They could and did participate in battle under specific circumstances — when the camp itself was under attack, when a close family member had been killed, when the extraordinary demands of the moment overrode the normal social divisions of labor.

The accounts mention women riding out alongside warriors, women using weapons when soldiers entered the camp, women actively encouraging fighters and sometimes joining in the fighting.

Moving Robe Woman is the most documented of these women, but she was not unique in her actions.

There is also a category of participation that the Lakota accounts describe more extensively than the combat itself: the role of women in the aftermath.

After the battle was won — after Reno’s men were pinned on their bluff and Custer’s men were dead — the Lakota women went to the battlefield.