words. Jocko will run in and Harry the bear. He would run around and bite the ball on one side and the ball would turn over to that side and then he'd run on the other side and bite the bar on the other side. And while Jocko was harrying the ball, hope was running with a knife and stead him in the hut. Killer band. And that's what happened. That's how they hunted. Jocko's sounds like quite the companion. Killing the bear with a knife wasn't just a macho feet but it was an effective way to dispatch a bear without accidentally shooting the dog, which is a real problem when the bear is being made by dogs on the ground. This might be hard to understand, but in bear hunting the dogs are of highest priority. Bear hunters to this day would take a bullet for their dogs. Here's minor telling us about the hunt the very first night. Roosevelt is all about whole car. He wants to know all about hold. He's served in because all these wonderful stories, and I think that's when when the hope confesses to him that he had killed James, a king and a duel in the cane brake and then he wants about know about the hunt in the morning. One of the plans and that Roosevelt did not want to sit on a stationary stand like deer hunters. Due today all the articles that have been written about bear hunting were chasing the bear on horseback, being entangled in the Briars, tooting the horns and calling and active through the swamps. He wanted to be on the chase and uh his his hosts, however, we're a great deal more timid than he was. They were afraid that they we don't want a president to get hurt on one of our hunts. So the plan was the very next morning was for hope, to put Theodore Roosevelt on a stationary stand, which was basically sitting on a log. So the fellow who accompanied Theodore Roosevelt to sit on that log was a guy named Huger foot. And they're sitting out there and there's a log, there's a slew of water, small pond. Immediately on the other side of this slough is a stand of cane and there's a game trail right across from the log where it's obvious jaguars come through their cats dogs, whatever is out there, wolves, bear come through that and they come to the slough to drink. Well, he puts Roosevelt and hear your foot on this log and give them specific instructions not to go anywhere. He and his dogs are gonna chase a bear. First they got to pick up the cent of a bear, then they got to follow the bed and then they gotta so they here hold and he tells them they'll stay right where you are. I'M gonna TRACK A bear. I'm gonna Chase the bear and he's gonna come right out of that game trail hold and they can't and I'm gonna bring him back to this slough. That's exactly what he does. It just takes a lot longer to do than they anticipated. They sit there on that log and they hear when caryer picks up the trail of the bear. They hear the dogs and they hear them go up north and then they hear the bear and the dogs go south and then they hear him go back North again. They can't see them, but they know they're in the distance, maybe a quarter of a mile away, maybe half, somewhere between them and the little Sunflyer River holsting everything, you can't keep that bear from getting to the little Sunflyer River. Doesn't want to cross the river, don't want to drink from the river, and then he goes all the way south until it's so far away Huger Foot says that bear must have crossed the Yazoo River. They actually think the bed has gotten away from hope and about that time they're getting hungry. They put out on that stand about eight o'clock in the morning. It is now new. They're hungry and Holt told him not to leave, but they left. They ride back into camp to get a sandwich or something to eat and as luck would have it, about the time they leave that stand, hope turns that bear around and about the time Roosevelt is eating a sandwich, holts got that bear heading right to him and he's behind that bear, I don't know, a hundred yards, two hundred yards, and instinctively hope knows where he is and he instinctively he knows that bear is popping his head out into that Slough about it right now, and he does not hear a gunshot and he immediately senses what has happened. The president leaves the stand early to head back for lunch. I believe Roosevelt was a tough hunter and he might have stayed there if it weren't for his host. Roosevelt had pleaded that the hunt numbers stay small. He had written to his friend John Parker. Quote. In short, my experience is that to try to combine a hunt and a picnic generally means a poor picnic and always means a spoiled hunt. Every additional man on a hunt tends to hurt it. Of course, I am only going because I want to hunt and do see that I get the first bear without fail. End of quote. Roosevelt was adamant that he be the first one that killed a bear and he wanted to keep the hunt small. Anyway, it really didn't turn out that way and it turned into more of a picnic and the president would forever regret it. Here's hank talking about Holtz log. Well, when that Bab broke out right at that log where the president was supposed to be sitting, and the president wasn't there, it perturbed hope pretty bad. Well, the dogs