Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1860–1946, American writer and artist, b. England. His name was originally Ernest Seton Thompson. His stories and paintings of wildlife, especially Wild Animals I Have Known (1898, new ed. 1942), were standard works on nature study and wood lore for boys and girls in the first quarter of the 20th cent. In 1902 he organized the Woodcraft Indians (later the Woodcraft League), much in the spirit of the later Boy Scout (now Scout) movement.
See his autobiography, The Trail of an Artist-Naturalist (1940) and extracts from his journals, ed. by his widow, J. M. Seton (1967).
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