It is not a curiosity.

It is history.

It is history that helps us understand who the Northern Cheyenne were — not the one-dimensional “hostiles” of Army reports, not the romantic primitives of Wild West mythology, but a people of extraordinary resilience, complexity, and courage, with their own histories, their own heroes, their own ways of honoring the human beings who stood up when standing up was required.

Buffalo Calf Road Woman stood up.

Her people remembered.

Now the wider world is beginning to listen.

EXTENDED SECTION: THE BATTLE IN CONTEXT — THE THREE COLUMNS AND WHAT WENT WRONG

The campaign of 1876 — the so-called Great Sioux War — was the largest military operation the United States had ever conducted against a Native population on the northern plains.

Understanding its strategic design, and how completely it collapsed, is essential to understanding the full significance of what happened at the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn.

General William T.