The horse was also wealth itself.

Crow men accumulated horses as a primary marker of economic success.

A man with many horses was a wealthy man; a man with few horses was poor.

Raiding for horses was not simply military activity in the abstract — it was also economic activity, the acquisition of wealth in the form most valued by the society.

Woman Chief accumulated horses.

Denig’s account notes that she was wealthy in horses — that she had large herds.

This was a specific marker of her economic and social success, equivalent in Crow terms to what wealth in land or money might mean in a European or American context.