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Sometimes people rise to great heights. Oh they may not become as famous as a president or a great captain of industry, but in their own way they may influence many generations after they are gone. One of these men was Frederick Russell Burnham. Burnham lived a full life, having died in 1947 at the age of 86 years old. Many a boy would have loved to have had his adventurous life. He was born in 1861, in Minnesota to missionaries on an Indian reservation. He didn't have much education, having never graduated high school and after serving in the British Army in colonial Africa he became a world traveler. He was truly like a character out of a Kipling novel. Even though he lacked the education, somehow he rose to the rank of Major as the Chief of Scouts in the British Army. One of the things he was responsible for was teaching wood working and outdoor living to a general in the British Army who later went on to found the Boy Scouts, Lord Baden-Powell.

One day when he was a baby and alone in his parents house while they were outside, the Sioux attacked the house, setting it on fire. After the raid his parents frantically ran to the house to find him, but he was fine. He had slept through the entire attack, even though the house had been burned down around him, he didn't have a scratch. I guess some people are just meant to survive. He had been sleeping in a basket filled with green corn husks that just refused to burn. Burnham met his future wife when attending school in Iowa. The family then moved to California. I guess they wanted to get as far away from Indian attacks as they could and who could blame them?

His family moved back to Iowa, but he stayed in California. He then became a mounted messenger working for Western Union and this took him between California and Arizona. This was not an easy job and he was lucky to be alive after bandits stole his horse on one of his trips. He became an indian tracker at the tender age of 14 years and took part in the Apache Wars. After that he traveled a lot. He traveled through the American Southwest, Texas and Oklahoma. He tried his hand at a lot of different trades including, prospector, buffalo hunter and cowboy. He tracked Indians again in the Cheyenne War. He went back to high school in California, but failed to graduate. I guess that this was just too tame for him. He needed excitement.

His life became more and more like a western movie. He became sheriff of Pinal County in Arizona, but that didn't last long. He went back to prospecting and raising cattle, but backed the wrong side in a feud in Arizona known as the Tonto Basin Feud and was almost killed, before escaping. Finally he went back to Prescott, Iowa and married Blanche, the girl he had met years ago in school. They settled down in 1884, in Pasadena, California. He was only able to stand this for about a year, before he went back to prospecting and scouting. As the west became more and more tame, he decided that he had to find other areas in the world that were more exciting. He sold all his possessions and he and his wife moved to Cape Town, South Africa to work on the Cape to Cairo railway. It wasn't long before he joined the British South Africa Company as a scout.

It may sound strange, a company going to war, but the British South Africa Company did go to war against the Matabele king Lobengula in 1893. The company used its own troops and when they were using information obtained from matabele women, Burnham sensed a trap, but the officers would not listen to his advice to withdraw. The main body of troops with their artillery was ambushed while crossing a river. The river had peaked and retreat was impossible. Somehow Burnham and a couple of others were the only survivors. Burnham had become a hero. I guess surviving a great battle where most everyone else is wiped out will do that. He was given the British South Africa Company Medal, along with a gold watch and 300 acres of land.

A second Matabele war started in 1896 and hundreds of settlers were killed. Burnham and another scout named Armstrong were able to sneak into a cave that their leader was using and they assassinated him. As they ran out of the cave, hundreds of warriors ran after them until they were able to get to their horses and ride away. It wasn't long before the leaderless warriors were convinced to surrender. This was enough for Burnham who now decided to leave for the Gold Rush. He left his wife and young child with his mother in California. He and his oldest boy struck out for gold. They traveled to Alaska and the Yukon to prospect in the Klondike, but that didn't last long. Burnham rushed home when he heard about the Spanish-American War. He volunteered immediately. It seems that this guy just couldn't resist action. Guess what? By the time he got there the war was over, he had missed it. He didn't miss the Second Boer War however. He had been sent a telegram by Lord Roberts that stated that he had been appointed Chief of Scouts and put on Robert's personal staff. When he got the telegram he left immediately.

In Hollywood style he had planted explosives to blow up an important Boer railway junction, but had been discovered before he could set off the explosives. He jumped onto his horse and while he was trying to escape the horse was shot and fell on him, knocking him out. Apparently he was mistaken for dead and when he awoke he was able to push the horse off of him. He notice that nobody was around and painfully crawled back to the explosives and set them off. He was then rescued. He had torn his stomach muscles and burst a blood vessel. He was told by the doctors that he had survived because he didn't eat or drink for three days. He was ordered to England because of the seriousness of his injuries and promoted to major. Once there Queen Victoria commanded him to dine with her and stay over at Osborne House. He was personally presented with the Queens's South Africa Medal by King Edward VII who succeeded the Queen after her death. After the war ended, Burnham's regiment became the first sniper unit in the British army. In 1927 Burnham was made an Honorary Scout and given the Silver Buffalo Award, its highest accommodation.

While the rest of his life was not quite as exciting, in 1902 he led a mineral prospecting expedition for the East Africa Syndicate and discovered a lake of carbonate of soda in Tanzania. In 1908 Burnham made some very important archaeological discoveries of the Mayan civilization. He led a team of 500 men into Sonora Mexico to guard mining properties, but then a series of revolutions broke out in 1912 and in 1917 Mexico passed laws forbidding the sale of land to foreigners. The lands were carried on the rolls, but had to be sold to Mexico in 1930.

Some other important events in Burnham's life occurred when Theodore Roosevelt asked him to raise a volunteer infantry division for service in France in 1917. In 1923 he struck it rich when he discovered oil at Dominguez Hill, California. He belonged to many different conservation clubs and was one of the original members of the California State Parks Commission. He also became the president of the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles in 1938. Many of us would picture a man of tall and muscular stature about 6 foot 2 inches tall or more, but the truth of the matter was that he was a mere 5 foot 4 inches tall, but he was one of the tallest 5 foot 4 inch men that ever lived.