by David L. Witt | Apr 29, 2022 | Curator's Notes
Portrait of Charles Eastman, Wikipedia The turning years from the 19th into the 20th century brought new challenges to the relationship between American Indians—white Americans. The entirely traditional pre-European life of indigenous people was over. The shooting...
by David L. Witt | Mar 24, 2022 | Curator's Notes
Eagle Award, Boy Scouts of America, ca. 1967 Experimental Camp According to Boy Scouts of America administrator Edgar M. Robinson, planning for the first “official” camp had started nearly a year prior to the 1910 creation of the Scouts. The foresighted YMCA official...
by David L. Witt | Mar 21, 2022 | Curator's Notes
Life Badge, Boy Scouts of America, 1965 Present at the Creation I have written about the creation of American Scouting from Seton’s point of view in my book about him. Here I want to examine a different perspective, that of Edgar M. Robinson, the actual organizer. I...
by David L. Witt | Mar 17, 2022 | Curator's Notes
Star badge, Boy Scouts of America, 1964 Short Misleading History of the Boy Scouts Here is the well known if incorrect short history of the Boy Scouts of America: The British general Robert Baden-Powell invented paramilitary Scouting out of whole cloth in 1908 with...
by David L. Witt | Feb 24, 2022 | Curator's Notes
“In days like these one can accept or assume no higher or better mission than that of peace messenger, a personal messenger of peace and understanding among the nations.” Ernest Thompson Seton, 1936, A Peace Mission to Europe Almost eighty-six years ago,...
by David L. Witt | Dec 11, 2020 | Curator's Notes
The novelist Anya Seton has received well deserved attention in a new biography by Lucinda H. MacKethan. My first encounter with a Seton came at a very young age. My mother’s extensive collection of novels included several by Anya. The daughter of two writers – Ernest...
