American Links with Early Days of Rhodesia

... The six-gun, rough-riding days of the American West produced a tough breed of frontiersman who were matchless in the arts of the wilderness -- of hunting, of finding their way over trackless terrain, of schouting and smelling out the enemy. Americans with these skills were in demand in Rhodesia. Two American scouts, Frederick Russell Burnham and Perl Ingram, an ex-miner from California, have the distinction of being the first men to enter the smouldering ashes of Bulawayo when the Matabele abandoned their capital during the war of 1893.

Burnham, the author of Scouting on two Continents and Taking Chances, was a colourful and flamboyant character who returned to Rhodesia to take part in the uprising of 1896, serving in the Matopos with Colonel R.S.S. Baden-Powell, later Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the world-wide boy scout movement. The scout movement was conceived amongst the granite boulders of the Matopos, where Rhodes now lies buried.

Once Rhodes established a settled administration a steady stream of immigrants with their families were attracted to Rhodesia. American enterprice was not lacking in this process of colonisation. Such farm names as "Buncker Hill", "Arlington Heights" and "Kentucky" (the last being the site of Salisbury's international airport), remind modern Rhodesians of the part that some of their adventurous forebears from the other side of the Atlantic have played in the development of the country.

American who played a prominent part in the early history of Rhodesia. Captain, afterwords Major Maurice David Heany, a Virginian and cousin of Edgar Allan Poe. He commanded "A" Troup of the Pioneer Column. Heany Junction is named after him. Bishop Joseph Crane Hartzell of the American Methodist Episcopal Church. He established the mission in Old Umtali. John Hay Hammond, from San Francisco, was Rhode's chief mining engineer. Major Frederick Russell Burnham, from Tivoli, Minnesota. He was the first man to enter Bulawayo during the Matabele War. William Harvey Brown from Des Moines, Iowa....