some order out of the chaos and confusion on earth; the force that
was there but not there—invisible, remote, giving, awesome,
unanswering. Many Osage had given up their traditional beliefs,
but Lizzie had held on to them. (A U.S. government official had
once complained that women like Lizzie “keep up the old
superstitions and laugh down modern ideas and customs.”) Now
someone, something, had taken Lizzie’s oldest and most favored
daughter before her allotted time—a sign, perhaps, that Wah’Kon-
Tah had withdrawn his blessings and that the world was slipping
into even greater chaos. Lizzie’s health grew even worse, as if grief
were its own disease.
Mollie (right) with her sister Anna and their mother, Lizzie Credit
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