Susan could not control every meaning attached to her.

What she could control was where she placed her labor.

She placed most of it at home.

That is why it is misleading to frame her as a woman who “left tribal life behind.”

She did not.

She moved through institutions that were attempting to reshape Native life, then returned to work inside the consequences.

The ambiguity of her position also makes her more historically useful than a perfectly modern hero would be.

She did not anticipate every twenty-first-century critique of assimilation.

She belonged to her own era.

She accepted ideas modern readers may question.