American History Hit - The Roosevelt Brothers' Panda Hunt

Episode Date: July 28, 2025

In 1928, President Teddy Roosevelt's sons Teddy and Kermit set out on an expedition to hunt a semi-mythical beast: the Panda. Don's guest today to help tell the incredible story of what happened next is Nathalia Holt whose new book brings this tale to life: The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda.Edited by Tim Arstall, produced by Freddy Chick. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. From the New York Times, June 12th, 1929, Kermit Roosevelt arrived today from the Orient,

with the first complete specimen of a panda ever brought out of the jungles. The huge animal, shot by Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt Jr. in the Tibetan wilderness, weighs 300 pounds and resembles a bear. The brothers, who, like their father, enjoy hunting big game, left New York last November on a hunting expedition for the Field Museum of Chicago. After months of traveling through the mountains, they finally found signs of a panda and tracked it to a lair in a hollow tree. Hi everyone, thanks for punching us in today. This is American History Hit, and I'm Don Wildman. Theodore Roosevelt is aligned with so much history of this nation, a larger-than-life figure whose civic service to the country was matched only by his missions of daring do, made for a legacy that still casts a long shadow.

now imagine being one of his children living up to that myth. In the late 1920s, two of his sons, Theodore Jr. and Kermit Roosevelt, took that challenge to an astonishing extreme, setting off on a dramatic expedition into the rugged highlands of Western China, with the singular goal of shooting and retrieving one of the most elusive creatures on earth, the giant panda. It was part big game adventure, part scientific quest. With us today is historian and author, author Natalia Holt, whose brand new bestselling book

uncovers the hidden story of that expedition. It is entitled The Beast in the Clouds, the Roosevelt Brothers' deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda. And we are very lucky to have the author with us today, Nat Holt. Great to have you on American History Hit. Thanks so much for having me. The book is everywhere. It's all over town. Congratulations.

Oh, I appreciate that. I'm excited to talk about it today. Excellent. The Roosevelt's. I mean, you could spend a lifetime on this crew. your book places us at the tail end of the roaring 20s. Hoover's the president. It's the jazz age, speakeasies.

Economy is booming, not for long. And there's all these famous adventures. Howard Carter and Tutankhamun's Tomb, Lindbergh, Soling the Atlantic, expeditions to the polls. And in this context, Ted Jr. and Kermit Roosevelt undertake a mission to China, which lands them the panda. So who were these guys, Ted and Kermit? Tell me about their place in the family.

The father's been gone for a decade at this point. Dies in 1919, Teddy Roosevelt. But he still looms large, doesn't he? He does. So Ted and Kermit are the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt. They were very close with their father. But as you can imagine, it's not easy to be the sons of a famous man. And so Ted and Kermit on this expedition are really looking to prove themselves.

They're coming out of some low points in their lives, both professionally and personally. And this expedition is a way for them. to capture more of themselves, to find themselves in a new era that is very much what their father would have done. Yeah, it's really a manhood thing of the time, isn't it? Going out on these expeditions or at least, you know, a few people were doing it. I'm curious, were they part of the Explorers Club? I always wonder about these things. They were. Yes.

And you can imagine that they have a long history at the Explorers Club. They know so many people, scientists, explorers doing these expeditions at the time. They're very well connected to this group of people. What was their relationship like between them? Ted and Kermit were always very close. They're close in age. They're the two eldest sons. And they grew up playing together in Oyster Bay.

They say multiple times in their letters, in their journals, that they really only feel like themselves when they're together in the woods. There's something about being together on these expeditions that really lets them be who they are and be happy together. Yeah. I'm a big Teddy Roosevelt fan. I have to say, I think of him as being a good father. Like he was loved by his children, wasn't he? He really was. And when you look at his letters to them, they were so affectionate. He was always telling them how much he loved them. He was the kind of father that got down on the floor, played with his children, played just fun games and sent them drawings when he was away. He spent a lot of time with them. But he could also be hard on them, too. He was especially hard on curve. who he was afraid would become a weakling. He wanted him to be strong. He was very, very concerned that he would not be strong enough. And that's part of the reason why he took them on these expeditions. Yeah. It's such an amazing house to go out and see that, you know, you really get a sense of that family visiting Oyster Bay. Sagmore Hill. It's such a cool place. What was their

