Bear Grease - Ep. 68: Holt Collier - Slave, Confederate Soldier, and Bear Hunter, Part 1

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast we'll be introduced to the man that president Theodore Roosevelt said was “the greatest hunter and guide I have ever known.”  Many believe his legacy deserves to be on the American pedestal with the likes of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. And some might even suggest he stand with the great African American civil rights pioneers early 20th century, based upon the standing he had in society and the life he lived. However, his life is riddled with mystery and controversy, but if you’re like me, after you’ve been exposed to the energy, audacity and bravery of this life, you’ll never – ever – forget the name Holt Collier. Holt Collier was born a slave and at age fourteen after he joined the Confederate Army and fought with distinction the entirety of the war. Afterwards he became a market hunter black bear. After the civil war he killed a white man in Mississippi, but no charges were pressed and was later accused of killing another one and was acquitted for the murder. He hob-knobbed with some of the most powerful men in the Delta gaining their loyalty and trust. But what he’s most known for is guiding the then sitting president, Theodore Roosevelt on two bear hunts in the Mississippi Delta and gaining his friendship and respect. Holt Collier lassoed a bear and tied it to a tree for the president, who refused to shoot it, and from this the press coined the term “Teddy Bear” which has become a global term, and it would have never happened if it wasn’t for the creative grit of a black man named, Holt Collier.  Undoubtedly, Holt’s life doesn’t fit into anybody’s mold and I think that’s what qualifies him as a great American. He lived an almost unbelievable life. On this episode we'll interview Minor Ferris Buchannon, Hank Burdine and Jonathan Wilkins to try to understand who Holt was.  Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, I want to introduce you to the life of the man that President Theodore Roosevelt said, quote, was the greatest hunter and guide I have ever known. This man's been gone from this earth since 19. There are no video or audio recordings of him. We do have roughly 13 photographs, six articles written about him, and the firsthand accounts of those who knew him, including Theodore Roosevelt. Many believe this man's legacy deserves to be on the American pedestal with the likes of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett,

and some might even suggest he stand with the great African American civil rights pioneers of the early 20th century, based upon the standing he had in society and the life he lived. However, his life is riddled with mystery and controversy. But if you're like me, after you've been exposed to the energy, audacity, and bravery of this life, you'll never, ever forget the name Holt Collier. I'm in search of understanding who Holt Collier was, and all the questions that we'll still have after we know everything we can know. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one.

This name, Hulk Coyer, keeps coming up. And who is this person? I just, I had no idea. And as I dug and dug and I found all these other stories that were part of his life, multiple chapters in his life, the fact that he was connected to the Heinz family, to Andrew Jackson, to all the prominent families from down in the Natchez district. And nothing had ever been definitive had ever been written about him. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant.

Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places. we explore. I have, and I never, of course, no way for me ever to have even met Hulk Collier. But to know what kind of man he was, and I've said, he was a man amongst men. I mean, to sit down with a president, to sit down with some of the titans of industry and law, business, and to be respected the way he was, that says so much to me in today's time. And I've said before and it's something that we don't think could have happened, but it did. And it's because of the integrity and the manner and the meat of who Hope Collier was. As Roosevelt said, he was a man of

a man of 60 that could neither read nor write, yet he had the dignity of an African king. And if you look at pictures of Holt, you see that in him. Throughout the course of this conversation, my hope is that we'll all see Holt Collier. I believe that within his life are the keys to some relevant lessons. I don't want to bury the hook too deep on this story because I'm dying to tell you the bullet points of Holt's life. He was born a slave, and at the age of 14, he joined the Confederate Army and fought with distinction the entirety of the Civil War. and afterwards he became a market black bear hunter. After the Civil War, he killed a white man in Mississippi,

but no charges were pressed and was later accused of killing another one, but was acquitted for the murder. He hobnobbed with some of the most powerful men in the Delta, gaining their loyalty and trust, but what he's most known for is guiding the then-sitting president, Theodore Roosevelt, on two bear hunts in the Mississippi Delta, and gaining his friendship and respect.

Holt Collier lassoed a bear and tied it to the tree for the president who refused to shoot it. And from this, the press coined the term teddy bear, which has become a global term. And it would have never happened if it wasn't for the creative grit of a black man from Mississippi named Hulk Collier. He was rough but polished, ruthlessly loyal, and he navigated the antebellum and post-bellum South with an uncanny confidence, skill, and grace. Undoubtedly, Holt's life doesn't fit into anybody's mold. And I think that's what qualifies him as a great American. He lived an almost unbelievable life.

You could take every 10 years of this guy's life and look at what he was doing and it would be, you know, movie worthy or bookworthy or story worthy. And so you take his life in its entirety, especially as, as long as it was. And it's just kind of, it's hard to fathom how a person puts that much stuff into a life, especially with everything, you know, he had going against him. Holt Collier was born a slave in 1846 in Jefferson County, Mississippi, within the floodplain of the Great Father of Waters, the Mississippi River.

He appeared on planet Earth 14 years before the Civil War, a war that would greatly impact his life in mold, multiple ways. Time is a ruthless master, eroding the answers and shrouding the truth in a haze of mystery. We have accurate data on his life. Much of what he actually told us is the data we have, which would seemingly be enough to make some profound conclusions of his motivations. But I think we'll see that Holt's world was very complex. But who was Holt Collier? To describe Hope, he was a refined man, yet could not read no right, a superb sportsman, a consummate outdoorsman. I will say a gentleman and a man among men that could go anywhere, be among any type of person.

