Modest in manner is an unexpected detail — someone with her war record and her status might have been expected to project more aggressive authority, but she apparently did not.

The scalp she presented to Denig on that occasion is the detail that most struck Kurz — and the detail that most clearly captures the combination of qualities she embodied.

She was pleasant in social interaction, and she was also a person who had recently taken an enemy’s scalp in battle and who considered it appropriate to present this as a social gift.

Kurz’s visual documentation of the northern plains is less well-known than his journal, but it represents another form of record from the same period.