Some people live a life so large, so filled with overcoming, achievements, brushes with greatness, and building an unparalleled legacy that condensing their story into one article becomes a serious challenge. Such is the case with Holt Collier.
Collier was born into slavery around 1848. His parents, Harrison and Daphne, were the third generation of their family to be enslaved by the prominent Hinds family. The patriarch of the Hinds family was Thomas Hinds, who had fought with future President Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans.
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Thomas’s son, Howell, inherited the family’s two plantations, Home Hill and Plum Ridge. Howell was said to have been primarily raised by Harrison and Daphne. Howell assigned management of Plum Hill to his son, Thomas, and when he was ten years old, Holt Collier was made Thomas’s junior valet.
Howell had taught Holt to shoot, and the youngster took to it quickly. Despite his young age, he was assigned the job of hunting games to feed the workers. He was frequently entered into shooting contests against much older competitors. He killed his first bear at age ten.
When Holt was around thirteen, Mississippi joined the other Southern states in seceding from the Union. The two Howell men left to join the army but emancipated young Holt before their departure. Holt begged to join them but was refused due to his young age.
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Holt gathered up his belongings and made his way to a riverboat on the Mississippi. After a time, he found Howell Hinds in Memphis and joined him in the Confederate Army in a company under General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest. He initially served as an orderly in a field hospital.
Collier was attending to a patient in a field hospital near a battlefield around Bowling Green, Kentucky, when he heard gunfire begin. He grabbed a rifle and ammo from a patient, went to the front lines, and began firing on the enemy. The unit’s members and leaders were impressed by his actions. It was illegal in 1862 to arm a black man, but Holt was issued a uniform and weapon. He was a member of Company I, Ninth Texas Cavalry.
Hinds and Howell Holt saw action at Shiloh. Soon after, Howell returned home, charged with raising additional troops. Having earned the respect of his fellow soldiers, Collier asked and was allowed to remain with his unit after Howell departed, spending much of his service in Northern Mississippi.
Holt fought at Vicksburg, Corinth, Holly Springs, and Iuka. He was often tasked with using his hunting and marksmanship skills to provide food for the troops. Spending much of his battle time as a sharpshooter, Collier’s talents were also utilized as a spy. After the Appomattox surrender, he and the others in his unit were mustered out. Holt returned to Plum Hill and served as a valet for Howell Holt.
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Soon after, on a train trip with Hinds, a conductor grabbed Holt and attempted to throw him out of the sleeping car. Holt punched him, and the conductor drew a knife. Holt shot him. No charges were filed, which was unusual for a black man who shot a white man at that time.
Back in Greenville, MS., Holt was involved in another confrontation with a Northerner, Captain James King, over a bad business deal. The man’s body was found after his horse was discovered wandering, riderless. Holt was arrested and tried for murder but was acquitted.
In the next phase of his extraordinary life, in 1867, Holt journeyed to Texas, where he met up with his former Confederate soldiers and became a cowboy. He remained in the Fort Worth area for around a year until he received word that Howell Hinds had been murdered. Holt returned to Mississippi.
The Union soldiers stationed near his home often clashed with Holt because of his service to the Confederacy. Choosing not to become a sharecropper, Holt found a way to use his skills for income as a market hunter. He would hunt and supply food for the workers of timber companies. He also served as a deputy, practically unheard of in the post-Civil War years, and he continued to maintain his hunting career, becoming an expert guide. It is thought that Holt averaged killing around 125 bears a year and grew to become highly regarded as a guide.
Holt also spent time as a bootlegger, although he never drank himself. He also tracked fugitives and wanted criminals. In 1868, Collier was in search of a notorious fugitive named Travis Elmore Sage. Finding him about to board at Washburn’s Ferry, Collier confronted Sage, who drew on Collier, but Holt put a bullet through his heart.
The Teddy Bear
Teddy Roosevelt became President in 1901 when an assassin took the life of President McKinley. A lifelong sportsman, Roosevelt was an early naturalist and conservationist. He entered public service as a young man, then switched gears to become a rancher. Re-entering politics, Teddy served as the Civil Service Commissioner, the New York City Police Commissioner, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy before resigning to serve in the U.S. Calvary in the Spanish American War. His heroics there, controversial to some, led to his being considered a war hero in the public eye. Resuming a political career after his service, he was elected Governor of New York and then Vice-President under McKinley.
In 1902, Roosevelt was extended an invitation for a bear hunt by Mississippi Governor Andrew Longino. Roosevelt was reportedly disappointed that the trip grew into a media event but, regardless, traveled to Smedes plantation in Mississippi for the hunt. In his party were Huger Lee Foote (grandfather of historian and author Shelby Foote, Jr.), future Louisiana Governor John M. Parker, Tabasco sauce heir John McIlhenny and future U.S. Senator Leroy Percy.
On the first day of the hunt, Collier’s dogs picked up the scent of a bear. Holt positioned the President in the anticipated path of the bear, then followed his dogs. After not seeing the bear, the President returned to the camp for lunch. Meanwhile, Collier had run across the bear, locked in a fight with the hunting dogs, having killed one of the dogs. Unable to shoot the bear without possibly hitting another dog, Collier approached it and hit it in the head with his gun stock.
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Having stunned the bear, Collier was able to tie it to a tree and go back to camp for the President. When he was taken to the bear, Roosevelt refused to shoot the animal, being that it was captive, and to kill it in that manner would not be sporting. Parker did kill the bear.
Clifford Berryman drew a cartoon based on the event, called “Drawing the Line,” that ran on the front page of the Washington Post. A shopkeeper in New York, Morris Michtom, had been manufacturing and selling toy bears. After seeing the Post cartoon with Roosevelt, he wrote to the President and asked permission to associate his name with the toys. Roosevelt agreed and thus was born the Teddy Bear.
In 1907, Roosevelt took part in another bear hunt involving Holt Collier. This time, the event occurred in “The Louisiana Canebreaks, in East Carroll and Madison parishes. The primary guide was Ben Lilly, a well-known big-game hunter. Collier was in charge of the dogs. This hunt was a success for the President. He killed a 200-pound black bear that was located by Collier’s dogs.