He knew what respect was, and he commanded respect. You know, born a slave, yet rode with the text. Texas cavalry and the Confederate Armed Services during the Civil War, there was no reason for him to bow his head to anyone. And that's Hulk Collier. That was the voice of writer, Delta historian, and River Rat Hank Burdine. Though he never knew him, he is one of the men who's worked tirelessly to preserve the memory and legacy of Hulk Collier. The other voice you've heard is my friend and fellow Arkansason Jonathan Wilkinson, Jonathan Wilyer. He's a writer, a chef, a waterfowl outfitter who lives and hunts in the Delta.

After being exposed to Holt's story as a black hunter in the South, he studied Holt's life with particular interest. We're going to dial in on the details we have about Holt. Here's Jonathan. I'd say that, you know, Holt Collier is one of, if not the greatest American, southern big game hunter. One of the most prolific black bear hunters, I think we could

assume, has ever lived. Born under the guise of enslavement in 1846 in Mississippi. So we've established he was a black man born into slavery and became a great bear hunter. He had legitimate records indicating he killed over 3,000

bears in his lifetime, presumably more than our bro Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett combined. But the wildest thing mentioned so far is that he fought for the Confederate Army. In an effort to completely over- clarify, the Confederate Army was the armed forces of the southern portion of the United States that seceded from the United States on December 20, 1860, and this newly formed government was in favor of keeping the institution of slavery legal. The Northern Army of the United States

was against slavery. We're going to expend A lot of energy trying to understand Holt's motivation and his unusual loyalty to the South. But to be fair, we've got to say they're all conjection. Here's Jonathan. You know, that's the thing about life. It's rarely as binary as human beings like to make it. Right. I still don't have a handle on on Collier's motivations for some of his actions.

You know, I have suspicions that are, you know, and these are informed by my life and my perspectives and how I understand the world. He's a fascinating dude. Like the way I describe him to people is I'm like, man, it's like if you took Django Unchained and Daniel Boone and like mixed it together, right? Because there's, there's so many, there's so many facets of the guy's life that, like, that don't make sense as far as kind of the assertions of himself that he was able to make, right? Especially you're talking about within a society that is foundationally built upon him not being able to assert himself, right?

Him not being able to be an authority, him not being able to thrive. You know, for all intents and purposes, especially for the time period, he was more financially successful than, you know, almost any other black people around. You know, he enjoyed great longevity. He enjoyed, you know, kind of high social standing in a society where black men, you know, that was not something that was available to them. Then to the point that he interacts, he interacts with this seminal American figure, you know, American political figure in such a influential way that, 121 years later, you have this legacy of the teddy bear that has touched pretty much every American. You know, I'd argue probably a large percentage of the world. It's familiar with the teddy bear, but again, like, no one knows who this guy is. No one knows who this guy is.

Have you ever heard of Hulk Collier? I'm walking down the street in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. The dome of the state capital is directly at my back. I slip a breath mint in my mouth as I push open the door of a swanky office building. I'm told by the receptionist the man I'm looking for is on the mezzanine floor, which is an odd architectural term used to describe a floor between the first and second floors in a building. It's an odd and unfamiliar term to me, kind of like Hulk Collier's life. I'm looking for a lawyer named Minor Buchanan.

It would be easy to say that he's been the bulwark of preserving Hulk Collier's legacy in modern times. He's traveled across the country to give presentations about Holt. He commissioned the painting of a watercolor print of Holt on his horse. But his biggest contribution is that he's written the only book in existence dedicated to Holt Collier, aptly titled Holt Collier. Miner will be our primary guide through the details of this story. Here's how he got interested in Holt. It's a circuitous tale. I am a native Mississippi born and raised here, as Holt was, and if you're familiar with the story, you know it's epic.

It's an absolute epic story, but I had never heard his name. And I was visiting with my children, the Memphis Zoo in 1989. We got in a rush. We were in the bear exhibit, and we had to go meet somebody, and we had to leave, and I was in a little bit of a hurry. So I grabbed my five-year-old daughter, and I said, we've got to go. And she says, wait a minute, Daddy, Daddy, I haven't seen the teddy bear. She thought the teddy bear was real. And I didn't even think when I said it. I said, honey, the teddy bear is not real. It's just a toy. And she broke into tears. I may as well as shot the Easter bunny in front

of her, you know, and she broke into tears, but when she got her composer, she said, well, if it's not real, where did it come from? Now, I had heard these human interest stories that would get published in a newspaper and a magazine about once a year that Theodore Roosevelt had come to Mississippi for a bear hunt and that's where the teddy bear got started but that's really all it was ever was so I promised her I'd make a bedtime story out of it my law office is downtown Jackson right across the street from the Department of Archives and history and I knew those people pretty well so sure enough I was good for my promise I went over to archives walked over there and there's a subject file on the Theodore Roosevelt Hunt. As I'm getting into this subject file, one on the teddy bear, another one on Theodore Roosevelt, this name, Holt Coyer keeps coming up. And who is this person? I just, I had no idea. And as I dug and dug and I found all these other stories that were part of his life, multiple chapters in his life, the fact that he was connected to the Heinz family, to the Andrew Jackson, to all the prominent families from down in the Natchez district. And nothing had ever been definitive had ever

ever been written about him, I decided to make a book project. And it came out in 2002, which was the 100th anniversary of the 1902 Titty Bear Hunt. That's neat. This bedtime story goal turned into a book project. Yeah. She was five years old when she asked me where the teddy bear came from when the book came out. She was a junior. She was probably satisfied that you wrote a great book on the whole thing. Yeah, but she was a freshman in college when it came out. It took a while. In 1989, Miner began his research on Holt Collier, and the book was self-published in 2002 after being rejected by a few university publishing presses, perhaps because of the controversial

