Teddy Roosevelt vs. Bigfoot
Did America’s most outdoors-y President have a close encounter with a Sasquatch?
With Halloween approaching, there’s no better time to explore how one of our most famous presidents might have drifted into the orbit of one of our most famous (mythical?) beasts.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), who emerged on the American landscape as a symbol of exuberant —some might say manic —masculinity before tumbling into the Presidency as a consequence of his predecessor’s assassination, was an active outdoorsman for nearly his entire life. He not only loved hiking, camping, and shooting big animals with high-powered firearms —he loved writing about those experiences. His books included The Wilderness Hunter, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, and Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.
In The Wilderness Hunter, Roosevelt describes a peculiar incident with a Native American guide while hunting in the Selkirk Mountain range (which extends through Idaho into eastern Washington):
Ammal objected strongly to leaving the neighborhood of the lake. He went the first day’s journey willingly enough, but after that it was increasingly difficult to get him along, and he gradually grew sulky… finally he gave us to understand that he was afraid because up in the high mountains there were ‘little bad…
