What she had not lost, perhaps, was the sense of who she was — the woman who had ridden across open ground to save her brother, who had walked a thousand miles home rather than be confined to a place that was not her people’s place.

The woman whose courage her community named a battle after.

Whatever she felt in the last months of her life — whatever she thought about the world she was living in and the world she had lost — she carried it with her to the end.

The Northern Cheyenne carry her name forward.

EXTENDED SECTION: THE DULL KNIFE FIGHT AND THE BROADER NORTHERN CHEYENNE EXPERIENCE

The winter campaign of 1876-77, which included the destruction of Dull Knife’s village in November 1876, is essential context for understanding the world Buffalo Calf Road Woman inhabited in the months after the Rosebud and Little Bighorn.

Colonel Ranald Mackenzie’s attack on Dull Knife’s village — sometimes called the Dull Knife Fight or the Battle of Red Fork — was one of the most successful operations of the winter campaign from the Army’s perspective, and one of the most devastating from the Northern Cheyenne’s.

The village was in the Bighorn Mountains, in a canyon that the Northern Cheyenne had chosen specifically for its defensive qualities and its concealment from Army patrols.

It was home to several hundred people — warriors, women, children, elders.

It was a winter village, meaning the community had laid in food stores for the cold months ahead and had settled in for the season.