nature of Holt's life. Perhaps it's because he was a black man who fought for the Confederate Army. That's a complex story to tell in today's society. It's very quick to see that Minor didn't write this book on a whim, or with the hope of creating a New York Times bestseller. It evolved out of a genuine curiosity and morphed into a decade-long project of trailing a man's life whose story was bypassed by the world. I'm incredibly grateful for those who do work like this. I've read a lot of self-published books and I was impressed by the amount of research and corroboration of the information in the book. It's well

written, but still no one fully is able to understand Holt's situation. So what do we know about Holt Collier's earliest days? I think it's interesting sometimes with these, you know, an enslaved person. A lot of times you don't have a lot of information. But with Holt, we have a fair bit of information about his upbringing. What do we know about his childhood? Well, let me make a comment on what you just said. When somebody's born, they're enslaved, they live during this period of of time, it's hard to find information about him. It's impossible to find an image of them. For instance, Robert Johnson, the famous blues player, I think there's only one, maybe two images of him. And he lived in a time when cameras were pretty prevalent.

Holk Collier was born in 1846, died in 1936 at the age of 90, and I think I found 13 images of him. I thought was incredible. Holt lived to be 90 years old, which is hard to believe when you hear of the skirmishes with death that he avoided. I want to hear from Jonathan Wilkins about this very thing we just brought up, why some of these African-American figures are so undocumented by pop culture. My personal hope is that I can truly listen to people with unique and different perspectives than mine. And over the years, Jonathan has often helped me. do just that. Well, I mean, that's, you know, that's kind of the American way, right? Like,

we, we footnote the black people in this country that have, have done important things, right? Like, he's, he's phenomenal, but I, you know, I wonder how many other phenomenal and brilliant and, like, just incredibly interesting stories will never know. I'll give you, like, a good reference point for this. So oftentimes they talk about the, the first film ever made, right? And it's this little tiny snippet, and it's a black guy riding a horse, right?

No one knows the black guy's name, but they preserve the horse's name. You know, I bet you that a lot of people don't know that the White House was built by slaves. You know, history is written by the victors. I don't know. Yeah, you know, it's just, it's just kind of like, it's the story of America, really.

I think what Jonathan is saying is true. It's powerful and interesting stuff. Here's how Miner started his first research on Hulk Collier. When I first started my research, I couldn't find anybody that ever heard of Hulk Collier unless they were from Washington County. When I first learned about him, I said, well, maybe some people in these nursing homes will remember him

because I started my research in 1989, and he died in 19, 1336, it's possible that somebody remembers Hope Collier. Thank God I started my research when I did because I found about six people who remembered Hope Collier. Really? Who had met him? Oh, knew him. They were children, but they knew him as an old man. And one of them was the most amazing. His recall was perfect. He was as smart as a whip. He could remember everything about Hokkaia. His name was Pete Johnson. And Pete owned a liquor store in Los Angeles. And I'd gone up to Greenville and people knew I was doing this research and I was trying to find folks.

And the first person I made was Jane Weathers. She was a widow, part of the Metcalf family. And she was 94 years old and she remembered Holt very well. He had lived there on their place. And she gave me a lot of information on him. Soon after that, about a month or two after that, I get this telephone call from a friend who's helped me out. And he says, Minor, you need to write this down. Pete Johnson gave me his telephone number out in Los Angeles.

He had just come home to Greenville, Mississippi. He'd been raised there as a child, and he was trying to get some statue or some memory or a park named after Hulk Cagia. So I got on the phone and talked to him. I ended up talking to Pete Johnson, probably 10 or 12 hours interviewing him over the phone. He had been raised right next door to Hoke Coyers. Hope Coyer is an old man sitting on his front porch, telling his stories about a bear hunting with Theater Roosevelt, about his Civil War escapade.

It's about killing men after the war and not being prosecuted for it. And what I love Pete Johnson telling me was that all the children of the neighbors, it's before television and really before radio, but all the children in the neighborhood would come up there as the son's going down and say, you know, Mr. Holt tells us some stories. Uncle Holt, they call him. But before Holt Ceyer sitting on his front porch, almost blind at this age, before he would tell him the stories,

he would make them put their pennies together and go down the story. street, you know, one of the little corner grocery thing, and make them buy him a plug of tobacco and a knee-high orange. And when they'd bring that plug-of-the-back-high-orange, he'd sit there and talk to them until the parents called him home. A plug of tobacco and a knee-high-high orange. It's stories like this that wouldn't be in the national newspaper article, but they give you a feel for the man. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts.

Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut.

I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

I'm grateful for people like mine. who took the time to document the last remaining people on planet Earth who knew Uncle Holt. Now we're going to get into Holt's early life history. Holt was born down there in Jefferson County, a place called Home Hill Plantation, just a few, about four miles out of Fayette. He was born to the Heinz family, best known for General Thomas Hines, who served with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, was in the United States Congress elected in 1828 the same year.

