Frederick Russell Burnham DSO (May 11, 1861 – September 1, 1947) was an American scout, big game hunter, world-travelling adventurer and distinguished soldier.
Burnham was born on a Sioux Indian reservation in Minnesota. At three months he luckily survived a Sioux uprising. During an attack his mother hid him in a corn basket; the renegades burned down the family home before being repulsed as the baby Burnham slept. Despite this he learned the ways of Native Americans during his childhood. By the age of 14 he was supporting himself in California while learning scouting from some of the last of the old cowboys and frontiersmen of the American south-west.