Frederick Russell Burnham was born on a Dakota Sioux
Reservation in Minnesota in 1861.
He wound up migrating to the American Southwest picking
up scoutcraft and woodsmanship along the way.
He worked as a civilian scout in the Apache wars, wound
up in the Pleasant Valley Range war.
Seeking new adventures, he headed for South Africa
where he wound up putting his “Indian” scouting skills to test on a new continent
and against new tribes and saw much action in the Matabele Wars.
In 1926 he put pen to paper and offered us a rousing
narrative of his exploits and an insight into the Bonafide scout mindset.
The book begins with this epigraph:
“England was never made by her statesmen; England
was made by her adventurers.” GENERAL GORDON.
This sets the theme for the internal compass of not
only this scout but most scouts, frontiersmen, pioneer men and women of the 200+
years leading up to Burnham’s era. We often overweight the influence of the
Founders, the bureaucrats on a boat signing compacts. We study hard the still
existing documents that say, “Looky here, look what we did” while blithely
ignoring the little documented often intangible contributions of the unsung
ones who simply said, “Hey, let’s go that way and see what there is.”
Ones who said, “I have an idea for a thing, I’ll
see if I can make something out of it.”
Things haven’t changed much, the small of outlook
still look to “The ones in charge” as if these were builders of any
sort, while walking right past all the folks who tweak that bit of code to make
this or that process faster and easier, the unnamed soul who put wheels on suitcases
so we aren’t hefting them around like we were a mere two decades ago, the
person who goes into hock to ply their trade in a fine but only-existing-on-the-margins
diner that serves good vittles.
Little acts of heroism, personal risk, intrepidness
exist day-in, day-out right before our eyes—and yet, the attention goes to the “top
of the food chain” that never slapped a wheel on a suitcase, made keyless checkouts
easier or cooked us a meal.
That opening epigraph says much about Mr. Burnham’s
mindset.
I shall repeat it as it should be held foremost if you
decide to read on.
“England was never made by her statesmen; England
was made by her adventurers.” GENERAL GORDON.
Burnham, whether one has heard of him or not, still holds
influence within our culture. He was one of the exemplars that the founder of
the Boy Scouts had in mind when he began his organization.
Extract from a letter from LT. GEN. SIR ROBERT
BADEN-POWELL, K. C. V. O., K. C. V., written from Africa to his mother, in
1896: “12th June, 1896… Burnham is a most delightful companion… amusing,
interesting, and most instructive. Having seen service against the Red Indians
he brings quite a new experience to bear on the Scouting work here. And while
he talks away there’s not a thing escapes his quick roving eye, whether it is
on the horizon or at his feet.”
·
No eyes on a phone for this man.
·
Sure, there were no “smartphones” then but…there
is still something so different in attention that the military man Baden-Powell
felt the need to remark upon it in a letter not to his superiors but to his
mother.
·
What is Our distinguishing trait that might
be remarked upon?
Consider the following story of Cincinnatus like
humility of not requiring credit, adulation, or “Likes.” In a day of “Me, me,
me” “Name that hotel and bitcoin after me” and “Make sure my name is on the
lipstick” this attitude is almost preternaturally alien.
“Cecil Rhodes when discussing the winning of Rhodesia,
that great territory about the size of California, which lies south of the
Zambeszi River and contiguous to the Transvaal on the north. Rhodes had been
reading a letter which he passed over to me [Mary Nixon Everett—Burnham’s
editor] with the explanation that it was in reply to one that he had written to
Burnham after the first Matabele War in 1894.
“Rhodes said that he had asked Burnham to suggest some
way in which the British South Africa Company, the owner of the country
afterward called Rhodesia, could recognize the invaluable service he had
rendered as a Scout in that war. Burnham’s reply, and I well remember it, was
to this effect: “While I appreciate the honour you pay me, in your generous
estimate of the service you consider I have rendered, and your offer of
recompense, I must frankly tell you that the part I played was not with the
object of promoting the interest of your company but was in defence of the
lives of the people who were at that time besieged by hordes of savages under
Lobengula. For that reason I cannot consistently accept any reward, but I
sincerely hope that I shall be able to retain the appreciation you have expressed
by what I may be able to accomplish in the future.”
“Rhodes exclaimed, “What an extraordinary letter!
It is a rare experience to have an offer of that kind turned down.”
I said, “Yes, but you respect him the more for
having done so.”
·
To Burnham, the reward was doing the right
thing as he saw the matter.
·
The reward was the deed.
·
So, how often do we see that today?
·
How often do We do that?
One encounters in Burnham’s work the word “Savages”
and other like epithets. In some of these old accounts the slur is omnipresent
and intended. In Burnham, the word is common usage, but he has an eye for the
gray area on all sides and the beauty that can still reside in the midst of
struggle as the following passage shows.
