Roger Pocock was a British adventurer, writer, and founder of the Legion of Frontiersmen, born in 1865 in Tenby, Wales. He led a remarkably restless and wide-ranging life that took him across North America, where he worked variously as a rancher, North-West Mounted Police constable, cowboy, and frontier hand. His experiences in the Canadian and American West gave him an intimate knowledge of wilderness life that would later inform his writing and his organizational work. In 1904 he founded the Legion of Frontiersmen, a volunteer organization intended to draw together experienced outdoorsmen, scouts, and adventurers who could serve the British Empire in times of crisis. The Legion attracted members from across the world and during the First World War contributed men to various theatres of conflict. Pocock was also a prolific author who wrote fiction, adventure narratives, and memoirs drawing on his travels and frontier experiences. His books included novels set in the American West and accounts of his journeys on horseback, most notably his solo ride along the length of the Americas, traveling from Fort Macleod in Canada down through the United States and into Mexico. This journey of roughly three thousand miles was undertaken in 1899 and 1900 and became the basis for one of his most celebrated works. He spent much of his later life continuing to write and advocate for the Legion of Frontiersmen, remaining associated with frontier ideals and imperial volunteerism until his death in 1941.
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