It is a case of mainstream history having alternative narratives that it preferred, and those alternative narratives not having room for her.

The popular history of the American West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was constructed around specific figures and specific story types.

The mountain man, the cavalry officer, the settler, the outlaw, the sheriff — these were the characters of the western mythology that Hollywood and popular publishing created.

Occasionally, a Native American figure broke through into this mythology — Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Cochise — but always as the adversary of the American protagonists, not as a subject with their own story.

The specific figure of a woman chief did not fit any of these story types.