It describes the chaos and intensity of the fighting, the movement of warriors across the battlefield, the roles of individual leaders, and the experiences of the people in the camp.

Wooden Leg’s account mentions women in the context of the battle — not in the specific fighting that destroyed Custer’s column, which happened at a distance from the main camp, but in the broader context of the day.

Women were present throughout the day of the battle: carrying supplies, attending to the wounded, and — in some cases — fighting in defense of the camp when Reno’s column initially attacked the southern end.

The Cheyenne oral tradition regarding Buffalo Calf Road Woman’s specific role at Little Bighorn — the claim that she struck Custer in the final moments of the battle — represents a particular strand of testimony that was preserved within the Northern Cheyenne community and shared more publicly in 2005.

This testimony, coming from elders who spoke from the accumulated memory of their community, carries the weight that any long-preserved oral historical tradition carries — significant, worthy of serious engagement, and impossible to evaluate by the same standards as contemporary documentary evidence without understanding how oral traditions work.

The claim that a specific individual struck Custer — and that this individual was Buffalo Calf Road Woman — cannot be corroborated by any surviving external source.

No soldier survived to describe the final moments of Custer’s command in detail.

The chaos of the final action makes precise reconstruction of any specific event extremely difficult.

What can be said, without overreaching, is this: the Northern Cheyenne community preserves the memory of Buffalo Calf Road Woman as having been centrally present and active at the Little Bighorn.

The specific claim about striking Custer is a part of this memory, preserved by elders who spoke from their community’s oral tradition.