CLOSING EXTENDED REFLECTION: ON HISTORY, MEMORY, AND THE LIVING PAST

We tend to think of history as something fixed — as events that happened, were recorded, were interpreted, and now stand in a settled relationship to the present.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn happened in 1876.

It is over.

It is history.

But history is not fixed.

It is continuously revised — not because the events themselves change, but because who is allowed to speak about them changes, and what questions we think to ask changes, and what sources we are willing to take seriously changes.

The story of Buffalo Calf Road Woman has always existed.

The Northern Cheyenne have always known it.

The oral tradition that preserved it was not a rumor or a legend constructed after the fact — it was the community’s living memory of what happened, carried forward by people who were in some cases the children or grandchildren of witnesses.