SKULL OF CHIEF COMCOMLY—STEWART 565 
having been long since removed by Dr. Gardner [sic].” Actually, 
Dr. Meredith Gairdner, physician of the Hudson’s Bay Company at 
Fort Vancouver, had removed the skull in 1835, only 6 years before, 
and he himself had died of tuberculosis in the Hawaiian Islands the 
following year. Also, the skull was not in Glasgow, but in the 
Haslar Museum at the Royal Naval Hospital near Portsmouth, Eng- 
land, where it had been placed in 1838 by its recipient Dr. (later Sir) 
John Richardson, the famous explorer of the American Arctic and 
the founder of the museum. These facts are to be found in the 
museum’s records in the following form: 
Copy of correspondence relating to the skull of Comcomly 
Presented by Dr. Richardson 
Skull of Comcomly, Chief of the Chinook Nation inhabiting the Country at 
the mouth of the Columbia in North West America. It was sent to Dr. 
Richardson by Dr. Meredith Gairdner a young naturalist of great talent, 
known to the scientific world by several able papers on mineral and other 
subjects,* but who died prematurely of consumption at Oahu in the Sandwich 
Isles, shortly subsequent to the date of his letter of which the following 
is an extract. 
OaAHu, SANDWICH ISLES, 21st. November 1835. 
My Dear Sir, 
I wrote to you from the Columbia in Sept. last and merely add these few 
lines to inform you that the accompanying head in a small box is that of 
Comecomly the old Chief of the Chinook Nation at the mouth of the Columbia, 
who died four or five years ago. You may have heard of this character, for 
he is mentioned in most of the narratives relating to the Columbia. By his 
ability, cunning or what you please call it, he raised himself and his family 
to a power and influence which no Indian has since possessed in the districts 
of the Columbia below the first rapids 150 miles from the sea. When the 
phrenologists look at his frontal development what will they say to this? If 
I return to the Columbia I will endeavour to procure you the whole skeleton. 
I would readily have done so now were it not for my weak state of health; 
as it was my exertions in procuring the head cost me a severe paroxysm of 
haemoptysis. The mummy like state of preservation which dead bodies of the 
Indians attain is curious. After death they are not embowelled or rubbed with 
oil or any gummy substances; they are merely sometimes painted with ochre 
and water and wrapped in several folds of blankets; they are then deposited 
in a canoe which is placed on a stage elevated about 6 or 7 feet from the 
ground; they here attain the most perfect state of exsiccation, though very 
imperfectly sheltered from the weather (the climate is very wet for six months 
in the year). After remaining in this position for 3 or 4 years, as may be, 
the relatives remove them from the cance and deposit them in the ground. I 
assure you no small ressurrectionary labour was necessary to get at Comcomly’s. 
I remain, 
Dr. Sir, 
Yours Sincerely, 
MEREDITH GAIRDNER. 
“The Catalogue of Scientific Papers of the Royal Academy of Science (London) lists 
five papers under Gairdner’s name, of which three report geographical and meteorological 
observations made in America. 
