Settlers cut off Yagan's head for a £30 reward, it was shown in London and buried in a Liverpool grave, and Noongar elders buried it in the Swan Valley in 2010

Yagan was a Noongar warrior near the Swan River Colony. His father Midgegooroo was captured and executed by firing squad on 22 May 1833^†. The colony offered a reward of £30 for Yagan, dead or alive^†. On 11 July 1833 a teenage settler, William Keates, shot him near Upper Swan; other Noongar speared Keates to death^†. The settlers cut off Yagan's head and skinned his back for his tribal markings^†. The head was smoked to preserve it and sent to Britain. Robert Dale took it to London, tried to sell it to scientists and displayed it at the anatomist Thomas Pettigrew's gatherings, then gave it to the Liverpool Royal Institution^†. In 1964 the museum buried it in an unmarked grave in Everton Cemetery, General Section 16, grave 296^†. A search led by the Noongar elder Ken Colbung traced it in December 1993. It was exhumed in 1997, and on 31 August 1997 a Noongar delegation received the skull at Liverpool Town Hall^†. Another Noongar man, Corrie Bodney, asked the Supreme Court of Western Australia to stop the handover and was refused^†. Disputes among elders over the burial site held up the burial for 13 years. On 10 July 2010 Yagan's head was buried at a memorial park in the Swan Valley, near where his body is thought to lie. Surveys in 1998 and later did not find the rest of his remains^†.