The reasons for not disclosing the location are not less relevant in the twenty-first century than they were in 1877.

The concern about commercialization, about disturbance, about the appropriation of a sacred site — these concerns are if anything more relevant given what has happened to other Lakota sacred sites in the intervening century.

The absence of physical evidence that would enable independent confirmation.

Without a confirmed physical location, the mystery remains open regardless of what the oral tradition says.

These structural conditions explain the persistence of the mystery better than any particular failure of research or investigation.

The Second Opening: What The Mystery Is Really About