Description
The Bacone Boy Scouts, from the Bacone Indian College in Muskogee, OK, attended the 1929 Boy Scouts World Jamboree in Birkenhead, England. They sailed from New York and landed at Queenstown, Ireland, before finally disembarking at Liverpool on July 29. They arrived shortly afterwards at the Birkenhead campground, where they took part in pageants, took photographs with spectators and signed autographs. As their scoutmaster, Dudley Carter, wrote, it took them 2 hours to get back to their teepee from the main arena 1/4 mile away one evening because of the attention they garnered: “You bet, they didn’t want to wear those costumes any more than they absolutely had to”they would have to go into the teepee and close the flap or else play the part, “˜Me no understand, no English.'”Just as soon as the gates open at noon till 10 p.m. at night our teepees had an endless changing audience.” He also remarked on how they had to correct many of the spectators’ stereotypes about Indigenous peoples. After the jamboree was over, the group visited Chester, Leamington, Stratford-on-Avon, and London, seeing the Roman walls that surrounded the city of Chester, although the boys were less than impressed: “After our boys had visited several castles and cathedrals they had their fill of such places. The English are living in the past the Americans are living in the future. Our boys were not interested in the old Roman and Gothic masonry architect [sic] after visiting one; while at each city the people lamented if history of the place shown did not date back about 1000 A.D.” In mid-August, they departed on the S.S. Arabic from Southampton, heading to New York, eventually arriving back in Muskogee at the beginning of September.
Bibliographic sources
“Scouts attend World Jamboree at Birkenhead, Eng.,” Bacone Indian, Vol. II, no. 2, 18 October 1929.