were on the bear and the bar started mauling the dogs and Holt had been told that the president kills the first bear. No one kills the bear before president does, or the colonel, as President Roosevelt asked to be called, when the bear was killing his dogs, and Holt knew he had to do something, so he turned jocko loose. And when Jocko ran into Mali, the baries nine and grabbed little jocko and was mauling Jocko. And that is why hope clubbed his gun and ran in, because if he were to shoot the bear he might kill Jocko, his favorite dog. He clubbed his gun and ran in screaming ball, let go my dog, ball, let go my dog, and he swung in an arc and hit the bear at the base of the skull and basically cracked the score, stunned to the bear. The bad drop jocko loose. He had already killed Jocko and fell back into the water. I hated to do that to you. I Tell my children that owning a dog is basically planning for a sad funeral. They will die and it will be sad. So Jocko is now dead and he wouldn't be if the president had been there. And Holt ain't happy. Let's step back in time. Two minutes to win. Holt had just clubbed the bear with his rifle, and I want to say that this bear story was told this way by Holt, as recorded by the press. This wasn't an exaggerated story told a hundred years later by people who didn't know him. And this bear was an older boar, weighing two D and thirty five pounds and was said to be bone skinny and he was six ft seven inches nose to tell. That's a really good bear. Here's minor and the bear stands up. Acording to Holt, I was looking straight up at him. He's at least two FT taller than me and I had the gun in my hand but I couldn't shoot it because the barrel was bent. So he retreated back to his horse and got his, quote unquote, Texas rope that he had been carrying with him all these years and he lasts sowed that bear and pulled it, took all the slack out on a willow tree and had him, had the bear tethered. We know it broke his skull, cracked the skull, because we still have the skull the Smithsonian Institution and uh, it's been examined, it's got a crack and UH. At any rate, caller ties his bear to a tree. It ain't going anywhere because he's he's tied real close with Real, real short line, and he sends a couple of men to the camp go find the president getting well. About that time, you know pretty quickly the president comes riding up with Huger Foot and all the other hunters are all gathered there and they say, Mr President, shoot, shoot that bear. Turn to that tree and Roosevelt thanks about it for a second. He knows those reporters are gonna be coming into camp that evening and they're gonna want and if the word goes out that he shot a bear that was tied to a tree, it would be devastated. He just he just wouldn't stand for so he refused to shoot the bear. The skull of that bear is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D C, with the cracked skull. Now that is wild. I want to say a word of defense for my brother Teddy Roosevelt. No doubt he calculated the press in not killing the tied bear, but Roosevelt played a vital role in articulating the ideas of fair chase developed by his Boone and Crockett Club. Here's their definition of fair chase. Quote. Fair Chase is the ethic old, sportsmanlike and lawful pursuit and taking of any free ranging wild game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage over the game animal. End of quote. Shooting a tied bear is not fair chase. Now, on the other hand, using dogs, however, is emphatically fair chase. It's hard to kill game using dogs. I'm just saying, don't be knocking hunting with hounds. Hunting with dogs is so foundational to the human experience that saying it's ethically wrong is like knocking the legs off the chair that you're sitting in. My, Oh my, I'm now climbing off my soapbox and walking back over to our story. Here's minor John Parker was on this hunt. Now, John is an interesting fella. He was from Louisiana. He born and raised in Mississippi, but he later became him governor of Louisiana. Was Theodore Roosevelt's vice president's candidate when he ran the second time as a bull Moose candidate. And Uh, he was a scrappy fellow. He wrote he didn't stay on the stand. He rolled behind a halt the whole time. So they, Mr President, killed this bear and, uh, he refused to do it, just absolutely refused to do it. John Parkers to them, says he'd volunteer and he wanted to kill a bear in the old fashioned way, the old hunter's way, where he lands the bear with a knife, stabbed the bear of the knife. And the way it's described, and everything I've read, is you stand on one side of the bear and you stab the bear in the chest or in the hard cavity from the other side, on the opposite side, because the bear is gonna gonna if he if he has an opportunity to strike or bite, he's gonna bite where that whether from the direction of the pain from the so you need to be standing on the opposite side of the bear. Well, Roosevelt happens to be carrying this dagger. It was more like an Arkansas toothpick. Toss it down to John Park and said here, use this. Well, Parker, hit a rib or something just made the bear mad. This is hopetelling