MacDonald, Ranald (1824–1894)

US adventurer. Of half-Indian, half-white descent, he ran away to sea at age 17. He ‘shipwrecked’ himself in Japan in 1848, and during his year-long imprisonment, he was the first teacher of English there. In the 1850s and 1860s he surfaced in Australia, Canada, and the USA as a businessman and explorer, at one point participating in the Canadian gold rush. He later retired to a Washington homestead. MacDonald was born in Fort George, Oregon.