It was understood by everyone around her as a legitimate and even admirable act.

But it began with grief.

It began with the news that her brother Deeds — probably a young man, maybe a teenager — had been killed in the early contact between the soldiers and the camp’s outskirts.

The grief she carried into the battle is the emotional core of her story.

It is what makes her account of Little Bighorn different from the tactical and strategic accounts that dominate the military history literature.

Those accounts are about formations and orders and the disposition of forces.