the story and he and he really resented it because now the bear was mad enough, now he's mad or even madder, and that wholes the one is going to have to dispatch the bear, which he does, and that's pretty much the end of it. Hope puts the bear on the back of his horse, rising the camp, Roosevelt and park and the rest of him going. Now they don't have the dogs, they don't they're not hunting, but now they're hunting anything and they just boys in the wood, so to speak. But the hope goes back into camp. And when he rides into camp and he's got his bear tied to the back of his horse, he said, did the President Kill that bear? And he says no, but if he had followed my instructions he would have. He says it's to the press. He says it's to the press and he didn't realize what he was saying. Well, I know, and the press ran with it and it was all it was on the front page and every newspaper Coast to coast that not only had the president failed to get his trophy bear, he had done it by failing to follow the structures of this lowly guide who don't even know how to read write. So whole care in nineteen o two. As I say, it becomes the first man of sportsman of African descent to have national recognition. And that's before Jack Johnson Holt didn't know what he'd done, but he'd leaked the details that would forever etch him into history, because the press ran with the story of the tide bearer. Well, it got so much news coverage that it wasn't just the news coverage. Clifford Berryman, who was a well known cartoonist, picks up this event and he does a cartoon about it and it's called drawing the line in Mississippi and it's it's drawn up in the Washington Post on November six nineteen O two. I've talked to a lot of historians, I've read a lot of articles about this and nobody can come up with the definite with the explanation for this title. But at this point in time there's been a debate every year in the United States Congress for an anti lynching legislation and it never passes. Now look at that car too and tell me if you can see how that would be material to an anti lynching. So the picture is is a man with a bear roped around the neck looks like white man with a black bear and a rope around his neck, and then the president of the line in Mississippi, and president has his back turned to that with his hand out. So is that saying that Roosevelt never passed the law? What would that be? What I'm saying is there's some misconceptions here. First of all, the man with a rope around the bear's neck is white. This would have been a whole care. It should have been a black man. What if that wouldn't have fit the narrative of Anti Lynching? Let's and as whole. And then, basically, Theodore Roosevelt said I'm drawing the line in Mississippi. I I tend to think that this as anti lynching connotations around. Be that as it may, Clifford Barman continues to use the teddy bear air in his car. Anytime he has something about Roosevelt, he puts a bear and he puts a little bears as a comic relief in a in a political cartoon. Before the Teddy Bear, the comic relief in any Theater Roosevelt cartoon would have been a raccoon. Raccoon Barman started the teddy bear. When did he actually call it the teddy bear. The Teddy Bear didn't pick up the name until it became a toy, so it was later. So well, it was very soon after this Barriman made the bear comic relief and political cartoons about Roosevelt, and later it would be commercialized and turned into a children's toy called the TAP. And they're multiple things happening at this point in time. So you got Barman doing it, you got other cartoonists start doing it. But soon after this happened a toymaker in New York besides he wants to make a toy and he wants to call it the teddy bear. Well, the legend is that he contacted Roosevelt and said we want to call it Teddy's bear and it thosevelt gave him permission to do that. None of that correspondence has ever been found. That's the story of the Teddy Bear and a hundred and twenty years later, the name for a small stuffed bear is as strong as ever. And when you get down to its roots, the great nerve and Ingenuity of Holt Collier created it. Here's how the nineteen o two hunt ended, because they kept hunting. And again they hunt all over the place that they ride and ranged for long distances and they killed three bear on this hunt, none of which are killed by Roosevelt. But in the community hunt like this would have been considered anybody that gets the big game. It's considered a success for everybody. But Roosevelt didn't pick up them and so he resented it. But he says, I'm coming back to the south next year and we're gonna get us a trophy bear. Well, it ended up being five years. Roosevelt would return in nineteen o seven. However, a lot happened on this five a hunt. Holt confessed to killing james a king and he told Roosevelt how many kids he had. Remember, I was gonna surprise you with the details of this. Here it is, and Roosevelt actually wrote this in a letter to a buddy about halt collier. But Roosevelt asked Collier if he had any children and halt started counting on his fingers and said I've got fourteen children. Roosevelt acted