new item on a ledger. One day, he said, a trader began to refer to
Ne-kah-e-se-y as Jimmy. Soon other traders began to call Mollie’s
father Jimmy, and before long it had supplanted his Osage name.
“Likewise his daughters who often visited the store, received their
names there of,” the trader’s son wrote. And that’s how Wah-kon-
tah-he-um-pah became Mollie.
John Florer’s trading store in Gray Horse Credit 13Mollie—who, like her mother, then wore leggings, moccasins, a
skirt, a blouse, and a blanket—slept on the floor in a corner of her
family’s lodge and had to do many grueling chores. But there was a
relative peacefulness and happiness to that time: Mollie could
enjoy the ceremonial dances and the feasts and playing water tag
in the creek and watching the men race their ponies in the
emerald fields. As the trader’s son wrote, “There lingers memories
like a half forgotten dream, of an enchanting world dawning on a
child’s consciousness in its wonder and mystery.”