GLOSSARY USEFUL AID TO SCHOLARS ~Stephen Kohl, Ph.D.

Ranald MacDonald’s account of his stay in Japan was written from memory many years after the experience.  Many of his Japanese artifacts were lost; the one concrete thing brought back from Japan and appended to his account of his adventures is his glossary of Japanese words.

We are fortunate that Professor Kenji Sonoda has recently taken the trouble to reconstruct the list of words as MacDonald originally had them.  It is understandable and inevitable that misspellings slipped into the list after Malcolm McLeod worked it over twice.  One of the most difficult things in the world is to work with words in a language with which one is not familiar.  One would suppose that these discrepancies would have come to light in 1923 when Lewis and Marakami assembled the manuscript we have today.  Nevertheless, we now have Professor Sonoda’s reconstruction which will stand as a valuable linguistic tool.

We have relatively few sources available to tell us how Japanese words were actually pronounced in pre-modern times.  As Professor Sonoda points out, the major sources are Carl Peter Thunberg (1743 – 1828), Walter Henry Medhurst (1796-1857) and Ranald MacDonald.  There are important differences in these lists which are instructive.  Since Medhurst got his words from a dictionary, he provides us with official readings as opposed to the way people actually spoke the words.  Thunberg compiled his list on the basis of how he heard people say the words.  He traveled extensively in Japan, but from west to east, from Nagasaki to Edo and back.  Ranald MacDonald also compiled his list on the basis of what he heard, but he traveled the entire length of the country from the northernmost tip of Hokkaido to Nagasaki in the south.  Although much of his journey was by boat, they put to shore at regular intervals so that his vocabulary will surely show a variety of dialects not found in either Medhurst or Thunberg.

The important thing, of course, is having an accurate version of what Ranald MacDonald heard and recorded.  Professor Sonoda has given us that.

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BOOK PUBLICATION CELEBRATED

Friends of MacDonald returned to Astoria in May to celebrate re-publication of Ranald MacDonald’s book, participate in the excitement of Clatsop County Historical Society’s “Jane Barnes Day” and present books to civic dignitaries gathered at the Heritage Museum.

Bruce Hamilton, director of the Oregon Historical Society PRESS and principal speaker, outlined problems and pitfalls involved in re-printing a 1924 book and explained the compromises and capitulations involved.

“The MacDonald book,” he told seminar participants, “fits beautifully into our series of publications for the North Pacific Studies Center.”  Hamilton said financial help from FOM and Epson Portland Inc. also made it possible to stretch available funds.

Chairman Mas Tomita sees book publication as only the beginning:  “We have started an ambitious project to reach many people and institutions by presenting this book,” he said, reporting copies already distributed.  He reminded members that FOM was organized “to promote and preserve Ranald MacDonald’s wonderful story.”

“During our first three years,” Tomita said, “we have made progress toward that goal by maintaining a membership of 150 persons, publishing newsletters, organizing seminars, assisting in research and inquiries, developing pamphlets and a videotape, producing postcards, and creating and helping to fund the bilingual MacDonald monument on the site of old Fort Astoria.

Barbara C. Peeples, FOM Secretary, read a paper outlining Ranald MacDonald’s own futile and frequently desperate efforts, during the closing years of his adventurous life, to see his manuscripts published.

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MAJOR ANNIVERSARY DATES APPROACHING FOR RANALD ADMIRERS

FOM vice chairman Bruce Berney invites comment on proposals for tour to mark two major anniversaries in Ranald MacDonald’s life:

1 – 1994 will be the 100th anniversary of Ranald’s death, on August 5, 1894, near the tiny community of Toroda, Washington.

Bruce suggests that planning begin now for a tour which would include a visit to the grave site and monument in the Indian cemetery at Toroda, as well as to Spokane, Colvile and other Eastern Washington points where MacDonald-related memorabilia is on display.

2 – 1998 will be the 150th anniversary of Ranald’s history-making trip to Japan.  The question:  is there membership interest in an overseas tour which would include visits to Rishiri, Nagasaki and other areas of specific FOM interest?

Would the Japanese government issue a stamp marking either the 1848 voyage or 150 years of English-teaching in Japan?  Members interested in the possibility of either tour are invited to get in touch with Bruce.

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After 68 years:  Second Edition of “Narrative” Printed by Oregon Historical Society Press

IT’S HERE!

That jubilant message from Bruce Hamilton, director of the Oregon Historical Society Press, announced the arrival in Portland of the historic Second Edition of Ranald MacDonald: The Narrative of His Life, 1824-1894.

