Ernest (Evan) Thompson Seton
Ernest (Evan) Thompson Seton
1860-1946
English-born American artist and naturalist who was a notable author of animal and Indian stories, mainly for children and young adults, from the 1880s until his death. His forty books—one of which, Wild Animals I Have Known, has been continuously in print for over a century—included two multivolume studies of North American mammals. All his publications were based on his own field observations and were accompanied by his unique drawings and paintings. He pioneered in developing methods of identifying animals in the field, later elaborated on by other naturalists. In the early 1900s he organized the Woodcraft Indians, on which the Boy Scouts of America was largely based. He was Chief Scout Executive of the BSA from 1910 to 1915. In his later years he was a student of American Indian culture, establishing the Seton Institute in New Mexico.