Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt's Mississippi hunt during which he declined to shoot an adult bear that had been brutalized by dogs and man. He ordered a member of the hunt party to kill it, which was done by knife; it was then skinned and eaten at camp meals. Despite this outcome, the myth arose that the president released a young bear on humanitarian grounds resulting in the creation of a soft cloth child's toy that became known as the teddy bear in reference to the president's public moniker. Over the first two decades of the twentieth century the teddy itself underwent a transformation from being representative of childhood to being symbolic of childhood innocence.
