Making Hollywood Seem Quaint: Real Men and Women Whose Lives Outdid Anything on the Silver Screen, 1st Edition

This will be a series of posts, where I will highlight a real person whose life was so interesting or crazy that Hollywood would fail to create anything as fantastical. Basically, I'll be writing short bios for people whose life-stories I have judged require a greater audience.

The inimitable Frederick Russell Burnham had a life so extraordinarily badass that I struggle to believe it. It really reads like wild pulp magazine, one where the reader would be expected to regard the events as exciting, yet implausible. But Burnham's life was exceptionally plausible, and exciting it damn sure was. Audiences in the early 20th century would most likely have been familiar with him; he was good friends with President Theodore Roosevelt, and his international exploits were widely reported. But, somehow, his legacy has not been sustained in the public memory, which is a damn shame because his life is more interesting than 99.9% of Hollywood scripts (I'm lookin' at you, Lone Ranger).

Frederick Russell Burnham was born on a Sioux Indian Reservation in Minnesota in 1861 to frontier missionary parents. Keep in mind that the Minnesota that Burnham was born to was a wild place, a far cry from the placid, bucolic scenery that defines it today. Less than a year after he was born, a band of Sioux Indians, infuriated at repeated treaty violations by American Indian Agents, went on a rampage in the Dakota and Minnesota territories, killing up to 500 white settlers. Burnham's own family barely avoided annihilation, with Burnham being saved when his mother hid him alone in a basket of corn husks in a corn field during an attack by the Sioux. After the Sioux had been repelled, Burnham's mother found their house burned to the ground, but the infant Burnham was fast asleep in the basket. It was in the fires of this wild frontier that Burnham was brought up. Living in close proximity to the Sioux, he learned their customs and ways in a manner few European Americans ever dared to in his era. He was uniquely disposed to be more connected to the land and perceptive to the natural world, which would serve him in his adult life.

Settlers in Minnesota seeking refuge from Sioux attacks in 1862

By the age of 14, Burnham was supporting himself in the American West, working a variety of odd jobs. The Wild West truly lived up to its moniker in this era, and Burnham found himself in a host of conflicts and nearly lost his life and multiple incidents, most notably the Pleasant Valley War. This local conflict in Arizona was emblematic of a variety of range wars fought throughout the American West during this era, where conflicts between competing ranchers and prospectors often erupting into clan like conflicts. Burnham had the misfortune of being caught up in this violent affair due to loyalty to his employer, a sheep herder in the Pleasant Valley area of Arizona. Burnham himself narrowly avoided death, while most of the principal actors in this conflict were eventually killed in an example of ruthless tit-for-tat frontier violence. This period of itinerant work on the frontier hardened Burnham, and although he was slightly built at 5'4", his tracker skills and rugged looks made him a dashing character (basically, a 19th century Tom Cruise, but with grey-blue eyes). 

A young Burnham circa his involvement in the Pleasant Valley War

After a period of working as a tracker for the U.S. Army in its conflicts with the Apache, Burnham was beginning to feel restless. The West was becoming smaller, railroads had allowed massive and rapid transportation to even the most far flung locations, and with the railroads came civilization, a prospect that did not sit well with the man who was raised on a Sioux reservation. In other words, the West was becoming too tame. Burnham then set his eyes on the a place that Western civilization was just beginning to make inroads: Africa.

In the late 1800's, all of the major European powers were scrambling to snatch up any scrap of Africa they set their imperial aspirations upon. By the end of the century, Ethiopia stood alone as the only part of Africa not under European control. It was during this great enterprise that Burnham arrived in Africa in 1893 with his young family, which by then consisted of his wife Blanche and their eventual three children. Settling in the British controlled Southern Africa, Burnham offered his superlative tracking skills to the imperial powers that be, and they were eager to use them. It was during the Anglo conquest of Matabeleland (in modern day Zimbabwe) that Burnham began to cement his legacy. Burnham's scouting exploits were legendary, and in one of the most famous incidents of the war Burnham used his tracking skills to track down the main chief of the Matabele tribe, an eminent belligerent in the war, and assassinated him, skillfully avoiding capture by the chief's many guards in the process. Burnham's considerable skill were put to the ultimate test in the war in Matabeleland, which was far from a foregone conclusion, with the Anglo settlers being far outnumbered and often cutoff from resupply and reinforcement.

Burnham on patrol in Matebeleland

By the end of the conflict in Matabeleland, Burnham's reputation as a unparalleled scout and tracker became well known. He traveled the world, seeking gainful employment wherever his skills were needed, be it conquering the frozen expanses of the Northern Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush, providing sniper security during a dangerous presidential meeting between President Taft and Mexican President Porfirio Diaz in El Paso, or helping to quell the Afrikaaner threat towards the British during the Boer War in South Africa. This last assignment earned him special military recognition from King Edward VII, a rare honor for a non-British national. His scouting skills helped him meet and gain the respect of Theodore Roosevelt, a venerable outdoors-man in his own right. His friendship with the former president helped him gain an assignment training a special cavalry corps for the U.S. Army during World War I, a war that he actively supported joining long before the U.S. declaration of war.

Perhaps Frederick Russell Burnham's most enduring legacy is the impact he had on the early Boy Scouts Movement. His time scouting in Matabeleland brought him in contact with Robert Baden-Powell, a British scout employed by the British Army. In their hunt for the Matabele chief, Burnham taught Baden-Powell his woodcraft skills. He left such an impression on Baden-Powell that the British soldier was inspired to organize the nascent Boy Scout Movement, the progenitor of modern scouting movements around the world, including the Boy Scouts of America. Burnham would remain intimately involved with the early days of the Scouting Movement.

