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Ed. Note: Earnest Thompson Seton was one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of
America. Robert Baden Powell started the scouting movement in England, but Seton
became the first Chief Scout in America. Seton was a naturalist and outdoor camper
who respected the American Indians and incorporated that attitude in the young
American organization.
In a book published in 1910 by Edgar Beecher Bronson entitled “cowboy Life on
the Western plains— the reminiscences of a ranchman” there is a letter from Seton
to Bronson. It spoke of the happenings at Fort Robinson, Nebraska when the Indians
were taken from their land and imprisioned on reservations. This is a special book
to me because it was given to me by my Nebraska rancher father. The letter from
Seton may be prophetic and reads as follows:
My Dear Bronson,
Your kind gift of the two books reached me just as I was leaving to Canada. I
took the “Ranchman” with me and read it on the train. I have never been so
absorbed in any book. Oh, how I wish I had not been too late to see and be of
the Heroic West. The chapter on the last of the Cheyennes is an epic of terrible
interest. It is typical of the whole treatment of the Indian. He wanted his land—
we were stronger— we crushed him, even as Naboth was crushed for his ancestral
vineyard, and slaughtered his little ones. As sure as there is a God in heaven,
this century of hellish wickedness will have to be settled for; and if ever the
revitalized Chinese millions sweep over this land with burning and wholesale
slaughter, possessing, conquering, exterminating us, we can only bow our heads
and say, “we are reaping what we have sowed; as we did to the Redman, so God has
empowered this Yellowman to do to us.” And further he wrote, “If in that final
scene there can be found in us the spirit to go forth with wife and child and die
fearless and steadfast, as did Dull Knife, then shall we have the joy at least of
going down like men. Gratefully, your campfire brother, Earnest Thompson Seton
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