American Folklore abounds with heroes and heroines -- Davy
Crockett, Pocahontas, John Henry, Betsy Ross, Paul Bunyan, to name a
very few. Some of their stories are indisputably factual -- others,
well, let's just say Americans have never let historical accuracy
crowd out a good story. Most of our tales of folk heroes, though,
do tell the truth about Americans -- we are a people who love to see
ordinary persons do extraordinary things. What a shame -- and how
unAmerican -- it would have been had Holt Collier been lost to
history, which, he almost was.
Born a slave in 1846 on a Mississippi plantation, bear hunter
Holt Collier led a life of adventure that included a stint as a
Confederate cavalry scout, wild-west-style gunfights, and hunting
trips to Mexico and alaska. Collier is remembered in his native
state to this day for the role he played in President Theodore
Roosevelt's 1902 Mississippi Delta bear hunt that resulted in the
naming of the Teddy bear, a tale recounted in Jim McCafferty's
children's book, Holt and the
Teddy Bear. Holt and the cowboys recalls a lesser-known tale from Holt's
exciting life, but one that is every bit as interesting and
entertaining.
In the days following the Civil War, Holt traveled to Texas
where he applied for a job on a cattle ranch. The ranch
foreman, intending to play a cruel joke on Holt, offered Holt work
if he could prove he could ride a certain horse. Unbeknownst
to Holt, the horse the foreman had in mind was Old Hurricane, the
meanest, most unrideable, buckingest mustang in that part of Texas.
Unbeknownst to the foreman, however, Holt was a horseman of vast
experience. The book tells how Holt outsmarted both the
foreman and Old Hurricane and, in the process, won the job -- and
the hearts and friendship of the cowboys on that Texas ranch.
Holt's work as a Texas cowboy now has been memorialized in the
Waco, Texas, sculpture project,
Branding the Brazos, at that city's Indian Springs
Park. The group of massive bronze
sculptures
depicting three mounted cowboys driving a heard of longhorns,
erected in 2014, includes one 14 foot tall statue of a black cowboy on horseback.
According to Texas artist
Robert Summers, who created the works,
he modeled the statue of the black cowboy after Holt Collier.
Holt and the Cowboys is written for children in the
lower elmentary grades.
Both Holt and the Cowboys and Holt and the Teddy Bear are recipients of the National Christian
Schools Association [NCSA] Children's Crown Collection designation,
an annual listing of twenty children's book titles recommended by
the NCSA "because they are well-written, they promote strong values,
and they contain positive and uplifting themes," according to
librarian Sandra Morrow, who established the Children's Crown
Collection program in 1992.
Follow this link for ordering information: Buy
Holt and the Cowboys.
Besides Holt and the Cowboys, Jim McCafferty is the author
of The
Bear Hunter: The Life and Times of Robert Eager Bobo in the
Canebrakes of the Old South and the children's book, Holt and the Teddy Bear. The
Kindle version of The Bear Hunter
can be previewed and purchased
here.
Follow this link for ordering information on all three books:
Buy the Books.