Andrew Jackson was elected president, was a friend of Jackson, was a friend of all the prominent people in that area down there, Marston Green. And so Holt was born into affluent circumstances, although he's enslaved and he's part of the labor class. And his father had served with General Thomas Hines as a manservant at the Battle of New Orleans. So they were closely connected. These were not a, these were not field hands. These were not people working in the field. And Holt's mother served the main house. I don't know as a cook or as seamstress or what. And when Holt got to be old enough,

they put him in charge of the horses and the dogs. They were big hunters and that's what Holt did. He started out hunting from a very early age, and he knew the horses and he knew the dogs. Holt was enslaved, and inside that system he worked in close proximity to his slave owners, the Heinz family, who were part of the powerful southern aristocracy of the region. They had even been friends with the former president, Andrew Jackson. Here's Jonathan describing Holt's early life. I mean, so prior to the Civil War, he's living on this Heinz plantation, and this is basically a Mississippi plantation that's,

like literally hacked out of the wilderness, right? They talk about like basically this is just a malaria infested swamp. You know, essentially what is a, you know, American jungle, right? So human beings have to go in there and cut and hack and channelize stuff and drain it out. And so he's born to servitude. You know, his family has been enslaved for multiple generations by the Heinz family. He's born into that family. He's born into that system of enslavement.

You know, I guess on the plantation, his family had, you know, a slightly higher position than maybe some of some of the other enslaved people, which is, to my mind, is a very dangerous distinction to make because it implies that it makes a situation not what it was, right? But he's kind of of this family of house slaves, you know, I guess would be the colloquialism for it. And around 10 years old, he kills his first bear. So even for that to happen, he's got to have some access that other enslaved people don't have, right? He's got to have access to weapons. He's got to have access or the ability to go out into the wilderness. And so I think he's probably showing himself to be an extraordinary human being from a very young age. Killing a bear that young is an impressive feat from a sportsman standpoint.

But of more note, is that a young slave boy would have had. had a gun and been able to hunt. Here's Minor developing the context for Holt's life. One of the unusual things about the Mississippi Delta is it flooded almost every year, which prohibited raising any kind of livestock. There was no meat source, but you had all this labor coming in, and they had to be fed, so you had to get this protein, the food, through hunting. But anyway, Holt goes up there, and he's, this is about 1850.

and he's given a shotgun. His instructions, after he takes care of the dogs and the horses, his instructions to go out into the woods and kill anything and everything that's edible, whether it's an alligator, whether it's a duck, whether it's a bear. He killed his first bear at age of 10. And that was his job.

Here's Jonathan with more details of where this wild game meat went. In very short order in his life, he basically becomes a meat hunter for this plantation. So he's doing two things. He's procuring what would be considered top shelf meat for the plantation owners. And then like the leftovers and the less desirable meat is being used as a way to supplement the food stuffs of the enslaved people there, right? So Holt is getting an education in horsemanship, being a houndsman, shooting and being a general hunter in the swamps of Mississippi.

Later in this series, we're going to learn that this was common for some. some sector of the slaves to become incredible hunters. Here's Minor. Turns out Holt was a heck of a shot. So that's what Holt did. Then Howell, he became such a proficient marksman that when his right shoulder would be too sore and he'd complain about it. Howard Hines made him shoot with his left shoulder. It became a proficient marksman with his right shoulder and his left shoulder.

There were times, Howell Hines on a yearly basis would travel up and down the river that go up into Kentucky. Heated, but Howell Hines was a gambler and a sportsman, and he always went to the races, and they always had shooting events, Clay Pigeon type shooting events. And Holt and Howell Hines had this routine where the men would challenge each other to a shooting contest, and Howell Hines would shame somebody who's willing to bet money and saying, heck, my servant boy over here is only 10 years old and he can out shoot you, and they would build odds and then hold go out there and beat them and make howell hines a lot of money and we were fortunate enough to find that documentation and uh they dressed holt up and fine clothing bought him good

boots and holt in his later interviews in life would tell about how when he'd get up there to Cincinnati Ohio and places like that he actually said he went to brighton beach one time which was in new york uh he said that people would try to get him to to run away because he's in a free state and he could run away and he always refused he says there's no way i could have a better life up here than i have down there and that's that that's holt's interviews when he's in his 80s he's telling holt was interviewed later in life and it is the subject of i believe it's six or seven major magazine articles during his lifetime and that would have been prior to the great white hope jim johnson the boxing great i always hear that he's that he's the first

man of African descent sportsman to become a national figure. But Holt, these magazine articles actually came out on Holt. The first ones came out immediately after the 1902 hunt. Right, with Roosevelt. And there's a second hunt in 1907. Magazine articles came out then. So Holt was well, say well known. He was in the articles that I read in 1902 and 1907. There's more, Holt's mentioned more in those articles than Roosevelt is. Minor is saying that Hulk Collier was potentially America's first African-American national sporting figure. Why don't we all know who this guy is? Let's now begin to answer an even bigger question.

How did a 14-year-old Holt Collier end up in the Civil War? This is the way Holt told the story. Here's Minor. At the time the Civil War broke out, Howell Hines, who's adult in his 40s. Now, Howell has a young son named Thomas Hines would be a junior named after his grandfather, who's in his 20s. Well, both of them sign up to join the Confederacy.

And Holt, because of the stories he's been told by his father, following his master into battle, being a man-servant, Holt wants to go. He desperately wants to go with Howell and Thomas Hines into the Confederacy and serve as a valet. Well, they told him he couldn't go. He was a very small frame kid, and they just told him he's not going. He saw them leave the plantation, and he's just not going to put up with it.

So he puts together a little sack of belongings. There are a string of riverboats on the landing in Greenville, which is where the hines are going to report. And Holt makes his way through the swamp to get to that landing because he doesn't want to get caught. He's now a runaway slave. And so he gets on one of those riverboats, and he, because he makes on one of those riverboats, and he becomes a stowaway. He talks about how somebody allowed him to be a stowaway, and they go upriver to Memphis, Tennessee.

