His analysis of the various claims and accounts is careful and honest: he identifies where accounts agree and where they diverge, where physical evidence would be expected to exist if a location were confirmed and where the absence of such evidence is telling.

The conclusion he reaches — that the location is genuinely uncertain — is not a failure of scholarship.

It is the honest result of applying scholarly standards to a body of evidence that was deliberately kept incomplete.

Edward Kadlecek and Mabell Kadlecek’s 1981 book “To Kill an Eagle” included accounts from Lakota elders who had personal or family connections to the events.

Their work documented the oral tradition as it existed in the mid-twentieth century, before many of the older people who carried specific memories had died.