Frederick Russell Burnham

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Frederick Russell Burnham
May 11, 1861 - March 11, 1947
Nickname	Fred; He-who-sees-in-the-dark
Place of birth	Tivoli, Minnesota (Souix Indian territory; near Mankato)
Place of death	Three Rivers, California
Allegiance	Scout for the British Army in Southern Africa; U.S. citizen.
Years of service	1893-1896, 1900-1904
Rank	Major
Commands	Chief of Scouts under Lord Roberts
Battles/wars	Apache Wars; Cheyenne War; First Matabele War; Shangani Patrol; Second Matabele War; Assassination of Mlimo; Second Boer War
Awards	Distinguished Service Order South African Medal Queens Scout Award Victoria Cross (declined) Boy Scouts Silver Buffalo Award Mount Burnham (in California).
Other work	messenger, Indian tracker, gold miner, wealthy oil man, American spy. Father of the international Scouting movement and a close friend of Robert Baden-Powell.

Frederick Russell Burnham, DSO (1861-1947), an American scout and world travelling adventurer is best known for his service to the British Army in Colonial Africa and for teaching woodcraft (i.e., scoutcraft) to Robert Baden-Powell, becoming one of the inspirations to the founding of the Boy Scouts. By all accounts Burnham was a humble man who refused to exploit his reputation and instead chose to live as Fred Burnham, scout, rancher, and oil man.

Contents 1 Early Life 2 First Matabele War 2.1 Shangani Patrol 3 Second Matabele War 3.1 Assassination of Mlimo 4 On Scouting 4.1 Baden-Powell 5 Second Boer War 6 Post Africa 6.1 Yaqui 6.2 Espionage 6.3 Oil Wealth 6.4 Conservation 6.5 Memorial 7 Biographical, partial excerpt from Real Soldiers of Fortune, Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916) 8 Notable quotes 9 See also 10 Footnotes 11 External links 12 References

[edit] Early Life

Born to a missionary family the baby Fred witnessed the burning of New Ulm, Minnesota, by Red Cloud and his Sioux warriors in the 1862 uprising. During the uprising, his mother, Rebecca (Elizabeth) Russell Burnham, hid the not quite 2-year-old boy in a basket of green corn husks and fled for her life. Once the Sioux had been driven away the mother returned to find the house burned down, but the young boy was fast asleep in the basket, protected only by the corn husks. The 26 December 1862 Sioux uprising in Mankato, Minnesota is still today the largest mass execution in the history of the United States.

The young Fred attended schools in Iowa and there he met his future wife to be, Blanche Blick, but the family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1870. Two years later his father, Rev. Edwin Otway Burnham of Kentucky, himself a long time pioneer and missionary along the boarder of the Sioux Indian reserve in Minnesota, died when Fred was only 11 years-old. While the rest of the family returned to Iowa, the young Fred stayed in California to make his own way.

For the next three years the young Fred worked as a mounted messenger for the Western Union Telegraph Company in California and in Arizona. But at age fourteen he began his life as a scout and Indian tracker in the Apache Wars. He traveled other parts of northern Mexico and the American Southwest, including Texas and Oklahoma, earning a living as a buffalo hunter, cowboy, and prospector, and he continued working as a scout while tracking Indians in the Cheyenne War. The young Fred eventually went on to attend high school in California, but he never graduated.

In 1882, Burnham returned to Arizona and was appointed Deputy Sheriff of Pinal County, but he soon went back to cattle and mining interests. He return to Prescott, Iowa to visit his childhood sweetheart, Blanche Blick (1862-1939) of Clinton, Iowa and the two were married on 6 February 1884. That same year, he and Blanche settled down to tend to an orange grove in Pasadena, California, but within a year he was back prospecting and scouting. His first son, Roderick (21 August 1889 - 2 July 1976), was born in Pasadena.

In the 1880s the American press had been popularizing the notion that the West had been won and there was nothing left to conquer in the United States. This idea had a life changing impact on Burnham. Ever the soldier of fortune, he began to look elsewhere for the next undiscovered frontier. When he heard of the work of Cecil Rhodes and his pioneers in building the Cape to Cairo railway in Africa, Burnham sold want little he owned and, in 1893, set sail to Cape Town, South Africa with his wife and young son. He soon joined the British South Africa Company as a scout and headed north. Burnham became well known in Africa for his ability to track, even at night, and the Africans dubbed him, he-who-sees-in-the-dark.