And so you've got no telling how many steamboats are pulling up there. And Howell Hines and Thomas Hines are standing there talking to some Confederate general. And Thomas nudges his howl Hines and says, Dad, look at that. You're not going to believe it. And they see Holt walking up to them. And they realize, well, we're not going to send you back, so you're going to be a ballet. He's days of travel away from his home.

Right. So they decided, okay, Holt, you can have your way. You're going to go ahead and so he becomes, in essence, a valet. So Holt was left in Mississippi, but snuck to the battleground following Hal Hines, and he is allowed to stay. Holt then travels with the Army into Kentucky and has given a job as a hospital orderly. And as he told the story, one day he was working and he heard some gunshots in the distance. so he grabbed a gun and ran towards the gunfire. He proceeds to actively partake in a battle with the men and his company and immediately gained their respect.

The story goes on. And they allowed him to carry a long gun with him from then on. And they made fun of him because he, you know, where's that little kid going with that big long gun kind of thing? He worked proudly and he was at Shiloh. His description of the Battle of Shiloh is dead on. You know, Holt never learned to read or write. He never could even write his own name.

Never could even write his own name. Sign it with an X. So when I'm reading an interview of Hulk Cawyer late in life, and he's describing the death of Albert Sidney Johnson, which was well documented in multiple sources, and he describes exactly what happened. There's no question in my mind that he's telling the truth, that he actually saw Albert Sidney Johnson get shot.

He didn't read it anywhere. He didn't read it anywhere. As a historical writer, Minor was interested in getting the story right. Often in history, much of what we have to go on is simply oral stories passed down, which we know can easily be shifted over time. Again, lucky for us, Holt was interviewed multiple times later in his life. So after Shiloh, both Howell Hines and Young Thomas Hines were there with him at Shiloh. And Howell Hines and Young Thomas Hines have seen enough.

If you're familiar with the Battle of Shiloh, it was an absolute bloodbath. Nothing had been seen like that on the North American continent. Nothing had been seen like that since the age of Napoleon. It was just, it was horrible. Even Grant said you could walk across the field, you know, 100 yards without stepping on anything but dead bodies. The brutality of the Civil War was unprecedented in modern war on the North American continent. And I say modern war because it's believed that as many as 20 million. Native Americans died from disease after the arrival of the Europeans.

Modern estimates of the Civil War believe that 650 to 850,000 Americans died during that five-year period. In the past, it was believed to be lower. Oddly, the casualties of the Union Army were substantially more than the Confederate Army, but records during the time give dim light to the facts. The bottom line is that Holt's life was impacted. by the difficulty of this time. So on with the story. Howell and Thomas Hines leave the battlefield. Hal requests from his personal friend, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy,

to be made Provost Marshal of Jefferson County. And Thomas, his son, basically deserts the Confederate Army. This is where things get interesting because they give Holt a decision. And they looked at Holt and said, Who do you, which one of us do you want to go with? Or do you want to stay? Well, at that point in time, since he had been in Corinth for several weeks, he had met this group of young soldiers who had come in from Texas.

And he had gotten to be buddies with them. And these are all 14, 15, 16-year-old kids who joined the Confederacy. They were under the command of Van Dorn. And Holt and these kids got to be friends. And they said, I'd rather stay with these Texas boys. Isn't that an incredible amount of agency that they would have given Holt for an owner to tell someone, you know, an enslaved person, hey, what do you want to do? You want to go back with us or you want to stay here and fight? I think at that point in time, it's very possible that the Himes said, if we can't contribute to the Confederate cause, we can give this boy up to fight for the Confederacy.

And that'll be our contribution. And I have no idea what motivated them. And I've had that same question has crossed my mind. But they allowed him to stay. So he stayed with what became the... They not only allowed him to stay, Howell Hines gave him a horse and gave him a sidearm. And from that moment forward,

you've got this young black kid armed with his own horse in the Confederacy. This is a wild image and a critical moment in Hulk Collier's life. He joins the Ninth Texas Calvary, which is a horseback roving unit of the Confederate Army. And they become a notorious outfit. I want to read some quotes from your book about these guys. There were multiple descriptions of what they did. One guy said that they were the best horsemen in the world.

That was a quote. Another quote was that they were common guerrilla outlaws. And that they were ruthless towards union sympathizers. So, I mean, these guys were pretty bad dudes. If you were a Yankee sympathizer, it's very likely you would be tried and executed. And when they would execute somebody, they would dispose of the body by throwing them in the swamp and covering the body up with some cut cane. When somebody found a body disposed of like that, they knew that company out of the night Texas cabaret had been through there.

And there would be a reason, but they didn't like sympathizers. But these guys kill their own. There's one account where two young men from Texas have robbed a citizen, which is not unusual, but they lined them up on creek back and shot them. They're old men. So they treat everybody equally. I'll give them that. Here's Hank Burdine with information on a very interesting request to Holt from a very powerful Confederate general.

He had been asked by Nathan Bedford. Forrest, General Forrest, to ride with him. He wanted Hol to ride with him. He'd heard about Hol. Colonel Hyne, who other was at the time, said, that's up to Holt. Holt's a soldier. I can't say what he does, what he's going to do.

