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Going Home painted by Judith A. Lowry, copy right Skip Lowry 1999 On December 5,1916, Mollie Lowry and four other girls ran away from Greenville Indian School. Two of the older girls had been "strapped" the previous morning and Mollie was heard saying "she would rather die than go back to that school." Mollie's family lived only three miles from the school yet she chose to flee miles away to Susanville, off the main road, across a mountain, in winter. Perhaps she feared of being found at her parent's home. The older girls were eventually found alive. A younger girl was found with frozen feet which later had to be amputated. Another died a month later from complications of exposure. Apparrently death was a safer place than the boarding school for Molly ; she was found frozen to death under a tree clutching a small bag of candy in her hands. A trial of school administrators ensued which amounted to ducking any sort of responsibilty. The girls, learning English as a second language, were demeaned as "mentally deficient:" Any strapping that occuured was "light" and "not done in anger." The matron was not held responsible for any misconduct even thouh the superintendent wrote a complaint on December 6, 1916, claiming "she is physically unfit for the duties of a matron..she has no force...no control...seems unlikely and undesirable." Perhaps upon discovering the "desertion" of the girls, the superintendent did not feel the Matron hit them hard enough. Records found at National Archives, #75 |
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