Ledwena Mowitch's Plea for Safety
A young woman escapes a violent marriage through the court system, forcing a reckoning for her abusive husband.
Ledwena Mowitch, a pretty Indian girl, was given a divorce by Judge Easterday, after showing the court that her husband, Tommy Mowitch, had beaten her cruelly and had threatened her life on numerous occasions. Ledwena, whose last name is Soloman, appeared to be nothing more than a child as she sat in the witness chair in the large empty court room and told the kind-hearted judge her pitiful story. Tommy Mowitch has a long police record, and is said to be one of the 'bad' Indians of the reservation. The court ordered him to pay a doctor's bill of $37, incurred on one of the occasions when he had beaten his wife into insensibility.
“Ledwena, whose last name is Soloman, appeared to be nothing more than a child as she sat in the witness chair in the large empty court room and told the kind-hearted judge her pitiful story.”
Reporting on the violence experienced by Indigenous women in this era was often filtered through paternalistic and racist lenses, yet this account documents a rare, successful legal intervention against domestic abuse in the early 20th century.
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