That's up to him. And when the request got down to Holt, Holt sent the answer back to General Farris that he appreciated the awful, but he's already arrived when them boys from Texas. He thinks he's just going to stick with them. There are so many unique overlaps of Holt's life. with odd characters in history. Nathan Bedford Forrest is an extremely controversial figure,

but he can't be understood in a soundbite. So here's what I've got for you. Forrest was known as a brilliant Calvary strategist, and he once also took some heat for killing some Union soldiers after they'd surrendered. But the biggest strike on his record is that he was the first grand wizard of the Clu Klux Klan, and originally helped the organization grow.

But as a green check on his record, years later, he withdrew from the KKK, and he issued a letter calling for the dissolution of the clan, and he denied that he'd ever been a member, and in a public speech in 1875 in Memphis, he said he believed that blacks should be able to vote, and their lives elevated. I don't know, but I do know that he requested our bro Holtz. Collier to ride with him because Holt was bad to the bone, and this 20-year-old black man

turned him down. I like the boldness of it. Here's more from Hank on the Ninth, Texas Calvary. Now, the beauty of Holt riding with the Ninth Texas cavalry, all these little guys out of Texas, they were the wildest, wieriest, craziest little things you've ever seen could ride a horse like lightning. One of the things that they did, they would girdle a tree with two six shooters as they would run around the tree at a wide open galloping space shooting into the tree. I hope you got to understand and remember that he was one of the best horseman around.

He raised on a horse. He would go and race horses all up in Kentucky in different places. And he was in charge of, or he worked at a stable when he was young. He took care of hounds, but he also. He was in charge of them. He was a. He was a, a hostler. Yeah. Hossler, so to speak, which takes care of all the animals on a place. Plus, he was given that Webby-Scott shotgun to kill as much game as he could to feed the planation, and he was an expert marksman.

Hold wasn't a great big man. He wasn't a slight man, but he wasn't a huge, big, bulky kind of guy. He could get around, and he did. Holt's involvement with this rough gang of horsemen out of Texas M. Paxson. This was a wild and chaotic. time period. Once, Holt went undercover, like Brent Reeves, to bust some bad outlaws. There's a wonderful story. It was just outlaw haven back then. You didn't know who to trust. You'd be lucky to get to go to bed at night. There were outlaws roaming everywhere, and there was a

fellow who lived on an island 76, and the islands are numbered in the Mississippi River, and they're numbered going down the river from where the confluence of the Ohio River and the Mississippi River, so the first island south of that would be number one. And then the second island would be number two, et cetera, coming on down. There's a fellow out there who sells timber. You've got all these union gunboats coming up and down the river, and he's making raids. He's an outlaw, and he's making raids into the interior of the Mississippi Delta,

stealing livestock, stealing the slaves. of burning houses, and they approach company out of the night, Texas Cavalry, and they say, we've got to do something with this fellow. It's kind of a reunion with Howell Hines and Holt Cawyer, and they come up with a plan, and they say, well, let's put Holt out there on this island, and he'll be a spy, and he'll come back in two or three days and tell us where all the buildings are, where everybody is, where the weapons are kept, that kind of thing.

Because there would have been slaves on that island, and Hulk could come in acting like a runaway. like a runaway, and that's exactly what happened. Holt went out there, and he stayed with it on this island for two or three days, and he came back, and he gave his report, and then Holt went in with them, and Hal Hines joined him. They went in on these very quiet at night, and it was a raid, and they killed a bunch of people, and they took four main characters who lived on the island,

who were part of his outlaw gang, and strung them up and hung them, and that was the end of Milford Allen Coe, I believe his name was. Holt saw some wild stuff in the 9th, Texas Calvary, and you can infer it's influenced by the gunfights he'd get into later in his life. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed, and there was a full of blood.

Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left. behind trying to piece them back together.

He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the end of Holt's career as a soldier. At the end of the war, Holt says that he mustered out in Vicksburg.

And I have no reason to doubt that he ends up going back to... What does that mean? Well, you muster in and you muster out. That's when you sign in and you sign out. Okay. I know that that's a very highly debated issue about blacks in the Confederacy, but I found several accounts of it out of northern newspapers. And, you know, where the union soldiers were right back home, they've encountered black Confederates.

I don't question that it happened. If they existed, and I think they did, they were all brought in as servants and ended up with, and as Shelby Foot would say, why are you fighting? It has nothing political other than the fact that because you've invaded us. And that very well could have been the motivation behind it. Holt's service with the Confederacy went from day one to the very end. He never left him. He never was AWOL.

He followed orders. He never got any kind of commission, obviously. And he never had a uniform, but he had a Confederate hat. And we have many photographs of him in that Confederate hat. And if you read the narratives from the Ninth Texas Cavalry, they wore the hat in a very unusual way, and that was with the front turned up. And all of these pictures of Holt wearing his Confederate hat

has the front turned up, just exactly the way the Ninth Texas Cavalry narratives describe it. And Holt wore that hat to his deathbed. He loved that hat, and many of his photographs in later life, He's wearing that hat. He's still wearing that hat. Holts' involvement in the Civil War is one of the most mysterious parts of his life. At least as we would look at it from today's perspective, I think it made complete sense to him. And on the surface, it seemed simple. He was endeared to the people that owned him, and an army had invaded the area he called home. And perhaps it was even the naivety of his youth thrown in there and him not understanding the bigger picture.

