The circumstances surrounding Buffalo Calf Road Woman’s death illuminate, in the most direct and painful way, the broader context of what the Northern Cheyenne survived.

Historical accounts suggest that she died while her band was in or near a military prison in the aftermath of the Exodus — possibly Fort Keogh in Montana, where many Northern Cheyenne who had surrendered after the Exodus were held.

Some accounts indicate she died of disease, which was rampant in the overcrowded, poorly supplied conditions of military confinement.

Other accounts suggest other causes related to the violence of the period.

What is consistent across the accounts is that she died young, in conditions that were the direct consequence of the United States government’s policies toward the Northern Cheyenne — the forced removal to Indian Territory, the inadequate provisions, the military pursuit of the Exodus, the imprisonment that followed.

Her husband Black Coyote survived longer.

He remained a figure in Northern Cheyenne community life into the 1880s and 1890s, and some later accounts suggest he was eventually implicated in incidents of resistance that led to further conflict with authorities.

Their daughter — the child whose existence tells us that Buffalo Calf Road Woman was not only a warrior but a mother — survived.

She was still young when her mother died, young enough that her life was still mostly ahead of her.

The daughter grew up on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, in the homeland that her people had fought and walked a thousand miles to reach.