astonished and Holt said no, sir, no, sir, all of them ain't my wives. She had to and the balance I got just frolican around. End of quote. Here's another interesting look into halt from the recordings of the hunt. Judge Jacob Dixon, who was there, wrote of the conversations around the campfire. He said, quote. Every night we set up later around the fire, black and white, a large company of us, and were regaled with hunting and fishing stories illustrate native of the days before, during and after the civil war, with the exception of the famous Robert Eager Bobo Callier, had killed more bear than any man in that country. He was a good rack and tour in a quaint, homely sportsmanlike way and by his vivid and intense descriptions, aroused and sustained unflagging interest. End of quote. Holt was a magnetic yet humble man. Here's the short version of Roosevelt's second bear hunt in the delta in nineteen o seven. It involves another famous bear hunter and it wasn't until nineteen o seven. First of all, this hunt, the second hunt. His host was John Parker down in Louisiana and he arrived there on a riverboat and this was a fourteen day hunt. And then by a whole car, and Roosevelt insists on having a whole car. You're on this hunt. The whole car you's Ad Roosevelt's specific invitation. But Ben Lilly, who's pretty famous outdoors, when at the time John Parker gets in Lily to be the leader of this hunt in nine seven and famous bear hunter with hounds, famous bear hunter, you know, goofy old coot accorded to Roosevelt and a religious fanatic. And somehow the metcalfs from Greenville come down the met cast and hope were real close, they were real tight. Long Story Short, after two days they decided there aren't any bear in the area and they moved to a place called Bear Lake. They go down to bear lake and they hunt for twelve more days. Roosevelt never gets his bear. Being literally stays in charge of the hunt the whole time until finally metcalts and whole carriers are talking to the side and the met casts are convinced that Roosevelt just needs to put whole carry in charge of his hunt he'll have a bear. So they go over there and they make that suggestion to him and roosevelts bites and he says, okay, Mr Lily, I'm sorry, but we're gonna put we're gonna give hold. I'm only here for one more day and we're gonna let Holt have his chance. So they put Holt in charge arch the next day, the very next morning, and hold it's really kind of funny when you think about it. He looks at the President says, you're gonna ride with me. You know, child. They've been putting him on a stand all these days. He says you're gonna ride with me. You know, child, you can handle this. And so he did and he got finally, he got to hunt in the true hunter fashion that he wanted to, by following the dogs, chasing the bear on horseback. And sure enough they got a trophy bear, a larger bear than the one that they had killed in the night two. That's why you have that card from Roosevelt to Holt saying thank you. So he very finally, finally, he got his bear and Holt was the hero. The whole was the hero. Ben Lily was an incredible and eccentric hunter who deserves his own burglary series, but this time Holt and the metcalfs hit the home run. Roosevelt would say, quote, he'd never met a man so indifferent to fatigue and hardship as Ben Lily. Here's what Roosevelt would lay to write about. Ben Lilly quote. The morning he joined us in camp he had come on foot through the thick woods, followed by his two dogs, and he had neither eaten nor drunk for twenty four hours, for he did not like to drink the swamp water. It had rained hard throughout the night and he had no shelter, no rubber coat, nothing but the clothes he was wearing, and the ground was too wet for him to lie on. So he perched in a crooked tree in the beating rain, much as if he had been a wild Turkey. But he was not in the least tired when he struck camp, and though he slept an hour after breakfast, it was chiefly because he had nothing else to do. Inasmuch as it was Sunday, on which day he never hunted nor labored, he could run through the woods like a buck. Was Far more enduring and quite as indifferent to whether. Though he was over fifty years old, he had trapped and hunted throughout almost all the half century of his life, and on the trail of game he was as sure as his own hounds. His observations are wild creatures were singularly close and accurate. He was particularly fond of the chase of the bear, which he followed by himself with one or two dogs. Often he would be on the trail of his quarry for days at a time, lying down to sleep wherever night overtook him. End of quote. I now want to read you what Roosevelt wrote about Hulk Collyer and the metcalf brothers. This is from miners book quote. Late in the evening of the same day, we were joined by two gentlemen to whom we owed the success of our hunt. They were Messrs Clive and Harley, metcalf planners from Mississippi, men in the prime of their life, thorough woodsman and hunters, Skilled Marksman and utterly fearless horsemen. For a quarter of a century they had hunted bear and deer with horse and Hound and were masters of the art. They