“Those were rough days and fierce
resentments. To-day, recalling all the crimes of the Indians, which were black
enough, one cannot but cast up in their behalf the long column of wrongs and
grievances they suffered at the hands of the whites. Then hatred dies, and I
can entertain the honest hope that they have all reached the Happy Hunting
Ground of their dreams. But the dark side of the lives of the pioneers,
measured in terms of tragedy and hardship, violent feuds and religious
intolerance, and Indian massacres, does not tell the whole story. The daily
tasks, the hours of relaxation, the eternal love theme woven by joyous youth
into the scheme of things — these made
up the sunshine of those days.”
Burnham felt that scouting, woodcraft and survival
lore was built by experience—not by book [YouTube channel, app, any other present-day
fill-in] experience and time alone testing the self.
“For sharpening the perceptions and enabling a man
to concentrate his mind for hours on one thing without change, I believe a
certain amount of solitude is necessary.”
·
And for the record, here, alone does not
mean, “Well, me and my trusty phone.”
·
It means—You, out there----Alone. Your
wits and you.
The following passage reeks of bitter truth. Burnham
tells a story to shame himself. The story IS shameful, but it is important that
he learned the lesson of his shame and decided there and then—Never Again Will
I Be That Coward.
“One day when he was very drunk, he got into a
terrible fight on Alameda Street with another powerful man who finally threw
him and started to beat out his brains with a cobblestone. I stood by so
paralyzed with horror and fright that I never thought of doing anything to
help. Suddenly Juan Abbott, a boy about my own age, rushed by me shouting,
“Won’t you help a friend?” He dashed into the scrap and pulled off the man with
the cobblestone. Twice this aggressor jumped up to attack again and twice Juan
tripped him. Meanwhile my old soldier friend, covered with blood, made his
escape. My humiliation was intense. Juan had saved my friend while I had played
a miserable, cowardly part in the affair. That query of Juan’s, “Won’t you help
a friend?” burned into my brain like a hot iron and I believe has caused me to
act quickly many times in later life when help was needed.”
The following passage is telling. It is a common story
of the Frontier expansion—even frontiers now.
“There came a time when I realized that I must have
some education, so, when an uncle living in the Middle West sent for me, I set
forth, at the age of fourteen, and landed in a little town on the banks of a
great river. Lest my statement about its good people should even now wound
their feelings, it shall be called Montville. It was a flesh-and-blood replica,
including the cuticle, of many little Puritan villages, but without the broader
vision which New England communities acquired through having as citizens
retired seafaring men or men of wide affairs from such places as Boston or New
York. The town was just old enough to have lost its rugged pioneers and Indian
fighters and had become a strange combination of materialism and intolerant
religiosity. When the inhabitants were not trying to reform one another, they
were wholly bent on making a lot of money. In this town I remained long enough
to get one year of schooling.”
·
Hard Men and Intrepid Women go some place unexplored
or make something new.
·
Once it is tamed and safe, the rest of us
flood in and use it.
·
We like the “image” of the hardy ones who
preceded it, so we adopt the clothing, lodgings, vocabulary of the Truly
Intrepid while lacking the pith and fiber that truly makes a hale and hearty
one.
·
As he notes, the usual sign of the “fake
hardy” materialism [“Time for a phone upgrade!”] and intolerance, “Gotta own the
Dems! Gotta decry MAGA!”
·
To Burnham’s eyes: Weakness all Around.
On one of the frontiersman who taught him the ways of
the wild—Old Man Holmes.
“Many times, in emergencies, his remembered words
proved the deciding factor between my destruction and my survival, and I have
gratefully given credit to his wisdom whenever I have been able to save lives
entrusted to my leadership. About all that is left in our memory of such old
pioneers are some of the more dramatic incidents in their careers, but I feel
that it would be of more real interest and importance to us to recall their
methods of meeting their problems as they arose day after day and the deep romantic
and philosophical ideals wherein they entrenched their hearts. Such characters
are worthy to be remembered as long as the nation endures, not only for what
they did, but for what they knew and thought.”
·
It is a telling observation of Burnham’s
that he found more instructive, not in the dramatic, but the bedrock philosophy
of Holmes’ day-to-day. A philosophy, not simply pragmatic [which it was as all must
be who depend upon the self for survival] but also the Romanticism of choosing a
Life of Seeing, a Life of Doing—not one of mere consumption and spectatorism.
·
I repeat: “but I feel that it would be
of more real interest and importance to us to recall their methods of meeting
their problems as they arose day after day and the deep romantic and
philosophical ideals wherein they entrenched their hearts.”
I’ll stop there for now. In Part 2, we’ll delve into
Apache scoutcraft, the scouting mindset, and, well, lots more. Lots more.
Hosses of Yore, their reality sends my Soul like
nothing in any text of philosophy, mythology or tome of divine provenance.
Go get ‘em, Crew! Get after that Life, Burnham Style!
Right Now!
For Old School Combat Ways and Livin’
The Black Box Warehouse
https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/
The Indigenous Ability Blog
https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/
The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast
