Holt Collier: Slave, Confederate Soldier, Cowboy, Big Game Hunter, And Presidential Hunting Guide
by EastTennessee1948
I was in Gen.Ross’ Brigade, Colonel Dudley Jones Regiment and Captain. Perry Evans Company I 9th Texas Cavalry Regiment. My Old Colonel. gave me a horse…. one of three fine race horses he had brought from Plum Ridge. He was a beauty, iron-gray and named Medock. After leaving Bowling Green it was a long time until I saw my Old Colonel again……….Holt Collier
He was a slave, Confederate Soldier, cowboy, and perhaps the greatest big game hunter in United States history. And he influenced the popularity and nickname of one our most beloved Presidents. Holt Collier was born, about 1847, a slave in Jefferson County, Mississippi. As a very young boy, his owner, Howell Hinds, brought him to his plantation in Washington County, known a “Plum Ridge”. Hinds had a particular fondness for Holt, to the point that he sent him to school with his sons to Bardstown, Kentucky. Holt didn’t care much for school and played hooky most days, shooting squirrels, quail, and an occasional bear. He was given his first rifle at age 10, and thereafter had the job of keeping meat on the Hind’s family table. By age 14 and the outbreak of the Civil War, Holt was considered an expert equestrian, as well as a marksman.
In his own words, he, “begged like a dog” to go off to war with Hinds and his 17 year-old son, Tom in 1861. Hinds told Collier he was “just too young”, and they left the boy crying like his heart would break. Not to be denied, Holt stowed away on one of the seven ships transporting the Mississippi Volunteers to training bases. The story goes, that once Holt’s skills with a gun and horse were observed by no less than N.B. Forrest, Hinds, (who Holt always called “My Old Colonel”), gave him his freedom, and he was allowed to choose what unit he would join. He then joined the 9th Texas Cavalry and served throughout the war. He finished the war as one of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s most trusted scouts, known as a superb horseman and marksman.
Holt was at the Battle Of Shiloh, where he received a minor ankle wound, and claimed to have seen General Albert Sidney Johnston removed from his” big white horse”, and laid under a tree, where he quickly bled to death.
After the war, Holt returned with his “Old Colonel”, and thus began the difficult days of “reconstruction”. In 1866, Holt was charged, tried, but never convicted of killing a occupying Yankee Officer. Howell Hinds and Union Captain, James A. King, of Co.B 49th U.S.C.T. had a verbal confrontation that soon came to blows. The much older Hines continually knocked down the much younger man, who grew angrier each time. Finally, the young officer from Iowa drew a knife and started toward Hines. From a distance a shot rang out, and Captain King was no more. Holt never admitted to the killing, but never denied it either. Legend has it, he admitted to Theodore Roosevelt, during one of their hunting trips, that he indeed was the shooter.
Soon after the trial, Collier left Mississippi and headed for Texas to lay low and let the controversy of the trial and King’s death blow over. While in Texas, Holt worked as a cowboy for one of the founding fathers of Texas, one of the first Texas Rangers, future Governor, and his former Brigade Commander, Lawrence Sullivan Ross. In 2008 Holt was inducted into the “Cowboy Hall Of Fame”. After returning to Mississippi, he began to build on his reputation as a guide and hunter.
Newspaper reporters were there, and as they say, the rest is history and the origin of the “Teddy Bear.”
In the 1930’s, at the age of 90, Holt was one of those interviewed for the Federal Government sponsored, “Slave Narratives”. Toward the end of the session the interviewer, Lottie Armistead, wrote the following, quoting Holt :
“I am black, but my associations with my Old Colonel. gave me many advantages. I was freer then, than I have ever been since, and I loved him better than anybody else in the world. I would have given my life for [him],” said Holt with tears rolling down his withered cheeks.
The full account can be read here: http://newdeal.feri.org/asn/asn03.htm
So… what do you think?
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