brought with him their pack of bear hounds. Only one, however, being a thoroughly staunch and seasoned veteran. The pack was under the immediate control of a Negro Hunter, Holt Collier, in his own ways as remarkable a character as Ben Lily. He was a man of sixty and could neither read nor write, but had all the dignity of an African chief and for a half century had been a bear hunter, having killed or assisted in killing over three thousand bears. He had been born a slave on the hinds plantation his father and the old man when he was born, having been the body servant and Cook of Old General Hinds, as he called him, when the latter fought under Jackson at New Orleans. When ten years old, Holt had been taken on the horse behind his young master, the hinds of that day on a bear hunt when he killed his first bear. In the civil war, he had not only followed his master to battle as his body servant, but acted under him as a sharpshooter against the union soldiers. After the war. He can you need, to stay with his master into the latter died and had then been adopted by the met cast and he felt that he had brought them up and treated them with the mixture of affection and grumbling respect which an old nurse shows towards the lad who has ceased. Being a child, the two metcalfs and Holt understood one another thoroughly and understood their hounds and the game their hounds followed almost as thoroughly. End of quote. We haven't said a lot about the metcalfs, but they were as close of friends as Holt ever had. Here's minor with the icing on the cake of the presidential bear hunts. So it was clear that Roosevelt had a ton of respect for the Holt Collier. He corresponded with him, he ended up giving him a gift. This is a great immage and and I know that your listeners can't see the images, but there's a photograph here in the in January nineteen o eight Roosevelt sent to whole collier model winchester as a gift and he sent one to clive metcalf and he sent one to Harley met calf, who were both on that hunt. Yeah, so there's a picture. There's there's four men hold collier in the middle. They're all holding guns. There's two little kids holding guns. There is a live black bear at the feet cup, but there's also presumably bare dogs standing around unleashed. Those boys are being raised properly. I Love I love that picture is taken in the front yard of the House that I met Jane Weathers and she's one of the first people play interviews. She was ninety five years old, I mentioned earlier, and she she's one who felt in a lot of she knew hold. She was a young woman, not a child. She's a young woman when she knew hold as an older man and she was there when that picture was taken. But that bare cub. She tells me she remembers when Holk caught that cub. I'm gonna give you the full circle here. The book kinds holp caught that cub and brought it into those boys as a pit because that cold grow bigger, grew bigger and bigger and they cage and they couldn't cage it anymore. So when they got to be too big to manage, they contacted the Memphis Zoo and said we've got a bear for you and it became the first bear at the Memphis Zoo. The bear same barriers in it. For my little daughter asked me where the teddy bear camera. Now that's some good stuff. Old Miner walked us right into a great full circle ending to shade minor Ferris Buchanan to Shay. If you remember miner's curiosity about the teddy bear all started at the Memphis Zoo. In here's some clean up details. Two of the presidential guns are known about, but the whereabouts of Holtz Gunn are unknown. On another interesting note, in December nineteen O A, Theodore Roosevelt invited many of us friends across the country to the White House for a presidential wild game dinner and Hult Collier was invited, but he politely declined. Also, Holt was later invited to Africa with Roosevelt, but he also declined. And just clean up stuff, Holt killed his last bear in nineteen eleven at the age of sixty six. Now we're going to move into the final chapter of Holt's life. When hold was an elderly man, he had a house in town and hold was slowing down. The money was not coming in because of the hunting ground trunk, but he he made a lot of money and I pointed out in the book that he would he would have after a hunting season he'd have thousand dollars in his pocket cash. Well, most white people didn't have that kind of money. So he was well known to make a lot of money and at some point in time one of the met cafs he he aligned himself with the Prom in a medcalf family. He helped them out a lot. They helped him out a lot. But somebody talked him intus when he had a handful of money, said you need to buy a piece of land or buy a house. Built a house, and so he did in town. It's still there. Here's Hank with more about Holtz House in Greenville, Mississippi. Holt's house in Greenville on Broadway Street is quite unique in that it is in an area where mostly black workers lived and worked, one far from Mr Percy's house and is on the way to the medcalf house side in the country at newstead planation. It's the only house in that area that's a two store house and there's a reason for that. The whole knew what