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When Mary died in 1933, her brain was sent to a man named Ales Hrdlicka, the Smithsonian\\u2019s \\u2018bone doctor.\\u2019 Post reporters couldn\\u2019t find any records that Mary or her family consented to this. So what happened to Mary\\u2019s brain? And what is the extent of the Smithsonian\\u2019s \\u201cracial brain collection\\u201d?

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The brain of a Sami woman who died at a Seattle sanitarium in 1933. The cerebellum of an indigenous Filipino who died at the 1904 World\\u2019s Fair. These are just two of the brains collected over the last century by the Smithsonian\\u2019s first curator of the physical anthropology division, Ales Hrdlicka. 

Now, a hundred years after this brain collection began, The Washington Post has pieced together the most extensive look at this work to date. And over the next two days on Post Reports, we\\u2019re bringing you the details of this reporting and of Ales Hrdlicka\\u2019s troubling legacy. In this first episode, we find out the extent of the collection, and we begin the search for the descendants of Mary, the Sami woman whose brain was taken in 1933.