Frederick Russell Burnham

Burnham was a celebrated American scout and classic Victorian adventurer. Starting at 14 as a frontier and Indian Scout in the American Southwest, he offered his services to Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company as they built the British Empire in Southern Africa. In Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), he was one of only three survivors of the Shangani Patrol, he assassinated the priest who started the Second Matabele War, and he taught 'woodcraft', the basis of scouting, to Robert Baden-Powell, thus became one of the inspirations for the founding of the international Scouting Movement. After three years prospecting in the Klondike during the gold-rush, he further distinguished himself in Africa as Chief of Scouts to Lord Roberts, Commander-in-Chief in South Africa at the beginning of the Second Boer War. Twice he was capture and twice he espaced from the Boer. For his heroism in the war, Burnham was honored with the Distinguished Service Order and, by courtesy of King Edward VII, was promoted to the rank of Major in the British Army without having to relinquish his American citizenship. Later in life, Burnham returned to the United States and supported the early conservation programs of his friends Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. Among his accomplishments he served on the first park commission in California, started two National parks in Arizona to save the Big Horn Sheep, and became president of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.