574 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
for a fitting conclusion of this account. It will be recalled that Com- 
comly met Lewis and Clark and their party, the first of the stream 
of white men to descend the Columbia River. Before and after this 
he saw many ships approach or enter the mouth of the river. How 
he must have wondered about the world beyond the mountains on one 
side and the sea on the other! He was not destined, of course, to 
travel so far in life; only his skull traveled. But then, maybe he 
transmitted some of his longings for travel, or at least for information 
about foreign lands, to his descendants. One can almost imagine 
this to be so, because the remarkable adventure of his grandson that 
will now be outlined is well documented (Lewis and Murakami, 
1923). 
In 1823 the youngest daughter of Comcomly, then still in her teens, 
married Archibald McDonald *° of the Hudson’s Bay Company and 
soon had a son whom they named Ranald McDonald. The father 
apparently saw to it that Ranald did not receive the traditional 
Chinook “sign of freedom.” But this does not mean that the boy was 
not free, at least to travel. In 1834 he was sent to school in the Red 
River Settlement in what is now Manitoba, Canada; and in 1839 
he was sent to St. Thomas in southeastern Ontario to work in a bank. 
Bank work did not suit Ranald, but apparently it did foster thoughts 
of further travel: this time to Japan, of all places. Japan, it will be 
recalled, was closed to outsiders in the early 19th century. 
During his childhood Ranald had seen Japanese sailors who had 
been shipwrecked along the Pacific coast near the mouth of the 
Columbia. Memories of this recurred to him now when he heard 
about the Japanese Decrees of Exclusion. Together they proved so 
tantalizing to a boy of 21 that Ranald gave up his job in the bank 
and started off for the Orient. From Canada he worked his way 
down the Mississippi to New Orleans and from there somehow reached 
New York. Late in 1845 he “shipped before the mast” on the 
Plymouth bound for the Sandwich Islands. Finding that the ship 
was going on from there to Hong Kong, Ranald talked the captain 
into agreeing to put him adrift in a small boat off the coast of Japan. 
Thus it came about in June 1848 that Comcomly’s grandson found 
himself on an island off the northwest coast of Hokkaido (or Yezo). 
The inhabitants of this part of Japan were Ainu and they treated 
Ranald very kindly. Nevertheless, Japanese law required that his 
presence be reported. This led to a series of interrogations in various 
places ending 10 months later in Nagasaki. During this time, in spite 
of being confined in somewhat cramped quarters, Ranald conducted 
a class in English for 14 government interpreters. In the process 
he himself learned a sort of pidgin Japanese. On April 26, 1849, 
10 The family preferred to spell their surname McDonald rather than MacDonald. 
