WHY THE DORMAN ATTRIBUTION HAS ENDURED

The claim that Moving Robe Woman killed or participated in the death of Isaiah Dorman has endured in popular accounts partly because it is a vivid and specific detail in a story that otherwise has few such details from the Lakota perspective.

Isaiah Dorman was an unusual figure at Little Bighorn — one of the only Black men on the battlefield, a civilian interpreter who had lived among the Lakota and who was known to some of the Lakota warriors by name.

His death was noticed, documented, and later described by some Lakota accounts as having been carried out in a different manner from the deaths of other soldiers — suggesting that his presence was recognized as distinctive.