Naturalist and Outdoorsman Theodore Roosevelt, Just Weeks After Assuming his First Federal Position, Writes to the New Secretary of the Interior to Recommend a Man Who Had Lived Among the Native Americans

Cornelius Bliss and Theodore Roosevelt maintained a lifelong friendship. When Bliss took over as Secretary of the Interior in 1897, he looked to form his office with people familiar with the West. At the same time, Roosevelt had just received his first ever federal appointment, having been named Assistant Secretary of the Navy by William McKinley, whose Vice President he would later become.

George Bird Grinnell had extensive contact with the terrain, animals and Native Americans of the northern plains, starting with being part of the last great hunt of the Pawnee in 1872. He spent many years studying the natural history of the region. As a graduate student, he accompanied Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s 1874 Black Hills expedition as a naturalist. He declined a similar appointment to the ill-fated 1876 Little Big Horn expedition.

In 1875, Colonel William Ludlow, who had been part of Custer’s gold exploration effort, invited Grinnell to serve as naturalist and mineralogist on an expedition to Montana and the newly established Yellowstone Park. Grinnell prepared an attachment to the expedition’s report, in which he documented the poaching of buffalo, deer, elk and antelope for hides.

Grinnell was prominent in movements to preserve wildlife and conservation in the American West. Grinnell wrote articles to help spread the awareness of the conservation of buffalo. For many years, he published articles and lobbied for congressional support for the endangered American buffalo. In 1887, Grinnell was a founding member, with Theodore Roosevelt, of the Boone and Crockett Club, dedicated to the restoration of America’s wildlands.

Typed letter signed, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, May 25, 1897, to Secretary of the Interior Cornelius Bliss. “The enclosed letter explains itself. It is from George Bird Grinnell, a man of very fine character, the editor of Forest and Stream, and the author of several books on Indian life and customs. I hope it may be convenient for you to see him as he requests, but in any event I should be greatly obliged if you would, in accordance with his request, telegraph him whether or not he shall come on.”