The Friends of MacDonald has been instrumental in making re-publication possible, thanks in large part to FOM Chairman Mas Tomita and Epson Portland Inc., of which Mas is president.

“Enclosed in the first copy of the special edition of Ranald MacDonald’s Narrative,” Hamilton wrote Tomita.  “All of us here at the Society, and the Press, but most especially for my part, wish to express our great and lasting gratitude for your support of this project.  Without your direct support we would not have these books in hand at this time, and we would not be able to provide to so many new persons the opportunity to become acquainted with Ranald MacDonald and his extraordinary life.”

Said Chairman Tomita:  “OHS delivered my copy just in time for Christmas.  It is one of the best Christmas gifts i can imagine.  Epson Portland inc. is glad to have been able to help with this publication, so that many more people can read this remarkable story.”

Ranald’s “Narrative” was first published in 1923, almost 50 years after his death, by the Eastern Washington Historical Society, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.  The volume includes not only Ranald MacDonald’s adventures in Japan in 1848-49 but also an account of his life before and after his journey and a biographical sketch by the original editors:  Naojiro Murakami (1868-1966), a Commissioner of Historical Compilation for Japan, and William S. Lewis (1876-1941), of the Eastern Washington Historical Society.

The heart of the “Narrative” is Ranald’s memoir of his voyage to Japan in 1848.  Written some 40 years after the adventure, it recounts his successful efforts to enter forbidden territory, his imprisonment, his months  spent teaching English to Japanese scholars and his “rescue”.

(Ranald’s own heartbreaking attempt to publish his book during his lifetime will be among topics discussed during the 1991 FOM Spring Seminar in Astoria.)

Presentation copies of the book are being distributed by FOM and EPI to academic libraries, government leaders and interested groups in the USA, Canada, Japan and Scotland.  The new edition includes a forward by Donald J. Sterling, Jr., FOM member, former OHS president and Oregon Journal editor now with the Portland Oregonian; and an afterward by Jean Murray Cole, FOM member, Canadian writer and author of Exile in the Wilderness, a biography of Ranald’s father, Archibald McDonald.  Mrs. Cole presented a distinguished paper on the family during the 1898 FOM spring seminar.

The new edition was edited by Kim Carlson of the OHS staff.  Designer was George Resch of the OHS staff, and the new-to-all-of-us illustration on the jacket is by Lisa M. Chiba, who created a portrait of Ranald at age 24 from later photos.

Although editors sought to make the new book resemble the original edition as closely as possible, there is one notable graphic addition:  Japanese characters appear on the last page and embossed on the back cover of the new edition, the traditional locations of Japanese book title pages and front covers, respectively.  The characters repeat the book title.

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FUTURE PLANNING – which “road” does FOM take?

FOM member Don Sterling has written some thoughtful and provocative comments which suggest interesting paths for Friends of MacDonald to pursue.  Excerpts from his letter –

“Dear Friends,

. . . It seems to me there are two ways the Friends can go in honoring Ranald MacDonald.  One is to concentrate on his own life and adventures.  This would involve the study not only of his career but of the climate of his times — on the lower Columbia, at the Red River settlements, in Japan, and wherever his travels took him in his later life.  It would involve many interesting cultures and personalities, but in my opinion it is a more limited field than the Friends ought to occupy.

The other approach – which I think is preferable – is to regard MacDonald as the personification of the early contacts between the West and Japan in the mid-19th Century.  Without ever losing sight of MacDonald himself, the Friends gradually could assemble and disseminate information about a wide range of related subjects, such as:

* The Dutch merchants at Nagasaki;

* The visits to Japan of whaling crews and other Westerners;

* Travels abroad by Japanese when such trips were still officially forbidden;

* The interpreters MacDonald taught, and their later activities;

* Events surrounding the arrival of Commodore Perry’s “Black Ships” and the immediate consequences in Japan;

* Townsend Harris’s  experiences as the first American consul in Japan.

* The first visit of Japanese emissaries to the United States.

