Holt Collier

Holt Collier
Holt Collier at age 61, 1907
Born	c. 1848 Mississippi
Died	1936 Greenville, Mississippi
Nationality	American
Occupation	soldier, hunter

Holt Collier (c. 1848 – August 1, 1936) was a noted African American bear hunter and sportsman. While leading a hunt as a tracker for United States President Teddy Roosevelt in November 1902, Collier unwittingly set the stage for the event that served as the origin of Roosevelt's nickname "Teddy Bear."

Collier was born circa 1848 as a slave in Mississippi, and was the third generation to serve the Hinds family on Plum Ridge Plantation, built by General Thomas Hinds, who was a veteran of the Battle of New Orleans. General Hinds, at the request of General Andrew Jackson, had surveyed central Mississippi and chose the site for the state capital, Jackson, before settling nearby in the area which is now Hinds County.

Collier killed his first bear at age ten; thereafter, his job was to supply meat for the table of the Hinds family and field hands. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Collier’s master Howell Hinds and his seventeen-year-old son Tom, who was Collier's childhood companion, left for the war. Although told by his master that he was too young to fight, Collier stowed away on a riverboat and joined Howell and his son in Memphis.

At the Battle of Shiloh he witnessed the death of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston. Collier's biographer says that although there was a prohibition against blacks serving in uniform, Confederates made an exception for Collier because of his demonstrable skills. Collier stayed with the Hinds men until later being given the opportunity to ride with the 9th Texas Cavalry. He did so, serving in Company I through the rest of the war, fighting in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.

After the war Collier returned home to the Hinds family. During Reconstruction, Collier was tried by a military tribunal in Vicksburg for the murder of a white man, Captain James King. The accusation may have stemmed from King's advocacy for the use of Freedmens Bureau labor on the Hinds plantation. After his acquittal, Collier left the state upon the advice of William Alexander Percy of Greenville, who was later the last United States Senator elected by a state legislature, and went to Texas where he worked as a cowboy on the ranch owned by his former commander, General Lawrence Sullivan Ross.