[edit] First Matabele War

Burnham’s first major test in Africa came in 1893 when the British South Africa Company went to war with the Matabele King Lobengula. Jameson had hoped to quickly defeat the Matabele by capturing Lobengula at his royal city of Bulawayo. Burnham and a small group of scouts were sent ahead to report on the situation in Bulawayo, While on the outskirts of town they witnessed the Matabele burn down and destroy everything in sight. By the time the white troops had arrived in force, Lobengula and his warriors had fled and there was little left of old Bulawayo.

[edit] Shangani Patrol

Following the abandonment of Bulawayo, Jameson dispatched a column of soldiers to find and attempt the capture of Lobengula. The column, led by a Major Patrick Forbes, camped on the south bank of the Shangani river about 40km north-east of the village of Lupane on the evening of 3 December 1893. The next day, late in the afternoon, a dozen men, under the command of Major Allan Wilson, were sent across the river to patrol the area. The Wilson Patrol came across a group of Matabele women and children who claimed to know Lobengula’s whereabouts. Burnham, who served as the lead scout of the Wilson Patrol, sensed a trap and advised Wilson to withdraw, but Wilson ordered his Patrol to advance. Soon afterwards, the Patrol found the king and Wilson sent a message back to the laager to requested reinforcements. But Forbes was unwilling to set off across the river in the dark, so he sent only 20 more men under the command of Henry Borrow to reinforce Wilson’s Patrol. Forbes intended to send the main body of troops and artillery across the river the following morning, however, the main column was ambushed by Matabele warriors and delayed. Wilson’s patrol too came under attack, but the Shangani River had swollen and there was no real possibility of retreat. In desperation, Wilson sent Burnham and two other scouts, Pearl “Pete” Wilson (a Montana cowboy) and Gooding (Australian), to cross the Shangani river, find Forbes, and bring back reinforcements. In spite of a shower of bullets and spears, the three made it to Forbes, but the battle raging there was just as intense and there was no hope of anyone reaching Wilson in time. As Burnham loaded his rifle to beat back the Matabele warriors, he quietly said to Forbes, "I think I may say that we are the sole survivors of that party." In the meantime, Wilson, Borrow, and their men were surrounded by a hundreds of Matabele warriors making escape impossible. All were killed. This incident became well known in the annals of Rhodesian colonial history as the Shangani Patrol, with Wilson and Borrow hailed as national heroes.

For his service in the war, Burnham was presented his first campaign medal, a gold watch, and a 100 mile tract of land in Matabeleland. It was here that Burnham uncovered many artifacts in the huge granite ruins of the ancient civilization of Great Zimbabwe.

[edit] Second Matabele War

In March 1896, the Matabele again revolted against the authority of the British South Africa Company in what is now celebrated in Zimbabwe as the First War of Independence. Mlimo, the Matabele spiritual leader, is credited with fermenting much of the anger that led to this confrontation. Matabeleland defenses were in disarray due to the ill-fated Jameson Raid, so in the first few months of the war alone hundreds of white settlers would be killed. With few troops to support them, the settlers quickly built a laager in the centre of Bulawayo on their own and mounted patrols under such legendary figures as Burnham, Baden-Powell, and Selous. An estimated 50,000 Matabele retreated into their stronghold of the Matobo Hills near Bulawayo which became the scene of the fiercest fighting against the white settler patrols.

[edit] Assassination of Mlimo

The turning point in the war came when Burnham and a young scout named Armstrong found their way through Motobo Hills to the sacred cave where Mlimo had been hiding. Not far from the cave was a village of about 100 huts filled with many warriors. The two scouts tethered their horses to a thicket and crawled on their bellies, screening their slow and cautious movements with branches held before them. Once inside the case, they waited until Mlimo entered.

Mlimo was said to be about 60 years-old, with very dark skin, sharp-featured, and had a cruel, crafty look. Burnham and Armstrong waited until Mlimo entered the cave and started his dance of immunity, and then Burnham shot Mlimo just below the heart. The two scouts then leaped over the dead Mlimo and ran down a trail toward their horses. Hundreds of warriors, encamped nearby, picked up their arms and started in pursuit. To distract the Matabele, Burnham set fire to the village. The two men got on their horses and rode off, back to Bulawayo.

