Sitting Bull’s choice — leading his band north across the Medicine Line into Canada — was one of the few options that preserved genuine freedom in the short term.

But even in Canada, the situation steadily worsened.

The buffalo that had sustained the Lakota for generations were disappearing south of the border, and the Canadian government made clear that it would not provide food for the Lakota refugees.

By 1881, Sitting Bull and his remaining followers crossed back into the United States and surrendered.

Moving Robe Woman’s movements through these years are not precisely documented.

What is known is that she eventually settled at Standing Rock, within the reservation system that had been established to contain and manage the Lakota people whose freedom had been extinguished.