Regardless, Jonathan has some insightful ideas on Holt's involvement in the Civil War. You know, I think that Collier's involvement is a civil war is the main place that I take some umbrage with the way the story is told about him. Because what are the, what's the actual motivations behind that? So this idea of like the loyal slave is problematic to me. Because one, it completely ignores the fact that you're dealing with people that have no choice. I don't think that the motivations could possibly be as simple or as binary as he loved the people that enslaved him and enslaved his mother and father and everyone he ever knew and cared about. So much that he was willing to put his life on the line to protect them. It is possible for a situation to be more complex than the summation of all the information.

we have. I think Holt deserves more than turning this story into a story about race. All of us simply want to celebrate the life of an incredible man. But the story of race is the backdrop of his whole life. So in an effort to understand his context, we owe it to Holt to talk about it. Jonathan and I have a lot of rapport with one another and have always been able to have productive conversations about tough subjects. here's Jonathan. Again, there's no denying the fact that he fought for the Confederacy and not only fought but did so with the distinction to the point that he was able to apply for and receive a Confederate pension,

which is mind-boggling. But to me, that speaks more to the extraordinary nature of the man, much more so than this idea that he so loved his brutalizers. Let me ask you some special power. question. Yeah. So it's certain that Hulk Collier was an outlier. I mean, isn't he the one that told us why he did what he did? Yeah. So that's a good point. And I would actually argue that that is further evidence of him being an extraordinary person and an outlier. I think it would be anyone who understands Collier's story would be hard pressed to say that he wasn't incredibly capable, naturally intelligent,

politically adapt. And if you think about the time that this man lived in, he never was free of the yoke of white supremacy at any point, right? The argument could actually be made, and I think pretty astutely, that the South was a much more dangerous place for black people after the Civil War than it was before. Because that social order had been so upended that there was a brutality that was instituted to try and hold on to the vestiges of that social order. Yeah, that makes sense. So what I would say about Holt Collier telling these stories in the way that he did, explaining his motivations, there's kind of two possibilities.

It's either that everything he's saying and putting out there into the cultural zeit guys is 100% true that he loved these people, that he hated Yankees, or he's a person who spent his whole life within these systems. And he understood that for him to have some sort of quality of life, It was necessary for him to ingratiate himself to the people around him that had power and to ingratiate himself to a social narrative that provided comfort to those people that were in a powerful position. Very interesting thoughts.

A black man getting a Confederate pension is incredibly rare and only documented a few times. Basically, the United States government gave money to Confederate soldiers injured in the Civil War in hopes to help rebuild the South. It's unclear if and how Holt was injured, but he did get a small Confederate pension. Tighten up your belts, brothers, because we're going to get even deeper. This is Bear Greas, folks.

We ain't scared of this kind of talk. I'd argue that what allowed him to endure was his understanding the people around him so intimately that he was able to manipulate them into allowing him to take advantage of opportunities that virtually no other black men around him were able to access. So does that make him a problematic figure? I mean, because it feels like what you're saying means that he was being disingenuous

through his whole life. So if that were the case, is he a hero or is he a villain? Oh, man, I think that, again, rejecting the binary, I don't think you can say, either, right? I think that... Do you see what I'm saying? No, I totally get what you're saying. Because if, I mean, if you follow that train of thought, it feels like you're saying

if he was being true to himself and true to his people, he should have been outwardly against all these people. No, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that... So, one, at one point in my life, I would... I might have been inclined to say that he was a traitor or a sellout or whatever. And now I'm kind of more implying to say that he's a complicated human being, which we all are, right? What I'm saying is that his circumstances were so different than the ones we live in today

that it's difficult to bring all of our sensibilities and understandings to those interpretations, right? Which is, I'm not playing a moral relativism game here, but I am saying that when you're dealing with a system that is completely devoid of honor, completely devoid of righteousness. I don't know that I can fully criticize somebody who finds a way to survive and in some ways thrive within it. And, you know, honestly, that's one of the more interesting things

about Collier's life to me, is how complicated it really had to be. That's one thing that's for sure. The South after the Civil War was a complicated place and time. I now want to dive into two unbelievable stories. I'll tell you one and I'll let Minor tell you the other. Shortly after the war, when Holt was 19 years old,

he's still living and working for his former owner, Hal Hines. They're trying to order an Uber of the time, which was a pay-for horse-drawn coach, and the white driver of the Uber refuses to let Holt, a black emancipated freed slave ride the coach. Hal Hines objects and gets in a physical altercation with the Uber driver, and O'Haw was a fighter with a short fuse. And the coach driver pulls out a knife and is about to stab Hal

when Holt, who is armed, pulls a pistol and shoots the guy in the hip. Holt would later say that he didn't want to kill the man, but just keep him from killing Howl. The gunshot ends the fight. And in an almost unbelievable outcome, Howell and several other influential people on the coach tell the authorities what happened and no charges were ever pressed on this 19-year-old kid that shot a white man in Mississippi shortly after the Civil War. That is a wild story.

Here's Minor talking about the most trouble that Holt would ever get in. It involved the killing of a former union officer. He ends up going back to Greenville, Mississippi, where Howell Hines ends up going back, and the south, not just Greenville or Fayette, but the entire south now is occupied in what is known as the Reconstruction era. And economically, it's a terribly depressed time, but the union soldiers are still here. They're an occupying force. over. The war is over. So the slaves are emancipated. Slaves are emancipated and they come under the jurisdiction of something called the Friedman's Bureau. It's organized and it's controlled and it's

run by the Union Army. The captain, the commander at Greenville is a guy named James A. King from Newton, Iowa. And he was born and raised an abolitionist. And he fought the entire war for the Union army and he's been given this command and his command is basically manage and control the entire former slave labor force and negotiate contracts with what remaining plantations their owners there are so that he can collect the money and then spread it out among the labor force at the end of the season and the hinds still have land they're devastated financially but they still got a piece of property it hadn't been taken away from them yet they end up losing it at all but in 18th 166, they negotiate with James A. King, so many bales per acre, they'll pay him whatever, those

bales of cotton. Bails of cotton. At the end of the season, they give him the money, and he's to disperse it. Well, James King, as you might imagine, didn't have a very good reputation among the locals. He was accused of stealing money. It was pretty common. As I said, Howell Hines had been wounded twice during the war. So he, I'm not going to say he was an invalid, but he was a cripple man. And Holt tells later in life, about the fact that James King had picked several fights with Howell Hines. And Holtz says it's a good thing he wasn't there because he would have killed him on the spot.

