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Woodcraft IndiansThe Woodcraft Indians was a youth program established by Ernest Thompson Seton. The program was later renamed the "Woodcraft League of America", and would also allow girls to join. The program was also picked up overseas, and many of these overseas programs still exist today. In the US, The First Woodcraft Tribe was established at Cos Cob, CT in 1902. Seton's property had been vandalized by a group of boys from the local school. After he had to repaint his gate a number of times, he went to the school, and invited the boys to the property for a weekend, rather than prosecuting them. He sat down with them and told them stories of Native Americans and nature. The unique feature of his program was that the boys elected their own leaders, a Chief, a Second Chief, a Keeper of the Tally and a keeper of the wampum. This was the beginning of his Woodcraft Indians. Seton wrote a series of articles for Lady's Home Journal in 1902 that were later published as the Birch Bark Rolls and the Book of Woodcraft. At the urging of his friend Rudyard Kipling, Seton published Two Little Savages as a novel, rather than a dictionary of Woodcraft. Seton was in England in 1906 and was looking for people interested in this sort of an outdoor organization. He met Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, and Seton gave Baden-Powell a copy of the Birch Bark Roll, and they corresponded from that point forward. Seton received a letter from Baden-Powell in 1908, stating that he was going ahead with his scheme for Scouting, based very much on Seton's program. Baden-Powell incorporated many of the ideas, honors and games into his book, Scouting for Boys. Seton established a program he called "Brownies" in 1921 for age 6 through 11 girls and boys, based on his earlier book Woodland Tales that served as the origin of the Brownies in the Girl Scouts of the USA. In 1910, Seton joined the Boy Scouts of America as the Chief Scout of the BSA, the same position that Baden-Powell held in England. He merged his Woodcraft Indians into the fledging BSA. After a fallout with James E. West, Seton would leave the BSA in 1915 and re-establish the Woodcraft Indians (he would claim he never really merged the group into the BSA) as the Woodcraft League of America as a co-educational program open to children between ages "4 and 94". There were many local Woodcraft groups in the United States in the early part of this century, and there are third-generation Woodcrafters who are still active in the movement. The best known group today are The WoodCraft Rangers in Los Angeles, who have a nature camp and activities for inner city children. There are camps following the Woodcraft Program in the United States and Canada that were founded by Seton's friends and students. By and large, the Woodcraft program died in the US following the death of Seton in the 1940s. External Sites .
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