566 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
The original has the following device at the end of the letter: 
Comcomly’s history is partly given in Ross Cox’s travels and his fame has 
been more generally spread since his skull reached England by Washington 
Irving’s pleasing compilation of “Astoria.” Comcomly was one-eyed. His head 
reached England in the dried state mentioned by Dr. Gairdner, but with the 
features greatly distorted and pressed to one side. The moisture commenced 
to become very offensive in about 5 to 6 months, notwithstanding a liberal 
application of corrosive sublimate; it was maccerated and the brain removed. 
Haslar Museum 
22nd. June 1838 
(Vide letter book 1827-1847) 
The true location of Comcomly’s skull and the existence of the 
letter from Gairdner covering the transmission to Richardson were 
made known in 1939 by A. G. Harvey. But in 1940, during the bomb- 
ing of England, the Haslar Museum was destroyed, along with most of 
its collections. Comcomly’s skull (but unfortunately not his lower 
jaw) was one of the very few historic relics saved. Then, late in 1953, 
after extensive correspondence between the Haslar Museum authorities 
and Burnby Bell of the Clatsop County Historical Society of Astoria, 
Oreg., the skull was given to the latter institution and thus returned 
to the vicinity of the original “tomb.” 
If the odyssey of this skull had ended here, the present addition to 
the scientific record might not have been written. In 1956 the skull 
made still another trip away from its original resting place. This 
time, with the approval of the Council of the Chinook Nation, it 
crossed the North American Continent to the Smithsonian Institution, 
where it remained long enough for an anthropometric study to be 
made. Since that time the skull has been on display in the Historical 
Society’s museum in Astoria. So far as is known, this is the only 
Chinook skull which can be attributed to a known personage. Indeed, 
skulls of known Indians are very rare, much less those of historically 
important Indians. 
At this point, and in spite of the full history here outlined, the 
question might be raised as to how one can be sure that the skull 
studied at the Smithsonian in 1956 is the same one which Gairdner 
removed from the grave at Astoria in 1835, or indeed was that of 
Comcomly to begin with. This is a proper question and in line with 
what a court would wish to know about the sequence of possession 
of material evidence. Retracing the sequence in this instance we may 
assume that Gairdner was certain of the identity of Comcomly’s 
grave. After all, Comcomly had been dead only five years and at 
first, following Chinook custom, his body had been in an elevated 
canoe. “Later, for greater security, his body [had been] taken out 
of the canoe by relatives and placed in a long box in a lonely part 