that river could do and he'd seen it do it too many times. So when he built his house he made sure that he had a second store on his house and it's still standing up there really, so holds house is still there. Hold House is still there. There is a story that I have no reason not to believe that it's true. The Metcalf Boys, which I'm sure you they hunted. They hunted with him they hunted together and they were big owners into the, shall I say, the Commercial National Bank, which is now hold didn't drink, but holt would go across the river and bring whiskey back over here and see to it that his friends had it whenever they wanted it. And he might have. He might have bootlegged a little bit on the side, you know, selling, selling that whiskey. And the story goes that he had just put a new roof on his house, Cyprus, shake shingle roof, and the metcalf bars were on the back up on the way back up north to metcalf MISSSIPPI, where new stead plantation was, and they stopped by Holts House, possibly to have a little nil, and they noticed that he had a new shingle roof on his house and one of the met caves. I asked him where you gotta? Is that what he needed to he had to have that new roof on. Where did you get all the money for that that? I went down to your bang bar that money. Your bankle owed me the money and uh, I think it was. Asked how much was still old on that roof and hope probably told him and he asked him to bring one of the over shingles in there, and he did and he wrote on that jingle with his knife, paid in full and signed it. Take this down to the bank and that I got a roof pace is essentially a check. The metcalf family were significant players in Holt's life. If you could pick ninety years to be alive on planet earth, it would be hard to argue that the nineties that halt was here, that he probably didn't see more change than any human generation ever. It's really interesting to me when you think about the span of human life and that we're all put on earth for like a certain time period. From this date to this date, being born in eighteen forty six and passing away in nineteen thirty six is an incredible span in in terms of social development, technology, all the things that happened. I mean going from, you know, pre civil war all the way to the to the nineteen thirties here in America. I mean it's a pretty incredible I mean you could you go back and say from seventeen thirty six to eighteen forty six, I mean life was about the same and then, you know, even past that. But like that period of time was pretty wild. I make the point at the very end of the book, at that very point, that hold was born and raised at a time when horsepower was the only power there was. In Ninety six when he died, you know, they were Hitler was in charge in in Germany and World War Two was on, even World War Two and nuclear age was right around the corner. He lived in an amazing and he put a lot of life in his ninety years. I'll give you that. You know, it's amazing he lived ninety years. So, as I started this book knowing nothing about the whole collier other than just his small amounts about his reputation, you know, I'm reading and he's twenty years old and then he's thirty four years old and then he's fifty six years old and I'm kind of looking at the amount of pages left in the book and I'm thinking, this guy, there's no way that he's gonna be an old man, like he's gonna die at age sixty and man, I was shocked and thrilled when you see that he lived to be ninety, which is is such an incredible thing. Daniel Boone, one of my favorite characters in American history, lived to be eighty six and part of the reason he was so famous was he just most of his contemporaries died when they were fifty. You know, he just had a long span of life, and I mean I see that and and hold he he covered a lot of ground. I want to move to an interesting part of whole legacy, and it has to do with the famed American author William Faulkner, who was a Nobel Prize laureate and widely considered the greatest southern writer of all time. He was born in eight nineties seven and died in nineteen sixty two, which would have been prime time for Holt's regional legacy to be known. And Faulkner was from and spent most of his life in Mississippi. Faulkner is known for his quote characterization of southern characters, including fiercely intelligent people who are dwelling behind the facades of good old boys and simpletons. Minor has something to say about this. You know, his immediate legacy that I think about as a William Faulkner's story. But there's no question that the SAM father's character in several of the faulkner books, particularly the bear go down Moses who Kaya was the inspiration for Sam Father, no question in my mind about it. Faulkner's second home was Greenville, Mississippi. Here's the excerpt from William Faulkner's the bear. Let's see if you can make the connection. The old man of seventy who had been in Egro for two generations now but whose face and bearing were still those of the chickasaw chief who had been his father, and he was glad. He was old. He had no children, no people, none of his blood anywhere above earth that he would ever