1905: Rescues Child from Indians
Predictably, a newspaper at the turn of the century treated this like one of those classic “white person in Indian captivity” narratives.
I sense that there’s a whole lot more to this story than is told to us.
Maybe this kid had an absent White dad, for instance.
Knowing more Chinuk Wawa than English was already getting to be uncommon by 1905 in British Columbia…
RESCUES CHILD FROM INDIANS
Agent of a Humane Society Takes Young White Girl From Camp of Chinooks
Vancouver, B.C., March 23. — There was brought down from the north by steamer to-day a white child who has been in the custody of Indians for the past six years — a girl of 11 years, who can hardly speak English, but is proficient in Chinook. She was taken from the Indian camp by the Secretary of the Children’s Aid Society, who had been searching for the girl for a year. Several times the society’s representative thought he had located the girl, only to find that she had been spirited away to a new camp. She was finally located through a trapper.
— from the San Francisco Call of March 24, 1905, page 2, column 3
