Victorio and his band were relocated to San Carlos from their Ojo Caliente homeland after the government eliminated the Ojo Caliente reservation.

The specific experience of San Carlos — the conditions, the management, the contrast between what had been promised and what was delivered — was one of the direct causes of the Victorio War.

Lozen experienced San Carlos.

She was there when the decisions about resistance were made.

She understood from direct experience what the alternative to resistance looked like.

Her commitment to the resistance was not based on an idealized vision of what freedom might be; it was based on specific, firsthand knowledge of what captivity on a poorly managed reservation actually was.

This personal knowledge is part of what the oral accounts preserve when they describe her complete commitment to the resistance.