incentive to do this trip? I mean, they're involved in the museum world, I imagine, just by virtue of TR. But this is going to be a different one than his. It's the Field Museum in Chicago, right? That's right. And so you can imagine that at this point, people have been searching for the panda for 60 years. The first pelt was found in 1869, and it was sent by a French missionary

who'd received that fur from a panda and sent it to a museum in France. And it spurred this movement to find the panda among Western scientists. And then a second pelt was given to the, the American Museum of Natural History in 1919. And this got people even more excited because it was really proof that, okay, this is a real animal and we need to figure out what it is. Is it actually a bear? Scientists knew nothing about its habitat. They only had a fur. They didn't have a skeleton,

so they knew so little about it. So by the time the Roosevelt's are venturing out, it's been a decade of explorers trying to find the panda. What made this animal so alluring? What was the reason for its legend. Many people believed that it did not exist. Even scientists at the time thought that this could just be a mythical animal. And so there was a real feeling that they wanted to discover this animal, bring it back to a museum, and compare it to other mammals. And it is truly the last large mammal unknown to science at the time. Polar bears, black bears, brown bears had all been described by scientists, but not the panda. But now we think of them as so, they're so gentle and so cute. In those days, they thought of them as a dangerous animal, I would imagine, right?

That's right. So little was known about the panda that they thought it might be a cross between a polar bear and a black bear. They theorized that it could be the most aggressive animal on Earth. So ironic. It is the cutest thing on Earth. Now, this all takes place in, I guess, the Himalayas, right? That sort of Western China down toward Tibet area. How mapped out was this area?

Just give me a sense of what people under the United. about the landscape there? So the Roosevelt's transverse a thousand miles, and they're mostly going through the Tibet and China border, which is not very clearly marked out at the time and is very much in contest in China. They're in the middle of a civil war. And so there are these large white spots on the map where they don't know if there's rivers there, if there's mountains there, there is a lot of exploration still to do. And the area they're traveling through does have roads or having to travel by trail with mules to carry their supplies. So it's definitely an unknown region. And it's at the time, it's filled with these populations that are autonomous

in China that are ruling themselves. And so we see that as they're going through La Miseries and as they're going through these Tibetan regions in the Himalayas and in the Tibetan plateau. Who's on the expedition? How many people are we talking about? You know, it's fairly small for expeditions at the time. So you have Ted and Kermit, of course, and then they have a naturalist named Sudham Cutting, who is a friend of theirs from New York City. They have Herbert Stevens, who is an English biologist. He's the scientist in the group. And then they have Ty Jack Young, who they brought on as an interpreter. He is a young man in NYU student who is born in Hawaii. his father is from San Francisco and his mother is from China. And so he grew up in China and knows something about the region and is very good at languages. He's adept. He knows multiple languages. And for this book, I was able to obtain his unpublished autobiography as well as interviews that he did with a journalist in the 1990s. And so to have the perspective of a 19-year-old on the trip who is just new to everything, awed by Ted and Kermit, was really fascinating.

And he ends up becoming very close friends with Ted and Kermit. They end up bonding and really keep in touch for the rest of their lives. We've framed this as their singular mission here. But of course, this has a larger agenda, which is the collection of all sorts of other mammals, perhaps, but also insects and I suppose plants, right? This is a total natural expedition, or at least a field expedition to find new specimens. That's right. So they are seeking out all kinds of new species, of which they find quite a few on this expedition. And that includes birds, insects, deer species that ends up being named after the Roosevelt's. So it's definitely a journey of discovery. And what's incredible is how many of those species have been lost today.

In just the space of a generation, so many of those species are already gone. Why was this such a movement at the time, these creations of these mega museums, and therefore the motivation to go out and collect for them. It all seems to happen in that gilded age, isn't it? Yes. And I think it's hard for us to imagine what it was like then as a scientist when you could not necessarily rely on photographs whose colors were inconsistent. There was really no way to record species and compare them to other animals and therefore be able to classify them, then by actually obtaining the specimens and bringing them back to the museum. And so museums had massive collections, which weren't open to the public, which were just kept in crates behind doors,

where the scientists would go through expeditions and create their phylogeny from that data. And what's interesting is what happened during that time really became a basis for conservation biology today. It's also the advent of the transportation networks that they suddenly had to get to places a bit more efficiently than they used to before. And suddenly it's a great excuse to go off in the woods. Tell me more about Herbert Stevens, the British naturalist. He goes on this trip and gives up on it quite early, right? Well, I don't know if give up is fair. He is a British naturalist who has a PhD.

