Theodore Roosevelt and his Passion for the Ozark Howler
There’s a shadowy side to American history, a current of imperialism and religious intolerance that a lot of folks don’t like to talk about. Wouldn’t you know it? This current runs straight through the Ozarks, and the dark horned beast that roams its wilderness.
The Two Wizards podcast discusses this history through the doorway of President Teddy Roosevelt’s passionate interest in the Ozark Howler.
“So, you know about Teddy’s days in the in Cuba with the liberation of San Juan Hill, he charges up with his Rough Riders. Well, one of his Rough Riders was a guy named John C. Greenway, and they were in Cuba together. They were really good friends. Greenway was super impressed by Roosevelt, and he told Teddy about the Ozark Howler, initially. He was the one that, you know, he said, hey, we’ve got this, there’s there’s this deal, it’s called the Ozark Howler.”
You may be asking yourself: Why would John C. Greenway, a soldier fighting in Cuba alongside Theodore Roosevelt, know about the Ozark Howler? The answer is that Greenway wasn’t from Cuba, or even from Florida. He grew up as a boy in the Ozarks, and he knew Ozark lore like the back of his hand.
“Greenway was from Hot Springs, Arkansas, which I also think was Bill Clinton’s hometown, and so he told Teddy about the Ozark Howler, and Teddy thought it was great. He even was quoted as saying it sounded like a bully good beast that embodied the robust physical character of the growing American nation.”
The thing you need to understand about Teddy Roosevelt is that he didn’t grow up with the strong, macho persona that he became known for as a politician. He was a thin, sickly boy. He reacted against his physical weakness by idolizing natural strength, purposefully seeking out robust physical adventures in the American wilderness in order to toughen himself up. Stories about the Ozark Howler were just the sort of thing that appealed to his hunger for self-reinvention. So, the future president listened to Greenway’s reports with interest, and worked to find others who shared his interest. Roosevelt’s good fortune was there was an organization that had formed in Arkansas specifically in order to deal with the threats posed by the Ozark Howler.
“So apparently, there’s a conservation group for this thing and it’s called the the International Concatenated Order of Hoo Hoo, a secret society dedicated to dealing with the danger possessed by or posed by the Ozark Howler. Roosevelt’s position within this organization was President of American Forestry, and he was assigned with the responsibility of establishing protected zones of the territory where the Ozark Howler would be allowed to roam undisturbed and its population managed so that Howler eradication efforts could be focused nearer, on areas of human settlement.”
Theodore Roosevelt had a well-known fondness for flamboyantly eccentric organizational branding, as seen with his creation of the Bull Moose Party. The elaborate oddity of the Concatenated Order of Hoo Hoo was right up his alley. His emergence as leader of the organization catalyzed one of the stranger left turns in American history, providing a surprising context for one of Roosevelt’s signature policies: The creation of world’s first system of national parks.
“One of his big pushes was to establish the National Park Service, and carve out all these pieces of land for, at least what he would tell us would be, for preservation and enjoyment and all that. That almost sounds like a front. That’s just the cover story to like help people sleep at night and sure, here’s the little like campground area that’s never more than like a quarter mile from an actual road. But then, who knows what actually goes on deeper and deeper in them hills.”
The thing about the Concatenated Order of the Hoo is that it began as a secret militia to contain the Ozark Howler. It wasn’t some kind of John Muir environmentalist organization, and its motivations ran much deeper than just setting up a giant nature preserve. American culture in the early 20th century was thick with spiritualism and flirtations with the occult. So, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to learn from the Two Wizards that the Concatenated Order of Hoo Hoo brings in deep numerology and old Ozark magic.
“This is where it gets really weird, as if it already wasn’t kind of weird. Apparently this Concatenated Order of Hoo Hoo is like the oldest, is one of the oldest fraternal organizations in the United States. It’s older than the Elks and the Rotary International Club. The Ozark Howler that serves as the official symbol of the Order is shown with a tail curved to make the shape of the number nine. Original dues were set at $9.99, and for years, membership was capped at nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine members. The Order followed the old beliefs of Ozark Magic regarding the number nine as a kind of hex for protection against the Ozark Tower. Teddy Roosevelt’s membership number was 999.”
How bizarre can the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s obsession with the Ozark Howler get? Mix in some Christian fundamentalism, and the woo factor really heats up. The Two Wizards explain that hardcore Ozark Christians blundered into Roosevelt’s work with the Concatenated Order, imperiling the precarious equilibrium keeping Americans safe from the Ozark Howler. Radical preachers sought to undermine Roosevelt’s work by imposing an outright prohibition of old cultural practices related to the Howler.
Horace Greenleaf was one of these anti-Howler preachers, and he went over the top to distance his church from its former embrace of Ozark Howler traditions.
“Again it gets even weirder here. You may have heard of this dude. Horace Greenleaf, he was a Presbyterian minister and he was one of what he called the moral watchdogs of the nation. Always. Yeah. You could call him like a Pat Robertson of the day, or Jerry Falwell. Greenleaf began a campaign of Christian protest with the goal of complete elimination of practices related to the Ozark Howler. So this guy was like out for it, too. So now you’ve got the President of United States, as well as this insane Christian dude fighting over it.”
In the 1930s, author Saul Ashton included an account of Horace Greenleaf’s activities in his book, Tales of the Ozark Howler. It seems that the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Russellville, Arkansas (now known as the Central Presbyterian Church) once had a stained glass window that included a picture of the Ozark Howler. Greenleaf believed that the image was demonic idolatry, and insisted on its removal. Ashton wrote,
“The issue came to a head in the Christmas Eve service of 1907, during which Minister Greenleaf declared himself unwilling to serve in the shadow of the Ozark Howler any longer. Seizing a brass candlestick from the altar, he threw it at the stained glass window, breaking a hole in the artwork in the space between Jesus and the Ozark Howler.”
History is stranger than the textbooks reveal. Tales of horned beasts and out-of-control preachers rarely make it into the classroom, but it’s not possible to understand the history of the United States without understanding the Ozark Howler.
