Ernest Thompson Seton

Seton was born in South Shields, County Durham, England to Scottish parents. His family emigrated to British North America in 1866. After settling in Lindsay, Canada West Seton spent most (after 1870) of his childhood in Toronto, and the family is known to have lived at 6 Aberdeen Avenue in Cabbagetown. As a youth, he retreated to the woods of the Don River to draw and study animals as a way of avoiding his abusive father. He attended the Ontario College of Art in 1879, studying with John Colin Forbes, then won a scholarship in art to the Royal Academy in London, England in 1880. He went out into the field, sometimes accompanied by William "Willie" Brodie Jr., the son of the naturalist Dr. William Brodie. The death of Willie in a canoeing accident was a blow to Seton. In the 1890s, he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris In 1893–4, he was elected an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Seton met Scouting's founder, Lord Baden-Powell, in 1906. Baden-Powell had read Seton's book The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians and was greatly intrigued by it. The pair met and shared ideas. Baden-Powell went on to found the Scouting movement worldwide and Seton became the president of the committee that founded the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and was its first (and only) Chief Scout. Seton's Woodcraft Indians (a youth organization) combined with the early attempts at Scouting from the YMCA and other organizations and with Daniel Carter Beard's Sons of Daniel Boone, to form the BSA. The work of Seton and Beard is in large part the basis of the Traditional Scouting movement. Seton served as Chief Scout of the BSA from 1910 to 1915 and incorporated what he believed to be American Indian elements into the traditions of the BSA. He had significant personality and philosophical clashes with Beard and James E. West. In August 1910, Seton organized and led the program at the BSA's first encampment at Silver Bay on Lake George in New York, where youth groups from across the country gathered under his direct supervision; a retrospective account described the first American scouts as organized "as an outgrowth of Seton's Indians." That same summer he visited Adirondack Camp for Boys, founded by Dr. Elias G. Brown, on Lake George.

British by birth, Seton was not naturalized as Canadian (as status did not legally exist until 1947; he thus remained a British subject) and became an American in 1931. He was married twice. His first marriage was to Grace Gallatin in 1896. Their only daughter, Ann (1904–1990), later known as Anya Seton, became a best-selling author of historical and biographical novels. According to Ann's introduction to the novel Green Darkness, Grace was a practicing Theosophist. Ernest and Grace divorced in 1935, and Ernest soon married Julia Moss Buttree. Julia wrote works by herself and with Ernest. They did not have any biological children, but in the 1930s they sought to adopt Moss Buttree's niece, Leila Moss, who lived with them for years in New Mexico. In 1938, they adopted an infant daughter, Beulah (Dee) Seton (later Dee Seton Barber). Dee Seton Barber, a talented embroiderer of articles for synagogues such as Torah mantles, died in 2006.

Seton was an early pioneer of the modern school of animal fiction writing, his most popular work being Wild Animals I Have Known (1898), which contains the story of his killing of the wolf Lobo. Four stories from this collection would be republished as Lobo, Rag, and Vixen (1900). He later became involved in a literary debate known as the nature fakers controversy, after John Burroughs published an article in 1903 in the Atlantic Monthly attacking writers of sentimental animal stories. The controversy lasted for four years and included important American environmental and political figures of the day, including President Theodore Roosevelt. For his work, Lives of Game Animals Volume 4, Seton was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1928. In 1931, he became a United States citizen. Seton was associated with the Santa Fe arts and literary community during the mid-1930s and early 1940s, which was a group of artists and authors, including author and artist Alfred Morang, sculptor and potter Clem Hull, painter Georgia O'Keeffe, painter Randall Davey, painter Raymond Jonson, leader of the Transcendental Painters Group and artist Eliseo Rodriguez. He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

He died in Seton Village, New Mexico, at the age of 86. Seton was cremated in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1960, in honor of his 100th birthday and the 350th anniversary of Santa Fe, his daughter, Dee and his grandson, Seton Cottier (son of Anya), scattered the ashes over Seton Village from an airplane.

The Philmont Scout Ranch houses the Seton Memorial Library and Museum. Seton Castle in Santa Fe, built by Seton as his last residence, housed many of his other items. Seton Castle burned down in 2005 during an attempt at restoration, but all the artwork, manuscripts, books, etc., had been removed to storage before renovation was to have begun. The Academy for the Love of Learning, an educational organization in Santa Fe, acquired Seton Castle and its contents in 2003. The new Academy Center that opened in 2011 includes a gallery and archives featuring artwork and other materials as part of its Seton Legacy Project. The Seton Legacy Project organized a major exhibition on Seton opening at the New Mexico History Museum on May 23, 2010, the catalog published as Ernest Thompson Seton: The Life and Legacy of an Artist and Conservationist by David L. Witt. Roger Tory Peterson drew inspiration for his field guide from the simple diagram of ducks that Seton included in Two Little Savages.

There is an Ernest Thompson Seton fonds at Library and Archives Canada. It is archival reference number R7616 and former archival reference number MG29-D108. The fonds consists of 6.2 metres of textual records, 1,220 photographs, 118 drawings, and other media.