. . . Whichever course the Friends organization takes, there are a number of things it could do, such as:

* Compile and publish a bibliography of writings about MacDonald and related subjects. (Note: a preliminary draft has been distributed);

* Establish collections of the most important works in several key libraries, such as in Astoria and Portland and in a few of the most appropriate places in Japan;

* Promote communication among the Friends’ membership by publishing not only a newsletter but also a journal of articles on MacDonald-related subjects.  (Any publishing should appear in both English and Japanese);

* Hold occasional dinners and other gatherings where members of the Friends and others interested in MacDonald-related subjects can become acquainted with each other;

* Encourage original studies;

* Establish cooperative relationships with other organizations similarly interested in the period, such as the new North Pacific Studies Center of the Oregon Historical Society;

*Locate, map and mark important sites connected with MacDonald’s life and vision;

* Sponsor tours to relevant historical places in north America and Japan . . . “

~Don Sterling

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RANALD MacDONALD: His Ancestry and Early Years

Jean Murray Cole of Ontario, Canada, an award-winning author, editor and historian, delivered a paper entitled “Ranald MacDonald: His Ancestry and Early Years”, during the 2nd annual Friends of MacDonald Seminar in Portland, Oregon on may 6, 1989.  Mrs. Cole, who is the great-great-granddaughter and biographer of Archibald McDonald, Ranald’s father, has generously presented a typescript of her presentation to Friends of MacDonald for the archives.  Her words paint a scholarly picture of a devoted, close-knit family, working hard to match “civilized” standards of education and religious training while stationed in the remote outposts of an uncivilized wilderness.  Excerpts follow:

RANALD MacDONALD was the product of two proud and powerful races, brought together by chance in this remote corner of the world.  His lineage was that of generations of free-spirited Scot Highlanders, joined with the blood of legendary Comcomly, Chief of the influential Chinook tribe who, in the early 1800s, held sway over all the natives around the Columbia River mouth (until  nearly 90 percent of them were carried off in the fever epidemic of 1830-31).  The sense of kinship was strong in both.  After infancy, surrounded by an ever-increasing number of half-brothers in a household that his father was determined should emulate as nearly as possible family life as he had known it in what he often referred to as the “civilized world.”

Archibald McDonald … was descended from the colorful Glencoe branch of the MacDonald Clan.  His grandfather, John, escaped as a child with his mother to the surrounding hills when King William’s troops carried out their infamous massacre of 38 MacDonalds in 1692.  Archy’s father, Angus, at the age of 15 served in the field at the Battle of Culloden in 1745 …

Although Ranald was in fact an “only child”, he grew up as part of a large, loving and happy family.  Later in life he said that he hadn’t realized, as a boy, that Jane Klyne was not his real mother, although this is difficult to reconcile with the fact that he also brings forth memories of his time spent in the lodge of his grandfather Comcomly.  He remembers that he was sometimes called “Comly” by his father’s fur trader friends, and “Qu`Ame” (grandson) or “Toll” (Chinook for “boy”) by Comcomly himself …

Ranald was born at the Hudson’s Bay Company Fort George, formerly (and later) Astoria, but when his mother, Princess Raven, died shortly after his birth he was taken to Comcomly’s lodge to be cared for by an aunt, his mother’s sister, Car-cum-cum.  There he remained until the following year when his father took another wife “in the custom of the country” – Jane Klyne.

[After Archy’s assignment to a new post, Fort Langley, near what is now Vancouver, Canada:] It was here that the little family began to grow up, and it was here that the father began what he referred to as his “thriving school” where he himself gave instruction to mother and sons alike.  McDonald firmly believed, as he said to friends, “There is nothing like early education,” and he was determined that his children would not suffer the fate of many of the offspring of fur traders who spent their childhood in the Indian country … [In late 1830] McDonald reported that his young wife had become “an excellent scholar” and that “Toll is a stout chap – reads his New Testament and began his copy the other day as he got out of his 7th year … ”

Much to his regret, that spring of 1833 McDonald was called back to Fort Vancouver … Ranald recalls this trip in his memoir, and at the age of nine he would no doubt have vivid memories.  I believe, though, that when he wrote of the Ft. Colville of his childhood, he was in fact recalling the years at Ft. Langley,  “Here, during three or four years, with younger half-brothers, under the tenderest and best, in every way, of parental care, I spent what I consider to have been the very happiest days of my life:  in a world of our own; little, singularly isolated from the haunts of men … ”  In fact the family was never all together at Ft. Colville.

There are many myths about Ranald, and there are many truths – it is not easy to sort them out.  It is documented, however, in contemporary records, that after those years at Langley the family was never all together again for any length of time.  Archibald McDonald was posted to Ft. Colville in the spring of 1833 … he decided to enroll Ranald in John Ball’s school at Fort Vancouver for the winter of 1833-34 … He had plans for the children: “It’s high time for me to … get my little boys to school …” [A journey east permitted him to see his family settled in Red River (now Winnipeg, Manitoba) while he was on furlough in Europe and to register the four older boys in the Red River school.]

