Ranald MacDonald

Ranald MacDonald (February 3, 1824 – August 24, 1894) was the first native English-speaker to teach the English language in Japan, including educating Einosuke Moriyama, one of the chief interpreters to handle the negotiations between Commodore Perry and the Tokugawa Shogunate. Early life MacDonald was born at Fort Astoria, in the Pacific Northwest of North America. The area was then known as the Columbia District or Oregon Country, disputed territory dominated by the British Hudson's Bay Company and the American Pacific Fur Company. MacDonald's father was Archibald McDonald, a Scottish Hudson's Bay Company fur trader, and his mother was Koale'xoa (also known as Raven or Princess Sunday), a Chinook, daughter of Comcomly, a leader of the "Lower Chinook" Chinookan people that lived near the present-day city of Ilwaco, Washington. She, however, died shortly after giving birth and MacDonald was briefly cared for by his mother's family. Around 1825, Archibald McDonald married Jane Klyne, a Métis woman from Canada, and brought Ranald to Fort Vancouver, the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company. It is unclear when MacDonald became aware of the details of his birth or of his Chinook ancestry. MacDonald was a member of the larger Métis community. Based on the popular historical fiction of Eva Emery Dye, it has been repeated that "as a child of eight in 1832 at Fort Vancouver, he met three shipwrecked Japanese sailors, including Otokichi". In reality the three shipwrecked Japanese sailors were brought to Fort Vancouver in July 1834 [not 1832], arriving there about four months after 10-yr-old Ranald MacDonald had departed for the Red River Colony – so there never was the fabled "meeting of East and West". MacDonald's First Nations relatives might have had legends that their ancestors had come from across the Pacific, but saying that MacDonald "developed a fascination with Japan" and "theorized that it might be the home of his distant relatives" may or may not be accurate. In his autobiography MacDonald explained it in his own words: "My plan was to present myself as a castaway ... and to rely on their humanity. My purpose was to learn of them; and, if occasion should offer, to instruct them of us." MacDonald was educated at the Red River Academy in the newly established Red River Colony, a part of British North America that later became Manitoba, Canada.