African Game Trails

In 1909, the Smithsonian Institution commissioned ex-President Theodore Roosevelt to collect specimens of African wildlife for the National Museum. Roosevelt went to Africa with his son Kermit, several prominent naturalists, and many journalists, thereby initiating the safari industry and setting the standard for the big game hunt. Yet Roosevelt never killed for thrills, instead hunting only specific animals in the amounts requested by the Smithsonian. Making his way from the Kenyan coast to the Upper Nile, he records his impressions of the African landscape, witnesses a traditional lion hunt by African pastoralists, and recalls his meetings with East Africans, to whom he was known as 'Bwana Tumbo (belly).'