Duncan Finlayson, who had charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company spring Express Party in 1834, brought Ranald with him from Ft. Vancouver to join his father at Colville before they moved on to the east together.  That brief time … was in fact the only period in Ranald’s childhood that he was there …

This myth about Ft. Colville brings up another confusing element … that [Ranald] was at Fort Vancouver when the three survivors of the shipwrecked Japanese ‘junk’ [Hojun-maru] were brought there [by Capt. McNeil on board the Llama] in the summer of 1834.  The truth is that Finlayson left Vancouver with Ranald in March of that year – they left Colville on April 18th, and arrived at the Committee’s Punch Bowl where Michael Klyne met them with horses to take them through the mountains to Jasper on May 2nd, and by June they were at Norway House at the Council Meeting.

[Ranald’s] knowledge of Japan and its people, I suspect, came more from his reading and his later travels with the whaling fleet in the south seas, although he may well have heard something of the three survivors of the shipwrecked ‘junk’ who arrived at Fort Vancouver shortly after his departure from there.  (Eva Emery Dye’s assertions in her 1907 version of the story that Ranald was “detailed” by McLaughlin to look after the three Japanese as they recovered in the Fort hospital is totally without substance, although one can believe, as she says, that “Ranald listened to theories of his elders as to the other wrecks.”)  That he identified with the Japanese people cannot be questioned … once he had conceived his plan to shipwreck himself on the Japanese coast, nothing could deter him … His purpose was firmly fixed:  “to learn of them; and, if occasion should offer, to instruct them of us.”

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IN RANALD’S WAKE:  Steve Kohl’s FOM Experience in Japan

Prof. STEPHEN KOHL, Ph.D., Friends of MacDonald vice chairman, returned to Oregon this fall after a year in Tokyo as director of the Oregon State System of Higher Education’s exchange program in Japan.  Dr. Kohl, who is professor of East Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Oregon, will discuss his participation in Japanese Friends activities during the FOM membership dinner meeting.

July 5:  Katie and I met Prof.  Jukichi Suzuki in Shinjuku and discussed wording for a new Ranald MacDonald monument to be erected on Rishiri Island on the beach where it is thought MacDonald came ashore.

July 13:  Dr. Takahashi and Mr. Ushio came to Sapporo, where we were staying with friends, to take us to a MacDonald seminar on Rishiri.  Weather problems disrupted our seagoing travel plans and we instead went by train to Otaru, where we boarded a beautifully sleek cruiser and headed out through the breakwater into the open Sea of Akhosk, taking photographs as we followed MacDonald’s trail.

As we reached the point judged by Professor Tomita to be the place where MacDonald actually left the Plymouth, it became hard to see why he made for distant Yagishiri rather than the mainland of Hokkaido, which is clearly visible to us.  In our discussion of this matter we came up with several reasons:

1) It was foggy, as we know from MacDonald’s journal, and perhaps he could not see the mainland to the east but could see Yagishiri to the north. 2) There is evidently a northward current in these waters which may have made it more practical for him to go north rather than east.  3) Because long stretches of the Hokkaido coast were uninhabited in those days, MacDonald may have decided to seek out a smaller island as an easier and more likely place to find human habitation.

My own conjecture is that MacDonald did not get off the Plymouth at the point Prof. Tomita indicates, but, rather got off further north within five miles of Yagishiri as he indicates in his journal …

Mr. Isono, a local innkeeper and a man who knows all the details of local history, was our guide on Yagishiri.  MacDonald is thought to have landed on a sandy beach on the south side of the island.  After lunch at Mr. Isono’s inn, we re-boarded our cruiser and headed north for Rishiri into a strong north wind and heavy waves.  It was quite moving to approach the towering peak of Mt. Rishiri and to think that this is the same sea MacDonald sailed and that we were seeing the same mountain and island he saw.  None of this has changed in the past 141 years.  What is different is that Ranald MacDonald was going into the unknown, dread Japan; we were accompanied by friends who would insure our good reception.  But this is only possible, of course, because MacDonald made that first trip.

July 14:  In the afternoon we went to Notsuka, which is where we believe MacDonald must have landed on Rishiri.  Our plan was to retrace MacDonald’s route from there to Motodomari on the other side of the island, which was Samurai headquarters in those days.  At Motodomari we visited a local Shinto shrine which was built about ten years before MacDonald’s arrival.  MacDonald visited the shrine and so did we . . .

July 15:  A day-long adventure climbing up steep, rocky trails, but we made it to the summit of Mt. Rishiri.  If you like mountain climbing it was glorious – high, alpine meadows filled with flowers, steep gorges, cliffs, and still some snow in the high meadows.

Over dinner that night we talked more about MacDonald and discussed a number of questions that had been raised by Prof. Aihara and some of the other 50 FOM members in Japan – questions that will be of interest to many of us here.

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