The specific circumstances of Woman Chief’s death in 1854 deserve more extended treatment than they sometimes receive, because they reveal something important about both the world she navigated and the specific qualities that defined her leadership.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 had created, at least temporarily, conditions that encouraged diplomatic activity between nations that had been at war.

The U.S. government’s interest was in reducing conflict that interfered with the emigrant traffic on the Oregon Trail and other routes.

The various nations’ interests in the treaty were more complex and varied by nation.

For Woman Chief, the treaty seems to have created a genuine opportunity to address something personal as well as political: the relationship with the Gros Ventre, the nation she had been born to before being captured as a child.

She had spent her adult life fighting Crow enemies, which sometimes meant fighting Gros Ventre enemies.