Mollie’s father (right) in front of Florer’s trading store Credit 14In 1894, when Mollie was seven, her parents were informed that
they had to enroll her in the St. Louis School, a Catholic boarding
institution for girls that had been opened in Pawhuska, which was
two days’ journey by wagon to the northeast. An Indian Affairs
commissioner had said, “The Indian must conform to the white
man’s ways, peacefully if they will, forcibly if they must.”
Mollie’s parents were warned that if they didn’t comply, the
government would withhold its annuity payments, leaving the
family starving. And so, one morning in March, Mollie was taken
from her family and bundled into a horse-drawn wagon. As she
and a driver set out toward Pawhuska, in the center of the
reservation, Mollie could see Gray Horse, the seeming limit of her
universe, gradually disappear until all that was visible was the
smoke rising from the tops of the lodges and fading into the sky.