The number of different weapons represented in the cartridge cases — the variety of rifles and calibers present among the Indigenous combatants — reflected a well-armed fighting force, not the primitive bows-and-arrows enemy of the popular imagination.

Many Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were armed with repeating rifles, some more modern than the single-shot Springfield carbines carried by the soldiers.

Physical evidence from the Reno-Benteen area — where the southern attack on the Hunkpapa circle occurred — confirmed the violence and chaos of that phase of the fighting.

This was the area where Moving Robe Woman entered the battle, and the archaeological evidence from this zone is consistent with the accounts of intense, close-quarters fighting in and around the camp itself.

THE RENAMING OF THE MONUMENT