The Gazette

STRANGER THAN FICTION.
Mother Finds Kidnapped Son
Living As Indian.
SQUAW
MAN TRADED COW
FOR WHITE BABY AND THE
LATTER WAS ADOPTED
BY INDIAN TRIBE
SAN FRANCISCO, Cal.-One
night twenty-four years ago, when
Idaho was a frontier and romance
still lived in the forests and the hills,
a 6 months old baby was stolen from
his crib beside his mother's bed in a
little log cabin in the Panhandle
state.
Some time ago Mrs. Erick E. Denley of the Oakland apartments, Oakland, found her boy at Lapwai Ferry, Idaho. He was living on an Indian reservation as Howard Wilson, adopted son of a squaw man and an old Indian woman, and lawful man of the tribe of Nez Perce.
A soldier from Idaho came to the Presidio last January and related at a party in Oakland a strange, traditional story of a white baby that had been stolen from a cabin near a military reservation one June night in 1895. Mrs. Denley heard of the story, and at the end of the trail to which it led she found her son.
As soon as Howard Wilson can sell the lands and the cattle left to him by the Indian woman that mothered him for years he will go to his mother's home in Oakland and become Robert Denley, a man of the cities.
Mrs. Denley was born in Vermont, and her mother died when the girl was a year old. Her father went to Idaho to seek wealth in the mines, leaving his daughter with friends in New England. Thirteen years later the girl went to her father, and a short time later he became seriously ill.
The girl and the son of her father's partner were called to the bedside, and there they were married. The father recovered, and a year or so later Robert Denley was born.
That day in June, 1895, the young husband was forced to go to a nearby settlement for supplies. His wife laughed at his fears for her safety. And, while the mother slept, the baby was stolen from his crib that night.
Howard Wilson, who will be Robert Denley, had heard from the Nez Perce Indians the story of his life.
A white man and two white women appeared among the Indians at Lapwai in June, 1895, and asked the Indians to care for a baby boy. The Indians refused, and the white persons went away, leaving the infant on a pier.
A young Indian mother took the baby for her own. When the Indians went away on a hunting trip the child was left with white persons, and when the Indians returned the baby again was missing. But he appeared a short time later at Kooskia.
Wilson, a squaw man, had a cow he didn't want. He did want the white baby. The trade was made, and as Howard Wilson the boy grew up. He saw the squaw man beat the aged Indian woman, who took the beatings stolidly and said she hoped the white boy wouldn't be like that.
The squaw man died, and Howard Wilson was adopted into the Nez Perce tribe. The adoption entitled the tribe to draw government rations for him. When the old woman died the boy received all her property and built over her grave a tombstone such as never was seen before at the Indian cemetery at Lapwai Ferry.
Mrs. Denley took up the case with government agents at the reservation. They traced the story of the lost white boy and found it was her son. They told the young man about it. He was doubtful, for he didn't know what a white mother would be like.
The night of July 12, Mrs. Denley met her boy. The young man's father died eleven years ago, after thirteen years of vain searching for the baby that was lost in the hills of Idaho.