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Just about every child has had one at some point, but do you know where it comes from?
As you might guess from the name, the Teddy Bear is named for President Theodore Roosevelt. But you probably didn’t know that it wouldn’t have come about without a hunting trip to the Mississippi Delta. The avid big game hunter and founder of the national parks system was invited to travel to the state in 1902 by Governor Andrew H. Longino to bag the elusive Louisiana black bear. He was joined by guide Holt Collier, who grew up on a Natchez plantation and killed his first bear at age 10, an expert on the land they were exploring.
The hunting party traveled into the dense forest of what’s now the Roosevelt National Wildlife Refuge, where Collier and his dogs tracked down a 250-pound bear. He planned to drive it toward Roosevelt so that he could take aim, but the president had already left to go back to camp for lunch. Feeling pressured to keep the bear for Roosevelt, Collier knocked it unconscious with the butt of his gun and tied it to a tree. But when Roosevelt returned, the president refused to kill the incapacitated bear. “It would be unsportsmanlike,” he reportedly said.
This story quickly made the rounds in the national media, appearing in a memorable political cartoon in the Washington Post where Roosevelt stands in the foreground as the bear is tied up behind him. Around this same time, the Ideal Toy Company in New York created a plush version of the bear featured in the cartoon, calling it “Teddy’s bear,” later shortened to teddy bear. A German company named Steiff made stuffed bears, which took off in popularity stateside and are now considered valuable.
The toy celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2002 and was named Mississippi’s official state toy. One of Ideal’s original bears is on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC.
The site of the hunting trip was later named after Roosevelt, making up 100,000 acres of preserved land. There’s also a refuge within it named for Collier, the only one in the country named for an African American, established in 2004. The refuge even has a replica of the hunted bear’s skull, showing a dent from Collier’s rifle. The original skull now belongs to the Smithsonian.
The community outside the refuge, Rolling Fork, adopted this love of bears and has fifteen wooden bear statues inspired by Roosevelt and Collier, carved with a chainsaw by Dayton Scoggins on logs donated by a local lumber company. All of the statues can be seen using a map from the visitor’s center, called the Rolling Fork Chainsaw-Carved Bear Hunt. The town’s annual Great Delta Bear Affair is another celebration of this story, bringing in thousands of visitors to support wildlife conservation.
The next time you or your loved one snuggles up to your favorite Teddy bear, remember that it traces its history back to a real bear in the forests of Mississippi.
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