He's had several failed expeditions in the past, and he's had some difficulty breaking into the Royal Geographic Society in London that he really wants to be part of. And so on this expedition, he moves incredibly slowly. He is always at the bottom of the trail, and in fact, the first day out, he becomes lost. They have to go search for him in the woods. And he's always doing this. He's always stepping off the trail, bumbling around. We see him have difficulty with chopsticks. He tends to be a funny person on the trail. But he also, besides the humor he brings to the story, he does end up having a wonderful redemption arc where even though he's left behind from the Roosevelt's,

he's able to keep moving forward and being able to find many different species himself, as well as record many of the mountain ranges that he's passing through. I can only imagine what this is like to be out in the middle of nowhere without reference points that we all have. You know, if you stuck me in the middle of Himalayans, at least I'd seen pictures and watched movies, whatever. You know, you're entering into an extreme landscape, awesome in every regard, not knowing whether you're, you're going to find what you're looking for. It's an incredibly epic challenge, isn't it? It is. And you could imagine how desperate the explorers are at this point. They've been traveling for six months. They've traveled over a thousand miles. They have reached the peak of the

Himalayas where they almost died from altitude sickness. They've had disaster after disaster occur on the trail. And now they are going to a region that multiple people have warned them against. And so this was certainly something they did only out of desperate. And of course, it ends up being very different than what they expect. Here, they're expecting to meet savages. They're expecting this to be a very dangerous place to travel in. And it turns out that the Lolo's or the Yee people are in fact incredibly kind to them and end up leading them to the panda. And it's interesting because really it's the Roosevelt's that we would look at almost as savages today, wouldn't we? They're the ones that are hunting a panda. And so certainly it's,

relationship and how they were able to form these friendships with the Yi people and have them be led into the bamboo jungle is such a fascinating part of the story. Are we talking about a small tribe of people or is this some sort of kingdom there or what? Yeah, so this is an autonomous region in China and the Chinese nationalist party has not been able to infiltrate it yet. And so it's really unknown to many of the outside regions. But there are dangers. I mean, they encounter bandits at some point, right? They do. They encounter bandits, and there's this great part in the book where the guides on the trail, who are sort of like the Sherpa people of Nepal, so these are people that are leading them. They know the way. They're able to navigate the trails, as well as set up camp and make food for the Roosevelt's and their crew. And so as they're going ahead on the trail and clearing the way, they end up encountering bandits. And it turns out that many of the guides were women. Over half of their guides on the expedition were women. So there's a great scene where bandits come in and the women are able to quickly entice a mule to kind of run around and go crazy. And then they're able to get the upper hand and chase off the bandits.

So there are these moments like that where they really are in danger. And there's other moments with bandits along the trail as well as these scary moments of civil war. And one point, Ty Jack Young is in a town where he sees three teenagers who are executed for, speaking out against the Chinese government. So there's certainly a lot happening at China at the time, more than the Roosevelt's were expecting. They collect thousands of birds and small mammals, 40 big mammals, types of deer, goats, I'm always wondering, how did they preserve these things? They're not going to make it back to any kind of shipping for a long time. That's right. And everything had to be preserved in a very specific way for the museum. So every member of the expedition

received training at the Field Museum. And they learned how to preserve the skins, how to measure the skeleton, how to preserve the bones. And so they did everything to the museum specifications so that the scientists at the museum could then describe these animals and create an exhibit. Yeah. There's so many great little encounters that we have through the book that they have had.