Burnham’s young daughter, Nada, the first white child born in Bulawayo, died of fever and starvation during the siege of Bulawayo on 22 May 1897 (plot #144 in the Pioneer Cemetery in Bulawayo) --three of Sir H. Rider Haggard’s books, ‘’The Wizard’’ (1896), ‘’Elissa; the doom of Zimbabwe’’ (1899), and ‘’Black Heart and White Heart; a Zulu idyll’’ (1900) are dedicated to Burnham's daughter, Nada. Additionally, Burnham’s youngest son, Bruce B. Burnham, was staying with family in London and accidentally drown in the river Thames that same year. Burnham became so disheartened by events that he decided to leave Africa and return home. But ever the consummate adventure, Burnham left his wife in California and went to Alaska and the Yukon along with his last surviving offspring, Roderick, from 1898-1900, to prospect in the Klondike Gold Rush.

[edit] On Scouting

As a scout, Burnham was also a frontiersman, but only coincidentally. His training in tracking, stealth, marksmanship, ‘’woodcraft’’ (i.e., scoutcraft), and knowledge of guerilla tactics learned while fighting Apache and Cheyenne made Burnham invaluable to the British colonial efforts in Southern Africa. As a boy growing up in the American Old West, he had learned these skills from indian trackers, frontiersman, and cowboys, so as a scout in Africa, Burnham was simply practicing his art and applying it as a soldier. As a military scout, Burnham would act alone or in small groups to perform reconnaissance beyond lines to determine the location and operational conduct of the enemy, live off the land, attack only when objectives had been achieved, and on occasion conduct sniper-like assassinations. The rifle was the weapon of choice for Burnham and its vital significance to military scouting cannot be overstated.

[edit] Baden-Powell

Baden-Powell and Burnham first became friends during the Second Matabele War. Himself a brilliant outdoorsman, Baden-Powell was a distinguished cavalry officer, and reportedly the finest pig sticker in India -- to kill a sprinting wild boar with one lance thrust from the back of a galloping horse is a notable achievement for any scout. During the siege of Bulawayo, the two men rode into the African hills on patrol and it was there that Burnham first taught Baden-Powell the art of ‘’woodcraft’’. So impressed was Baden-Powell by Burnham's scouting spirit the he fondly told people he "sucked him dry" of all he could possibly tell.

The young boy scouts envisioned by Baden-Powell and Burnham in 1896/97 was one of fighters first whose business it was to face their enemies with both valor and good cheer, and as social workers afterward. While Baden-Powell went on to refine the concept of scouting and become the founder of the international scouting movement, Burnham can legitimately be called the movement's father. For his noteworthy and extraordinary service to the international scouting movement, Burnham was bestowed the highest commendation given by the Boy Scouts of America, the Silver Buffalo Award, in 1936.^[1]

The low-key Burnham and Baden-Powell remained close friends for their long lives. In 1931, Burnham read the speech dedicating Mount Baden-Powell ^[2] in California, to his old scouting friend (pictures and speech)^[3]. Today their friendship, and equal status in the world of scouting and conservation, is honored, in perpetuity, with the dedication of the adjoining peak, Mount Burnham,^[4] in his honor.

[edit] Second Boer War

In January 1900, Burnham received a message from Lord Roberts requesting his return to South Africa to become the Chief of Scouts for the British Army to help him fight the Second Boer War. Burnham was in Skagway, Alaska at the time, but two and a half hours later he was on his way back to Africa. Unusual for a foreigner, Burnham was given a commission and the rank of Major.

During the war, Burnham was twice captured and twice escaped, but he was also invalidated for a time by his near fatal wounds. He was sent to England and there he dined with Queen Victoria and was presented the South African medal and the cross of the Distinguished Service Order, the second highest decoration in the British Army, by King Edward VII for his heroism in the "victorious" March to Pretoria. Burnham had been selected for the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military award, but he declined rather than forfeit his American citizenship – a requirement at the time.