meet again. And even if he were to, he could not have touched it spoken to it because for seventy years now he had to be a Negro. It was almost over now and he was glad, but still the woods would be his mistress and his wife. End of quote. This is from Miner's book halt Collier. Quote. Pete Johnson, one of the neighborhood children who knew callier for many years and who often drove him when the old man was too feeble to walk, described Holt's complexion as dark olive, similar to that of a native American Indian, and similarly, Harris Dixon referred to collier as a yellow man. Johnson strongly believed that hulk all your had native American blood and that his lineage would be obvious to a careful observer. The reader can draw his or her own conclusions by studying the von Dresser portrait rendered in Nineteen thirty five. Collier's bloodline, of course, cannot be confirmed and it seems of little consequence and the research of Collier's life, until a reference is found in the regimental history of the Ninth Texas Cavalry of an Indian boy riding with Captain Perry Evans Company, who raced horses in the company's popular equestrian contests. End of quote. It's clear to see where minor is getting that this Sam father's character of Faulkner's is based upon halt Collyer. I now want to read another excerpt from Miner's book, and it's about the latter years of Holtz life, and it's pretty sad. Quote. In nineteen twenty eight, largely because of the flood and the economic disruptions it caused, many African Americans began leaving Washington County for better opportunities in the north. Callier saw many of his people leave the area. From the effects of the flood, the storm and the loss of his friends, callier fell into a state of despair from which he never completely recovered. His wife, Frances, earned a meager income as a housekeeper, but holt was too feeble to provide any income other than his pension of two hundred dollars annually. He had for years collected corn chucks from the area plantations, which he sold to a stable. He also collected dried bones which he sold as fertilizer, and on occasion he would train and sell a hunting dog. One dog he sold to John and Nathan Adams for thirty dollars and it would not hunt. When the boys returned, the dog hold explained that his ears had to be twisted with pliers and he would then take to the briars. Callier also made a little money during prohibition by supplying Arkansas Corn Whiskey to his friends who did not want to deal with bootleggers across the river. Holt, Collier's confederate servants pension was successfully renewed in nineteen sixteen. In the ninety eight, Collier was approved for a pension from the state of Mississippi, not as a servant, but as a confederate soldier. No longer was the award based on Holt Service for his former master. He was recognized as a combatant for his service in the ninth Texas Calvary. He is the only known African American classified as a combatant by any of the former confederate states. End of quote. It's sad for me to see a man like Holt having a rough ending to his life and to become depressed. That's really sad after we know all that we know about him. It's well documented that many African Americans were in the confederate army, but at the time of this research Holt was the only African American classified as a combatant. The others in the confederate army were doing stuff other than fighting. It's complicated because others did fight but they weren't officially registered as combatants. I just want to make that clear. The philosophical premise of the confederacy was that if the blacks were good enough to fight, they were good enough to be independent people who deserved civil rights. So they were denied official classification as combatants. But Somehow Holt slipped through the cracks and he had a knack for doing that. Holt died in nineteen thirty six at the age of ninety. His third wife, Frances, had died at the age of forty four, five years before him, in nineteen thirty one, of an aneurysm. The last several years of his life, Holt almost went blind. Death is rarely noble and sadly it was not noble for wholt Collier. He died a poor man and was buried in an unmarked grave in Greenville, Mississippi. James a king had that big monum when I showed you a picture of from the day he was buried totally in a unmarked grave. died in nineteen thirty six. He's like he was in an unmarked grave for sixty year until we put this too, we put this headstone. So what year was that had? Two Thousand Four. Wow. Do you feel like that was a result of this book and bringing some attention to him? Absolutely it is. Now we've we've, we've breaked it. It's a monument. Now we it's it's in an enclosed gate. Many people in groups were involved in getting Holtz headstone and turning his grave into a monument, but two of the men that can be given a lot of credit are Hank Berdine and minor Ferris Buchanan. There is something else I haven't told you. I'll let hank tell you. James Come in with Wildlife Mississippi Center, Thad Cochrane, and decided to do something with these wildlife refuges around here and pull them all into one complex called the Theodore