Solitary ion-acoustic wave propagation in the presence of electron trapping is investigated within the theoretical framework of the Tsallis statistical mechanics. A physically meaningful Schamel-like distribution is outlined. In the small amplitude limit, the nonlinear dispersion relation is derived to analyze the global dependency of the main solitary wave quantities. It is found that for a given amplitude and trapping state, the solitary potential structure speeds up and broadens as the electron nonextensivity strengthens. Our results may be of basic interest for experiments that involve particle trapping. The flexibility provided by the nonextensive q-parameter enables one to obtain a good agreement between theory and experiment.