She was not fighting for an abstraction.

She was fighting against a specific, known alternative that she and everyone around her had experienced.

The Rivers She Crossed

The specific rivers that appear in the accounts of the Apache resistance — the Rio Grande, the rivers of the Sierra Madre, the San Francisco, the Gila — were not merely geographical features.

They were the practical boundaries of the Apache world during the resistance, the barriers that pursuing forces used to limit the resisters’ movement, and the obstacles that the resisters had to overcome repeatedly in order to maintain their freedom.

Crossing a major river in flood — one of the specific challenges documented in the accounts of Lozen’s crossing with the pregnant woman — was not a trivial undertaking.