EPILOGUE: THE NAMES WE REMEMBER

There is a question worth sitting with, as this story comes to its close.

Why do we know Custer’s name, and not hers?

It is not because he mattered more.

The evidence suggests, if anything, the opposite — that his tactical recklessness contributed to the deaths of two hundred and ten men under his command, while her courage saved a life and inspired a community at a moment when inspiration was desperately needed.

It is not because what he did was more important.

He lost a battle.

She preserved a piece of her community’s heart.

It is because the people who wrote history were writing about him — because the dominant culture’s historical memory was built to center the experiences of men who held official titles, who served the American state, who died in ways that fit the national mythology of heroic sacrifice.

The people who remembered her were writing in a different medium — in story, in ceremony, in the names they gave to the places where things happened.