[edit] Post Africa

[edit] Yaqui

Burnham returned to North America and for the next few years he became associated with the Yaqui River irrigation project in Mexico. It was there that Burnham, in 1908, made important archeological discoveries of Mayan civilization, including the Yaqui Stone.

[edit] Espionage

During World War I, Burnham was living in California and was active in counter-espionage for Britain. Much of it involved a Boer spy, Capt. Duquesne, who became a German spy in both World Wars and allegedly killed Kitchener while on route to meet with the Russians. In a letter written to Burnham, Duquesne states: “To my friendly enemy, Major Frederick Russell Burnham, the greatest scout of the world, whose eyes were that of an Empire. I once craved the honour of killing him, but failing that, I extend my heartiest admiration. One warrior to another, Fritz Joubert Duquesne, 1933".

[edit] Oil Wealth

In 1923, Burnham struck oil at Dominguez Hill, California. In the first 10 years of operation, the Burnham Exploration Company paid out $10.2 million in dividend. Although Burnham had lived all over the world, he never had a great deal of wealth to show for it. Ironically, it was not until he returned to the place of his youth that Burnham struck it rich.

[edit] Conservation

In his later years, Burnham filled various public offices. In 1927, he was one of the original members of the first California State Parks Commission, and later he became president of the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles.

[edit] Memorial

Burnham is buried at Three Rivers, California, near his old cattle ranch, La Cuesta. His memorial stone was designed by his only surviving child, Roderick. Also buried at Three Rivers is “Pete” Ingram and several members of the Blick family who had also pioneered in Nineteenth century Rhodesia for a time.

[edit] Biographical, partial excerpt from Real Soldiers of Fortune, Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916)

Major Burnham, Chief of Scouts

Among the Soldiers of Fortune whose stories have been told in this book were men who are no longer living, men who, to the United States, are strangers, and men who were of interest chiefly because in what they attempted they failed.

The subject of this article is none of these. His adventures are as remarkable as any that ever led a small boy to dig behind the barn for buried treasure, or stalk Indians in the orchard. But entirely apart from his adventures he obtains our interest because in what he has attempted he has not failed, because he is one of our own people, one of the earliest and best types of American, and because, so far from being dead and buried, he is at this moment very much alive, and engaged in Mexico in searching for a buried city. For exercise, he is alternately chasing, or being chased by, Yaqui Indians.

In his home in Pasadena, California, where sometimes he rests quietly for almost a week at a time, the neighbors know him as "Fred" Burnham. In England the newspapers crowned him "The King of Scouts." Later, when he won an official title, they called him "Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D. S. O."

Some men are born scouts, others by training become scouts. From his father Burnham inherited his instinct for wood-craft, and to this instinct, which in him is as keen as in a wild deer or a mountain lion, he has added, in the jungle and on the prairie and mountain ranges, years of the hardest, most relentless schooling. In those years he has trained himself to endure the most appalling fatigues, hunger, thirst, and wounds; has subdued the brain to infinite patience, has learned to force every nerve in his body to absolute obedience, to still even the beating of his heart. Indeed, than Burnham no man of my acquaintance to my knowledge has devoted himself to his life's work more earnestly, more honestly, and with such single-mindedness of purpose. To him scouting is as exact a study as is the piano to Paderewski, with the result that to-day what the Pole is to other pianists, the American is to all other "trackers," woodmen, and scouts. He reads "the face of Nature" as you read your morning paper. To him a movement of his horse's ears is as plain a warning as the "Go SLOW" of an automobile sign; and he so saves from ambush an entire troop. In the glitter of a piece of quartz in the firelight he discovers King Solomon's mines. Like the horned cattle, he can tell by the smell of it in the air the near presence of water, and where, glaring in the sun, you can see only a bare kopje, he distinguishes the muzzle of a pompom, the crown of a Boer sombrero, the levelled barrel of a Mauser. He is the Sherlock Holmes of all out-of-doors.

Besides being a scout, he is soldier, hunter, mining expert, and explorer. Within the last ten years the educated instinct that as a younger man taught him to follow the trail of an Indian, or the "spoor" of the Kaffir and the trek wagon, now leads him as a mining expert to the hiding-places of copper, silver, and gold, and, as he advises, great and wealthy syndicates buy or refuse tracts of land in Africa and Mexico as large as the State of New York. As an explorer in the last few years in the course of his expeditions into undiscovered lands, he has added to this little world many thousands of square miles.

