The history of the White House isfull of weird pets , from John Quincy Adams ’s alligator to Calvin Coolidge ’s menagerie ( which included both a wallaby and a pygmy hippopotamus ) . But one of the odder taradiddle occurred in 1807 , when Thomas Jefferson received an endearing gift of creature that shortly pop off dangerously awry .
Jefferson ’s gift occur from Captain Zebulon Pike , an intrepid explorer who made it his mission to head into formerly uncharted Western territorial dominion . Pike take on two ambitious military reconnaissance expeditions , one to discover the reference of the Mississippi River , and the other focused on the Red and Arkansas Rivers .
He was n’t the first person to steer west to represent the as - yet - unfamiliar territory : Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had been send on the first American western expedition by the Army just a few years sooner . But instead of head up to the Pacific Northwest , Pike head southwest in April 1806 . He made it as far as Colorado — giving pike Peak its name — beforeapparently getting lostand wandering into what was then the Spanish territory of New Mexico ( the degree to which he was really lose , as fight back to stress to gather military data on the Spanish , has been contend by historians ) . He was detained by the Spaniards , but released whole after a year .
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Pike ’s jaunt was no sightseeing slip [ PDF ] : Its real purpose was to place the origination for an American empire that stretched from coast to coast . And what better style to thank the chairman for that lofty committee than to share a little gift of appreciation ? In October 1807 , Pike sent along a pair of untried “ Grisly Bears ( mail service & femail ) which I bought from the dividing ridges of the Pacific & Atlantic Oceans,”along with a letterthat said that the natives considered them “ the most furious Animals of the continent . ”
The bear cubs were cute curiosity , but they were n’t just safe . In a time before modern zoos , nobody really knew how to deal for them decent — or on the dot how turgid they ’d grow . For a while , the prexy put his progressively treacherous endowment in a cagenear the Union entrance to the White House . His political enemiescalled the enclosurethe president ’s “ bear - garden , ” a condition used to refer to a place ruled by grisly uproar , much like the Elizabethan bear - taunt spots that spawned the term .
But the president did n’t want to keep the cubs for long . In a missive to his granddaughter , he write that the bear “ are too dangerous and troublesome to keep . ” Jefferson had a backup program : Charles Willson Peale . A observe American puma , Peale open up a museum in 1782 that started out as a portrayal gallery but soon became acabinet of curiosities . Peale even invented a new way of expose animals in an early version of the panorama , showing off animal specimen in front of painted backgrounds .
Peale had already had a bad run - in with a grey-haired bear that he stress to display in 1804 . Yet he could n’t exactly turn over down the chairman ’s request that he take on the “ perfectly easy ” creature [ PDF ] . The bear took up mansion house at the museum , but alas : According to a historiographer at Monticello , Jefferson ’s home , they , too , outgrew their cages and were tear after one of them threatened a member of the Peale mob . Their mounted skin were after put on video display in the museum .
The fib of Jefferson ’s cute gift gone awry is a reminder that badly - thought - out presents are n’t always appreciated — and that back in that rash age of American imperium , almost nothing seemed impossible .
