This was not a large diplomatic delegation with formal credentials.

It was more like a reconnaissance mission, an attempt to open a conversation.

Near Fort Union — the same trading post where she had been introduced to Kurz three years earlier — the party was encountered by Gros Ventre warriors.

What followed is documented only in its result: she was killed.

Whether the Gros Ventre warriors recognized her, whether there was any exchange before the violence, whether the attack was premeditated or opportunistic — none of these details are preserved in the historical record.

Denig, who recorded the event, was clearly struck by its tragic irony: the woman who had spent decades fighting enemies at tremendous personal risk, who had survived countless raids and battles, was killed on a peace mission to the people she had been born among.