Tragedy on the Colville Reservation
A mother returns to find her child dead after leaving the baby unattended near a tree.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A sorrowful story came down from the Colville reservation last night. An Indian woman named Ki-Yu one day last week tied up her papoose, strapped to a board, as usual, to the stump of a tree, and went off picking berries. She heard her baby crying, but, thinking nothing of the matter, paid no attention to the little one’s wailing. A half-hour afterward, she went back to the stump where the poor, innocent babe was tied up. To her horror, she found a large rattlesnake coiled about the child's neck. She dispatched the reptile with a stick, only to find that the baby was dead, having been bitten several times by the reptile.
“To her horror, she found a large rattlesnake coiled about the child's neck.”
Tragic reports involving children and wildlife were common in regional papers of the 1890s, often framed with a detached, clinical tone. Today, the Colville Reservation remains a vital part of Washington, and the incident serves as a stark reminder of the environmental dangers faced by early settlers and Indigenous families alike in the remote wilderness.
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