Robert Baden-Powell, father of the Scout Movement

Burnham eventually found great wealth by striking gold on private land he owned in Northern California, and he died comfortably at the age of 86, spending his last years devoted to causes of conservation and scouting. Everyone who met him said that he was conspicuously moderate, seldom speaking of his many adventures. But if there ever was man who had the right to brag from time to time in his old age, his eyes brimming with the memories of adventures done and victories won, it was Frederick Russell Burnham

What did People Read in the Doctor's Offices of Yore?

Recently, in my inexorable boredom I have been discovering the joys of Google Books. Somehow, Google has managed the rights to thousands of books and periodicals that can be viewed on their website for free. it comprises of mostly out of print books or very old periodicals, but regardless it is an amazing source for someone with enough free time to sift through the voluminous material.

I think the best way to learn about an era is to read periodicals from the period. Even more so than books or movies, periodicals can give a bigger sense about what people in a given time were reading, what they were eating and drinking, what they were shopping for, what subjects were taboo or not, and what they thought was most worthy to be discussed in a public forum. In my free time I have perused some old Time and Texas Monthly articles, and I collected specific examples that I think illustrate how these old periodicals can give us an excellent window into our past.

Here is a picture from an article in Texas Monthly about sororities at the University of Texas at Austin from 1976. The article explains in great detail the benefits and drawbacks for a girl (usually from a background of privilege) entering the UT Greek system, written by a UT alum who enrolled in the early 1960's and pledged. As an alum from this same Greek system, it was an illuminating read. What struck me the most was how little had changed in almost 5 decades. I was honestly expecting much more to be different, but so much of the article described almost to a T many of the same experiences I went through.

Here's and ad from the same 1976 Texas Monthly issue. Nothing extraordinary, however I just really wish these boots were still in production. I would buy a pair in a heart beat.

This picture is from an issue of Time from the 1940's, as will the rest of the images. I thought this one was interesting because it was an example of the sexualized marketing I discovered throughout issues of Time from this era. The old canard about how oversexualized our own modern culture has become really doesn't have much grounding when you see voluptuous young models in skimpy clothing selling fucking insect repellant during the 'Greatest Generation'  (something I gather would be seen as being in poor taste today).

This is another great example of sexualized advertisement, but with a hint of nationalism! I'm sure those limey Brits were none too pleased to see ads advertising some intimate 'R&R' between American servicemen and British girls. But hey, if you're about to hit the beaches of Normandy, why not try to find a Cockney princess of your own to keep you company...

These wartime advertisements are really awesome to me. They highlight the importance of their products in the war effort, with the ads showing intense action with the advertised product in the limelight. I'd much rather my orange juice ads looks like this than have Phil Dunphy make lame jokes about oranges.

This was an interesting image of a ball at the Virginia Military Institute. I think it's an impressive image of young couples dressed to the nines with a dramatic depiction of the Institute's former war glories in the backdrop. Love and war.

This article was extremely interesting to me, and something I had never heard of in my readings on Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most evil motherfuckers in that unprecedented cabal that was the leadership of Nazi Germany. It describes his skillful assassination at the hands of Czech freedom fighters through the eyes of an American eyewitness, who just happened to be in Prague at the time, trapped behind enemy lines when war was declared 6 months before. The fact that he witnessed this momentous occasion and somehow managed to escape back to the United States is quite a tale indeed.

Here's where it starts to get real ugly. Yes, this is a real info-graphic published in Time magazine, explaining to its readers 'how to tells Japs from the Chinese' and enumerating supposed general physical characteristics between people from the two countries. The article was written in an almost sanctimonious appeal to its readers to ensure that they don't wrongfully abuse someone of Chinese heritage, lest they attack one of our allies. It really doesn't get much uglier than this, but this is December 1941 we're talking about. Is it really surprising that a country that at the time had institutionalized segregation would not find this offensive?

This is from another issue of Time from a few years later than the Japanese/Chinese info-graphic. At this point, hundreds of thousands of Americans and Japanese had already died. Emotions were running high. This picture was attached to an article about a female factory worker who had received a Japanese skull in the mail from her boyfriend who was in the Navy at the time (She is writing a 'thank you note' in the photo, pondering the skull on her desk). While the photograph did manage to cause a stir in the military, the fact that Time received it and was willing to publish speaks volumes about the dehumanization of the Japanese during World War II. It is actually really hard for me to wrap my head around this level of casual brutality.

In an example of the cognitive dissonance I uncovered in many issues of these periodicals, the published letters in response to a Time article about a Japanese-American itinerant farmer, Mr. Yamamoto, who was collectively banished from a small New Jersey town during World War II really surprised me, both for their candor and diversity of opinions. The print is hard to read, but I'll offer some summaries. Some letters, unsurprisingly, offer nothing but congratulations for the residents of the town and condemnation towards the Japanese-American farmer (One of these articles is from, you guessed it, Birmingham, Alabama). But most of the letters published by Time offer solidarity for the unfortunate farmer, with one even coming from a farmer offering Mr. Yamamoto a job at his farm. One letter acutely compares the treatment of Mr. Yamamoto to "the attitude towards 'Mr. Finkelstein'" in Germany (Her words, not mine). It is just incredibly interesting to me that the same magazine that unflinchingly publishes a Japanese skull used as a war trophy also displays the positively American acceptance of anyone willing to work hard, regardless of race or creed. It also proves to me that all history is complex, and no one worldview or opinion can accurately describe the attitudes of millions of people. Reading these magazines have also underscored for me the importance of the freedom of the press (the only industry named in the Constitution), one of the cornerstones of our democracy, even if at times the media can espouse less than satisfactory viewpoints.