At some point, they're in a place called the Kingdom of Muli, and they make a friend there. It's all about this Buddhist monastery that's in the middle. Tell me about that place. Yes, so they are in another autonomous region in China that is Tibetan. And so many of these Tibetan kingdoms are run by Tibetan monks called llamas. And they have many encounters with the llamas on this expedition who really save them during some very treacherous moments on the trail. In the kingdom of Muli, the Roosevelt's meet the guardian of the eastern border, a man named Chang Ta Li, and his son.

who is the prince of the kingdom of Muli. So the king of Muli is not there at the moment, and he is a llama. So he is one of these Tibetan monks. And so as they meet the guardian of the eastern border and his son, the Roosevelt's are enchanted. They make fast friends with this man. And it's really an interesting moment for them, because as they're showing pictures of their family, Chang Tali asked the Roosevelt, who is this man? Who is President Roosevelt? He has no idea who their father is. And this This is such a refreshing experience for the Roosevelt's. They've really never encountered anything like this. And it gives them a lot of freedom because they're no longer tied to their father when they're traveling through this region. And so they become very close friends with him. They really enjoy having this toddler. They enjoy their experience in the House of the Prince, in the kingdom of Malai. And I think for them, it also reminds them of their families they've left behind. You remember, they're traveling for months with no word of their families. And being able to be part of this family is a wonderful experience for them. And they say in their journals how much they wish they didn't have to leave. It's such an antithesis to what they expected, isn't it? You know, this anticipation. And for that matter, what their father encountered in so many places like the River of Doubt,

all these extreme experiences. A low point, though, is encountered when a few days after leaving Chang Tai Li's home, it's the dead of winter. They're trekking through the high mountains and they wake up and their mules are gone. What happens then? That's right. They're caught in a blizzard in the Himalayas and they wake up and their mules that are holding their food and their supplies have vanished. Yes, this is a really scary moment.

It takes all of the guides going out and trying to find these mules for them to be able to recover any food. This actually happens several times on the trail, if you can believe it, which just goes to show how difficult the situation was in the Himalayas. The first time it happens, they're not able to recover their food, and they're only saved because of a Tibetan Llamasari that takes them in and takes care of them. This time, fortunately, the guides are able to recover their mules, so they're able to continue on with their expedition. What was their relationship with the guides? You know, was there a sense of belonging with them, or what was the vibe between them? You know, it changed over the course of the expedition. At first, I would say that Ted and Kermit did not have.

have as much respect as they should have for the guides. They, you know, even when they're being saved by the guides from bandits, even when the guides go and rescue their mules in the middle of a blizzard and only arrive at camp, very late past 10 p.m. What we see is that prejudices do arise. And so Ted at one point writes in his journals on the same night that the guides have retrieved these mules practically all native steal. And I think it just goes to show how much that thinking was ingrained. And I think it just goes, at the time. But a real change in thinking happens over the course of this expedition. And what we see is that they become very close with many of the guides. They end up having a lot of respect for them.

And at the end of this journey, they have some real feelings about leaving them and about what this means and if they'll ever see them again. How much were the diaries of Ted and Kermit part of your work? Were they meticulous note takers? They were. Every night, they would write down every detail of their trip, they end up publishing a book in 1929 that contains many of these accounts, but it doesn't contain everything. They leave out many of their personal feelings about the expedition, many of their fears, and even many of their regrets from the trap. So it was really interesting to be able to combine their journals along with many of the other accounts of the trail from the other expedition members and letters. It gave me such a rich picture. You know, there's nothing like when

you're recreating history and writing nonfiction to be able to look at different accounts of the same events, it really allows you to get a lot of detail. And so that's really what I was aiming for to give us much detail for each of these events as I could. Well, enough about these human beings. Let's talk about the panda. How do they eventually find them and where? So they end up finding the panda in the land of the ye. So this is a section that's below the Tibetan plateau, and it's in a deep bamboo forest. It's exactly where we would think you would find a panda today. But of course, at that time, they just had so little knowledge of where these animals would be.

And no other expedition had come close to this region. And so when they do find the panda, it is really almost a shock to the brothers. They really can't believe that after all of these months of searching, they finally found this animal. And they first spot it in a dragon spruce tree that is above this bamboo. forest. And the Yi people they're traveling with are shocked as well because they've seen a panda so infrequently that even though they agreed to take the Roosevelt out to find the panda, they secretly did not think they would be successful. And so it creates a problem because many of this group refuse to go on. They don't want to hunt a panda. They know that these

animals are very peaceful. But the Roosevelt's do not. They still believe they're tracking an aggressive animal. So they actually find it because they see the poo, right, the feces of these things. And that's how you, I guess you attract them any kind of animal that way, but they find that at the bottom of a tree and a bamboo forest. So then they shoot it. And that's because that's what they do with all the mammals and they're taking this home, so they have to.

I want to understand something. It sounds like we're talking about one creature in the middle of nowhere. Are pandas really like that? Are they just out in the middle by themselves like this? They're kind of solo animals? They are. They're very isolated animals. They live by themselves in their own territories. They communicate mostly by secretions. So they rub glands on trees and they're able to communicate with each other that way. But they leave very solitary lives. But having killed this animal, reportedly, Kermit and Ted immediately feel badly, right? They realize that this was not a savage beast after all. That's right. So they shoot the animal and they're expecting the panda to be aggressive to come at them.

And of course that doesn't happen. And it's obvious right away that this animal is not what they expected. And the brothers experience immediate regret over what they've done. And that regret only deepens as time goes on because once they've returned the panda and brought it back to the United States, immediately big game hunts are inspired to go find their own pandas. And now they know exactly where to look. And not only that, but you also have explorers now who are searching for cubs. that they want to steal from China and bring to zoos in the United States. And the Roosevelt's feel horrible about what they've done because, really, they've caused this to happen. And there's one moment at a hotel in New York where you have Ruth Harkness, who was the first to bring a panda cub back to the United States. And she's presenting this cub to the Roosevelt's. And someone in the room asked Ted, oh, do you think one day this animal will be stuffed and be alongside your pandos in the, in the exhibit at the Field Museum. And he says, I'd sooner stuff my own son.

And what we see is that the Roosevelt's then pursue a very different path. Kermit especially then becomes president of the Audubon Society. And he works to preserve pandas in China. So he ends up changing laws so that way that they can't be hunted and cubs stolen. He has his own struggles, doesn't he, Kermit? He does. It's very difficult for him. And we see both of the brothers struggle when they come back to the United States.

states. And a lot of that is due to the stress of the panda, knowing what they've caused. Kermit especially really changed his life. He no longer went and hunted endangered species. And he changed some of the thinking at that. You know, for many scientists at the time, the idea was that if there were very few animals in the wild, that it was worth going out and killing them because we had to learn about them as much as we could. But after the panda, the Kermit really goes out and talks to people and changes that thinking. And what we see is that in his explorations after that, when he goes to the Galapagos, for example, the species that they're looking at, he no longer kills and brings back for museums or zoos, but instead tries to initiate breeding programs for. Thank you, 43, Kermit Roosevelt commits suicide. Did you see any relationship between the story you told and his own personal tragedy?

Absolutely. He becomes very depressed after the trail, and what we see is that he has these struggles in his personal life. But he says in many of his journals and in his many of his letters that it's really in the woods that men show themselves to be as they are. And I think for Kermit, it was difficult to lose that. He and Ted become estranged after the Panda Expedition, and he loses much of what made him himself. And so it was a difficult period to research and to write about. But I think for readers, you'll see that there's redemption as well as tragedy at the end of Kermit's life. Ted becomes the governor of Puerto Rico, then the Philippines, and then very famously fights in World War II.

He takes part in the D-Day landing. But then he dies during the war in France. It's an incredible epic journey. As I say, the entire Roosevelt story is an epic journey. but this is an incredible episode within that. And I love that it's about his children. And even so, you know, as I am speaking, referring to over and over again, there's TR looming over everything, which is indeed, you know, driving the whole spirit of this expedition and the spirit of these sons' lives.

It's incredible. How do you feel about these brothers now looking back on researching all of this? Yeah, I tried to present the brothers' history as honestly as I could. So I cite both their difficult moments as well as they're really hopeful, inspiring moments. And I think when we look at the full spectrum of their lives and what they gave to this piece of history, it's hard not to have respect for them. I think they did their best to find redemption at the end of their journey. And really, what they gave us is something very valuable. Not only the panda, introducing it to the west, but really sparking a new era in conservation biology that's very, very,

much due to their efforts after the expedition. Well, it's a period of time, period of history that I'm very drawn to all the proud stories and you tell it masterfully. So thank you so much for sharing with us. Natalia Holt is the author of The Beast in the Clouds, the Roosevelt Brothers deadly quest to find the mythical giant panda just released. Read this book. As well, Nat published a series of histories, The Rise of the Rocket Girls, the Women who Propel Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars. And there's a whole list of them. Go find them at the bookstore. Thank you, so much. And Talia Holt, really appreciate it. Thank you.

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