The Army’s initial reports about the battle were, in some cases, significantly wrong about what had happened and how.

The accounts collected from Lakota and Cheyenne warriors — by journalists, by Army officers, by anthropologists and historians over the following decades — provided information about the battle that the military’s own records did not contain.

Moving Robe Woman’s story survived in both dimensions: in the specific recorded interview that captured her account in her own words (as translated), and in the ongoing Lakota cultural memory of the battle and the woman who rode into it after her brother was killed.

The survival of this story is not inevitable.