The result is a scholarly literature that is thorough on the events observable from outside the community — the military actions, the surrender, the death at Fort Robinson — and much thinner on the internal community dimensions of those events, including the burial.

The scholars who have been most attentive to this limitation — who have been explicit about what they don’t know, who have engaged with Lakota oral tradition without overstating what it confirms — have produced the most honest accounts of the burial mystery.

The scholars who have been less careful — who have treated specific location accounts as confirmed, who have presented oral tradition as documentary evidence, who have resolved uncertainties in favor of a more definitive narrative — have produced accounts that are less reliable as guides to what is actually known.

The Living Question: What Do The Lakota Want?