It was a story of successful resistance, of warriors and women protecting the largest gathering of Plains peoples in the history of the nineteenth century.

Moving Robe Woman was part of that story.

Not at its edges.

At its center.

THE WORLD THAT MADE HER

To understand who Moving Robe Woman was, you have to understand the Hunkpapa Lakota — and to understand the Hunkpapa, you have to understand something about the Lakota nation and the world it was built for.

The Lakota — sometimes called Teton Sioux — were one of the great nations of the northern Great Plains.

By the mid-nineteenth century, they had expanded westward from the Great Lakes region over several generations, following the bison herds that sustained their way of life, and had established themselves as one of the most powerful military forces on the Plains.

Their territory covered an enormous swath of what is now North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana.

The Lakota were not a single centralized nation with a unified government.

They were a confederation of seven divisions — the Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires — each with its own territory, its own leaders, and its own character.

The Hunkpapa occupied the northernmost range, near what is now the Missouri River, in the region that would become the Dakota Territory.

The Hunkpapa were known for their fierce defense of their territory and their resistance to American encroachment.

They had produced some of the most formidable leaders of the nineteenth-century Lakota world, including Sitting Bull — Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake — who was both a warrior chief and a wičháša wakȟáŋ, a holy man, whose vision would shape the gathering at the Greasy Grass.