Personally, Burnham is as unlike the scout of fiction, and of the Wild West Show, as it is possible for a man to be. He possesses no flowing locks, his talk is not of "greasers," "grizzly b'ars," or "pesky redskins." In fact, because he is more widely and more thoroughly informed, he is much better educated than many who have passed through one of the "Big Three" universities, and his English is as conventional as though he had been brought up on the borders of Boston Common, rather than on the borders of civilization.

In appearance he is slight, muscular, bronzed; with a finely formed square jaw, and remarkable light blue eyes. These eyes apparently never leave yours, but in reality they see everything behind you and about you, above and below you. They tell of him that one day, while out with a patrol on the veldt, he said he had lost the trail and, dismounting, began moving about on his hands and knees, nosing the ground like a bloodhound, and pointing out a trail that led back over the way the force had just marched.When the commanding officer rode up, Burnham said:

"Don't raise your head, sit. On that kopje to the right there is a commando of Boers."

"When did you see them?" asked the officer.

"I see them now," Burnham answered.

"But I thought you were looking for a lost trail?"

"That's what the Boers on the kopje think," said Burnham.

In his eyes, possibly, owing to the uses to which they have been trained, the pupils, as in the eyes of animals that see in the dark, are extremely small. Even in the photographs that accompany this article this feature of his eyes is obvious, and that he can see in the dark the Kaffirs of South Africa firmly believe. In manner he is quiet, courteous, talking slowly but well, and, while without any of that shyness that comes from self-consciousness, extremely modest. Indeed, there could be no better proof of his modesty than the difficulties I have encountered in gathering material for this article, which I have been five years in collecting. And even now, as he reads it by his camp-fire, I can see him squirm with embarrassment...

[edit] Notable quotes

• "There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day." - from Scouting on Two Continents
• "As far as we can look back into history, the downfall of any nation can be traced from the moment that nation became timid about spending its best blood." - from Taking Chances
• "I am more afraid of an army of a hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of a hundred lions led by a sheep." - from Taking Chances

[edit] See also

• Africa Region

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑  Silver Buffalo Award Fact Sheet. Boy Scounts of America. Retrieved on April 20, 2006.
2. ↑  Mount Baden-Powell Mapping Service. USGS. Retrieved on April 17, 2006.
3. ↑  Dedication of Mount Baden-Powell. The Pine Tree Web. Retrieved on April 20, 2006.
4. ↑  Mount Burnham Mapping Service. USGS. Retrieved on April 17, 2006.
5. ↑  full text of Real Soldiers of Fortune. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on April 19, 2006.
6. ↑  full text of The Days of My Life. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved on April 22, 2006.

[edit] External links

• Frederick Russell Burnham Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University. A large collection of Burnham's documents: Correspondence, 1864-1947. Subject Files, 1890-1947. Writings, 1893-1946. Personal and Family Papers, 1879-1951. Photographs, ca. 1893-1924.
• Frederick Russell Burnham Papers, 1879-1979, Hoover Instition Library and Archives, Stanford University. Another large collection of Burnham's documents: Correspondence, speeches and writings, clippings, other printed matter, photographs, and memorabilia, relating to the Matabele Wars of 1893 and 1896 in Rhodesia, the Boer War, exploration expeditions in Africa, and gold mining in Alaska duing the Klondike gold rush.
• Google Book search on Major Burnham,D.S.O.
• Major Burnham on Pine Tree Web scouting site.
• Edgar Rice Burroghs Library.
• The Illustrated London News Personal Page entry (11 January 1902)
• Howell Wright South African Collection photographs in Janus/Cambridge collection
• Russell Adam Burnham (great grandson). U.S. Army Soldier of the Year for 2003. Eagle Scout
• Frederick Howard Russell Burnham (great grand nephew)
• A biographical novel by Peter van Wyk
• Peter Craigmoe's blog on Major Burnham
• ‘King of Scouts’ honored at gravesite
• The Canadian Anglo Boer War Museum Boer War Discovery of the Month (Dec 2003)
• Spooring. Camp Fire Yarn no. 12
• Milestones, Time Magazine (Sept 15, 1947).
• Mt. Burnham selected as a Hundred Peaks Section by Angeles Chapter, Sierra Club (1956). The peak named after Major Burnham by the U.S. Forest Service in 1951

