Understanding this does not require condemning every individual soldier who fought in the 1876 campaign.

Most of them were men carrying out orders in conditions they didn’t fully understand, for reasons largely beyond their individual choice.

Understanding it requires seeing the conflict from both sides simultaneously — holding the complexity of a situation in which individual courage and individual tragedy existed on both sides, while the structural forces driving the conflict were rooted in policies that were, by any honest assessment, unjust.

Buffalo Calf Road Woman rode into battle in the context of this larger struggle.

Her courage was personal — the courage to cross open ground to reach her brother.

But it was also political, in the deepest sense: the courage of a person who understood what was at stake and acted anyway.

EXTENDED SECTION: BLACK COYOTE — THE HUSBAND SHE LEFT BEHIND

Any full account of Buffalo Calf Road Woman must acknowledge the man she was married to, because their relationship and its fate illuminate the personal cost of the years she lived through.

Black Coyote — sometimes called Black Coyote or Noisy Walking — was a Northern Cheyenne warrior who was present at both the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn.

He was a man of standing in his community, known as someone of courage and strong opinion.