So there's bad blood between James A. King and Howell Hines. And being true to his past, Holt had threatened to kill King. And the money comes in. The cotton crop is sold down in Natchez of New Orleans. I don't know. But Young Thomas and Howell Hines say Holt's going into town, riding in the town, riding in the money. to Greenville for some reason. It says, stop by James King's, wherever you can find him, tell him the money is here to come on out.

And so Hope goes to the boarding house, tells James King the money's out at home at Plum Ridge Plantation for him to come pick it up. And then Holt goes on about his business. And James King made... This money is money that has been, so there's been work done by... This cotton has been sold. And now this money, James King gets a cook. Howell is going to give King this money to distribute to the former slaves? That's it.

Bingo. So James King makes two mistakes. He goes out that evening. Obviously, he's going to be coming back in the dark. And he goes alone. And his body is found three days later. His horses found riderless the next morning in Greenville. And so a search party goes out and they find his body.

And it's covered by Kane in the same manner that the company eye of the Nike's Texas cavalry used to cover the bodies of the people, as we discussed earlier. And so they immediately, they went out and questioned the hinders, and they immediately zero in on Holt, and they arrest Holt, charge him with a murder of James King. It's one year after the Civil War, and Holt is charged with murdering a white guy who was a union officer. And don't forget, he's already shot another white guy. There's no way this is going to end well.

Holt never confesses. It's a big mystery who killed James King. They take hold down to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and in the old courthouse, which is still there, the Warren County Courthouse, they have a military court-martial of a civilian for the murder of this union officer, and he's found not guilty.

Many of the prominent people of Greenville, Mississippi, come down for this hearing, and Howell Hines scratches up enough money to hire William Alexander Percy, who's known as the Grey Eagle of the Delta. His son made great fame as Leroy Percy, a United States senator and friend of... This is a big-time lawyer. The best. And there was nobody to compare to William Alexander Percy.

Fortunately, as anybody in criminal law knows, 90% of the convictions are because somebody talks. Assume their version of the prosecution is correct. Hope would have been the only one there when James. King was killed, he never talked. Holt's acquittal, meaning he was found not guilty, is almost unbelievable. William Alexander Percy was the best lawyer in Mississippi and wielded incredible power in the Delta. It's interesting to consider why he'd take the case of a young black man that everybody

knew was guilty. Later we'll learn that the Percy family fought adamantly against the Cluclux Klan and had an uncommon vision for the reconstructed South. Holstiquiddle is one of the greatest examples of the uncommon nature of his life. He had a way of gaining people's loyalty. Here's Hank Burdine with the story behind the story about the trial. They took him to Vicksburg, had him arrested for the murder of Captain King. Mr. Pershing went down there representing him and all these other folks, went as his character

witnesses. The courthouse is still down there. The courtroom is on the second floor. He was acquitted. And there was a reporter there from up north, whether it was a carpet-bagging reporter or whatever, and said to the judge, says, judge, why did you let that man go? You know he was guilty. And the judge says, would you walk over to that window and look out on that front yard? And the guy did. And he looked out in the front yard of the courthouse at Warren County and Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the banks of the Mississippi River. And there stood six. of the 9th Texas Cavalry Cowboys

and there were seven horses he said they were going to get him anyway no matter what so his buddies in the 9th Texas Calvary knew he was going to trial and basically if he was convicted they were going to take him by force and bust him out of there

they didn't bust him out of there and they looked at that the world back then was that unstable that that was a real thing oh absolutely I mean it was like this was right after the Civil War this place was just chaos down here.

Absolutely. And so, I mean, this wasn't just an idle threat. And when you had six of the ninth Texas out there, wasn't much they couldn't do. Wasn't much they wouldn't do. If Holt had a bumper sticker slogan, it might have been ready to roll. That's a pretty good descriptor of him in everything he did.

He didn't seem to let much hold him back. In this first episode, we've covered only the first 20 years of Holt's life, and he lived to be 90, so we've got an interesting journey ahead of us. Like Jonathan Wilkins said, Holt's life can't be understood in a binary way, meaning that there are only two options. It wasn't just black and white, and I don't think we can fully understand him,

but we're going to do our best to do it. His wholehearted engagement in the Civil War, his shooting of multiple white men shortly after the war, and not getting in trouble for it, it's wild. It's clear that he had an incredible draw to his life that overrode the predominant relational themes of the time. It's a shame that America doesn't know the story of Hulk Collier on a broad scale. And I think we can make this statement that it's definitely a complicated story, but that's exactly why it needs to be told.

I can't wait for episode two. I can't thank you guys and gals enough for listening to Bear Grease. We've got some very interesting episodes coming up as we continue to explore the incredible life of this man. So do me a favor. Tell a buddy about this podcast. Leave us a review on iTunes. Go check out the meat eater.com for some bear grease merch. And I can't wait to talk all this over with the render crew next week.

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