[edit] References

• Real Soldiers of Fortune, ^[5] by Richard Harding Davis. LC call number: CT105 .D35 1906a. LCCN: 06042911 - includes an early biographical sketch on Major Burnham [public domain, Project Gutenberg etext]. (1906)
• The Esperanza Stone, Scientific American article by Charles Holder, pp. 196, on a Mayan stone found in Yaqui Valley of Mexico by the author and Major Burnham. (10 September 1910)
• Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, edited by James E. Homans. Major Burnham biographical entry on pp.249 [public domain, available in full-text online on Google Books](1918)
• The Boys' Own Book of Adventurers, by Albert Britt. A chapter on Major Burnham: Burnham, the Last of the Scouts. LC call number: G525 .B85 (1923)
• The Union Oil Bulletin ran an extensive feature on Major Burnham, then in the employ of Union Oil (May & June 1925)
• Scouting on Two Continents, by Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D.S.O.]], Autobiography. LC call number: DT775 .B8 1926. (1926)
• The Days of My Life Volume II, ^[6] by Sir H. Rider Haggard, Chapter XVII is on Major Burnham. Letters in Chapter XIII dedicated to Burnham's daughter, Nada. [public domain, Project Gutenberg etext]. (1926)
• Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship, by Robert Baden-Powell. (1926)
• The remarks of Major Frederick R. Burnham, Annual Publications, Los Angeles, California; Historical Society of Southern California, p. 334-352 (1927)
• Six horses, by Captain William Banning and George Hugh Banning, forward by Frederick Russell Burnham. LC call number: F593 .B21. (1930)
• Folks Ushud Know; Interspersed with Songs of Courage, by Lee Shippey and A. L. Ewing. A chapter on Major Burnham, pp. 23 (1930)
• Scouting Against the Apache, essay by Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D.S.O., and published in The Boy Scout's Book of True Adventure, Fourteen Honorary Scouts, with foreward by Theodore Roosevelt and biographical notes by James E. West. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. LC call number: G525 .B77 (1931)
• He-who-sees-in-the-dark; the boys' story of Frederick Burnham, the American scout, by James E. West and Peter O. Lamb; illustrated by Lord Baden-Powell. LC call number: PZ9.W41 He. (1932)
• Taps for the Great Selous, essay by Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D.S.O., and published in Hunting Trails on Three Continents, Grinnell, George Bird, Kermit Roosevelt, W. Redmond Cross, and Prentiss N. Gray (editors). A Book of the Boone and Crockett Club. New York: The Derrydale Press, (1933)
• Taking Chances, by Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D.S.O., LC call number: DT29 .B8. (1944)
• In my fathers house are many mansions, Sunset Club, obit. LC call number EPH.061.9494.11 (1951)
• Dedication of Mount Burnham, by Mary Nixon Everett, The masterkey anthropology of the Americas, (Southwest Museum publication), v26, n4 LC call number 570.6 LA Sm (1952)
• The Shangani Patrol, a feature film by David Millin. The Shangani Patrol was a group of 34 white Rhodesian settlers, under the command of Allan Wilson, killed in battle on the Shangani River in Rhodesia in 1893. The incident achieved a lasting, prominent place in Rhodesian colonial history. Burnham, who was Wilson's Scout at the time of the incident, was one of only two survivors of the Patrol. Burnham is played by actor Will Hutchins. Filmed on location by RPM Film Studios. Internet Movie DataBase(1970)
• 35mm copies of "Shangani Patrol" are preserved at the National Film, Video and Sound Archives, Pretoria, South Africa. [[7]]
• Major Burnham of the Shangani Patrol, by J. P. Lott, Rhodesiana Magazine (September 1976)
• Major F. R. Burnham, D.S.O., by J. P. Lott, Rhodesiana Magazine, #36. (March 1977)
• An American family on the African frontier : the Burnham family letters, 1893-1896, edited by Mary and Richard Bradford. LC call number: DT1850 .A64 1993. (1993)
• Burnham: King of Scouts, by Peter van Wyk. ISBN 1-4120-0901-4. A biographical novel. (2003)