Roosevelt Wildlife Refuge system, and they had several thousand acres that had just come into the system that they named the whole call your wildlife refuge, which is right out number twelve highway over here there's some farm land that had been cleared but had gone back into tree been planted back into trees and it's coming back on pretty strong now. It is the only refuge in the entire United States refuge, federal refuge system that's named after a man of African descent. Mhm To me that's pretty strong. Uh. We've got a lot of famous black people done a lot of wonderful and famous things, but there's only one that has a wildlife refuge, of federal wildlife refuge named after him, and that's whole cart, the whole call National Wildlife Refuge was established in two thousand four, two years after miner's book was published. The refuge is open to the public for hunting and outdoor recreation. Here's minor asking a question that I had from the beginning, and the answer is not flashy. Everybody always wants to know whine in the movie been made about this guy, and this will given an example of why. It's just nobody in Hollywood wants to put a black man riding with a confederate outfit. It's so politically incorrect. That's all I can come up with. I mean there's so many. This is such a wonderful story for the big screen. I mean, if you had to put all the great characters in American history out there, I put him right up there with the best of them. Holt never really fit into anyone's mold. Jonathan Wilkins is an African American hunter and guide from the Delta. He is a Holt Collier Aficionado who helped give us some insight into life in part one and two. I wanted to end this series by asking him how WHOLP Call Your story had inspired him personally. Here's what he said, you know. So for me, what it would inspire is trying to live a life with as few blockades as possible, trying to fully realize myself. You know, ultimately you're dealing with a person who, because of the circumstances of his birth, should not have had the influence and impact that he did, and he did so because he refused to internalize all the messaging about who he was from outside. Right, and that had to be from a very young age. Right, for a ten year old child to have the hood spa, to go out into this American southern jungle and kill a bear with a rudimentary weapon and then get to the point where he's credited with killing three housing black bears, that's a person who doesn't allow external limitations to dictate what their life can be. For him to be able to stand on equal footing with one of the most influential political figures in the history of this country and instruct him and, you know, probably scold him. Man, I told you to be sitting right here and you couldn't wait for a sandwich and you got my dogs killed. You know like that's a person who doesn't let external limitations dictate the quality and the substance of their life and it's not. It's this isn't like a this isn't a pull yourself up by your bootstraps trope because, like we keep using the word extraordinary, right, this is a guy who is beyond the Pale. But you know, as human beings we look towards the extraordinary, we look towards the outliers to find inspiration for the fact that almost everybody is ordinary, but to realize that we all have the ability to be extraordinary at some time or in some place or in some instance. William Faulkner wrote of the fictional character Sam father's quote like an old lion or bear in a cage. He was born in a cage and he has been in it his whole life. He knows nothing else. By external measures, Holt seemed to thrive in the postbellum south and will never know his deep motivations, his regrets and the shackles that the race barriers placed on his life. Media Cherry picked the highlights that America was interested in at the time, and that's how the game works, and those interviews are the primary source for the material that we have. What I'm trying to say is that this story is a lot more complicated than just a guy who seemingly had this adventurous and wildlife. His life was filled with tragedy and I don't know. I just want to tell his story. I'll end this whole series with minor's words from his book. Quote. Holt Collier is entitled to a place in the history and heritage of the United States alongside the many courageous pioneers and hunters of fame and legend. His Service to the confederacy will no doubt be debated by those of both races who prefer not to believe it. His contribution as a pioneer to the opening of the Mississippi Delta wilderness cannot be ignored. He is a central figure in the story of the Teddy Bear. His courage, tenacity, honesty, integrity and independence should be an inspiration to all Americans. Thank you so much for listening to bear grease. I've been deeply moved by the story of Hulk Collier. You can buy Minor Ferris Buchanan's book Hulk Collier at Hulk Collier Dot Com and be sure to check out all of our bear grease merchant on the meat eator DOT COM. And do me a favor by sharing this series with a friend this week. Long live the beast and long live the legacy of our brother, hulk callier.

Save this episode