The band was imprisoned in barracks and eventually cut off from food and water in the dead of winter in an attempt to force them to return to Indian Territory.

On the night of January 9, 1879, in temperatures that had fallen to thirty below zero, they broke out of the barracks.

The soldiers fired into the fleeing crowd.

Dozens were killed, including women and children.

Dull Knife and a few survivors eventually escaped.

Buffalo Calf Road Woman’s exact movements during this period are not entirely clear in the historical record.

What is known is that she did not survive to see her people finally granted a permanent reservation in their northern homeland — which eventually came in 1884, when the Northern Cheyenne Reservation was established in southeastern Montana.

She died in 1879, probably in the aftermath of the Exodus, before the Northern Cheyenne found their way home.

She was, most estimates suggest, in her late twenties or early thirties.

SECTION 11: THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HER DEATH — AND WHAT THEY REVEAL