How the sons of Teddy Roosevelt discovered the mythical Giant Panda

Among the great hunters and adventurers of the Roaring 1920s were the two eldest sons of Teddy Roosevelt, America’s 26th president, former New York governor and one of the country’s most energetic and famous figures. The Roosevelt family had funded museums to fill their halls with exhibits of virtually every large animal known to man, but for one — the elusive and legendary creature, the giant black and white panda.

Emboldened by their legendary lineage, Ted Jr. and Kermit Roosevelt decided to follow in the footsteps of their big-game-hunting father who had brought back kills of lions, tigers, elephants and bears — often exhibited in New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, which the boys’ grandfather had co-founded in 1869.

Pursuing fame and glory — as well as hoping to escape the shadow of their father — the brothers set out for remote, and inhospitable Himalayan mountains in Asia, which had yet to be explored by Westerners. Their goal was to find the panda thought to be some kind of polar bear — but a beast that many believed did not exist. And the brothers faced a punishing route up a 16,000-foot peak with howling winter storms.

As Nathalia Holt writes in her deeply researched nonfiction account, “The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers’ Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda” )One Signal Publishers): “The animal the brothers coveted looked like no other species in the world . . . a black and white bear so rare that many people did not believe it was real. 

“Not even naturalists who had worked in China all their lives would say precisely where the creature lived, what it ate, or how it behaved . . . The Roosevelts desired this one animal so acutely that they could barely speak about it with each other, much less anyone else,” the author observes.

Few people in the Republic of China had ever seen the panda, but there was a probable reference to it in Chinese literature in the early Third Century, according to the author. And proof of its existence arose when Joseph Milner, a missionary, donated the skin he had purchased of a giant panda to the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1919.

A French missionary, Armand David, had hired hunters in the Chinese province of Sichuan in 1869 to collect interesting specimens. They returned with a lifeless body of an unidentified animal, possibly the panda. David skinned it and shipped the pelt to Paris to be identified by experts. But scientists would not confirm it was authentic.

In 1929, the determined Roosevelt siblings began an expedition to finally find this elusive bear, more legend than fact, in the inhospitable bamboo forests of the Tibetan Plateau in the high Himalayas. The brothers were accompanied by naturalists, trackers, guides, interpreters and scientists, and funded by Chicago’s Field Museum and a wealthy donor.

The Roosevelts were unprepared for what they faced: treacherous glacier crossings of the Himalayas, raiders ready to attack travelers, and air so thin that it was easy to die of oxygen deprivation. But they were driven by their ambitions to find a beast in the clouds that was considered the most challenging trophy on earth.

The trail that crossed China and Tibet was desolate and forbidding with its intense wind, snow and ice, writes Holt. Indeed, there was “no tent strong enough” to withstand the mountain squalls, and no fire hot enough to warm the explorers.

“These were the Roosevelts. They bore an air of invulnerability that had carried the entire group forward into this treacherous environment,” writes Holt — even when passing through a region called the Valley of Death, located in what is today the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, that was said to be full of evil spirits that haunted people while they slept — never to awaken. 

During the trek, forest walls closed in on all sides, and the extremely high mountain elevation made it difficult to breathe. There were bandits — including a “band of eight hundred Tibetan marauders” — who roamed the rugged terrain.

One night, their team of mules mysteriously disappeared and starvation became a stark possibility with few provisions left beyond dried green peas and rice. A Tibetan lamasery provided nourishment before the crew moved on in blizzard-like storms.

While the elusive panda remained little more than a fantasy, the scientists captured birds, broke their necks and skinned them. Capturing as many specimens as they could for natural history museums, an entire family of nine golden snub-nosed monkeys — the last of their kind — was killed in the name of science. 

After rugged days and nights, the expedition was finally on the panda’s trail when reports of a white bear sighting came from a nearby village. The natives considered this beast a “supernatural being, a sort of demi-god,” writes Holt. The villagers never tried to capture it and only agreed to take the white hunters in search of it — for money.

At the base of a tree trunk, panda scat was discovered with bamboo in it, known to be the daily diet of the panda, along with its coarse white hair.

A trail of paw prints in the snow and half-munched bamboo quickly led them to their ultimate target. He was shot and killed on sight — a panda!

“For the explorers, it felt like the end,” writes Holt. “In the five months of their expedition, the party had collected five thousand bird skins, two thousand small mammals, and forty big mammals,” but not the great bear.

“It was only here, at the end, that the brothers realized they had been wrong and the panda wasn’t the wild, bellicose predator they had expected,” writes Holt. The gentleness of “the panda had permanently altered their sense of purpose — and immediately following the panda hunt they were struck by illness.”

A cut on Ted’s leg became infected with bacteria spreading up his torso. News coming in revealed that Kermit’s shipping business was headed to bankruptcy, and he had to return to New York. As soon as Kermit left, Ted felt himself emotionally and physically unraveling, according to Holt.

“His body ached from months of sleeping on the ground, repeated illness, and hard climbing,” Holt writes.

“Together we had shivered in the bitter winter cold of the high mountains and sweltered in the damp heat of the semi-tropics. Together we had passed through troubles ranging from lost mules to bandits. Now in all probability we would never meet again,” Ted later wrote.

He came down with malaria and was admitted to a Saigon hospital where doctors found he had dysentery, caused by bacteria or parasites.

The two brothers had always depended on each and now they were separated and barely speaking.

Kermit’s company was bleeding money and, worse, he had become an alcoholic. With his marriage unravelling, he started having affairs. In June 1943, he placed a revolver under his chin and pulled the trigger.

Ted lived a year longer. 

They had awakened a pandamonium with pandas now being hunted for excessive sums becoming one of the rarest mammals on earth.

“A dark shadow had fallen across their lives the moment the brothers had simultaneously pulled their triggers,” writes the author.

“The panda hunt had forever altered his life,” writes Holt, and they had awakened a “panda-monium” with pandas now being hunted for excessive sums becoming one of the rarest mammals on earth.