In this mythology, Indian warriors were male.

Indian women were background figures — waiting in camp, processing hides, raising children, occasionally being rescued or captured by the white heroes who were the narrative center.

This mythology was never accurate.

But it was persistent, and its persistence shaped what Americans knew — and what historians thought to look for — in the documentary record.

The actual history of Plains cultures, as documented by ethnographers who worked carefully with Native communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, presents a more complex picture.

Plains cultures did generally divide the work of war and the work of the camp along gender lines — warriors were typically male, and the domestic work of maintaining the camp was typically done by women.

But these lines were not absolute.

There were recognized categories in multiple Plains nations for individuals whose gender identity and social role did not conform to the binary male/female division — the winkte among the Lakota, the hemaneh among the Cheyenne — people who occupied a distinct social role, often with spiritual significance.

And there were women who fought.

Not just in the desperate, unplanned defense of an attacked camp — though that happened regularly and is well-documented.