She managed a household of four wives.

She participated in the governance of a band of 160 lodges.

She was celebrated in songs that her community sang about great warriors.

She attempted to make peace with the people she had been born among, taking a genuine personal risk in the service of a political and perhaps personal goal.

She was killed for it.

She lived approximately 48 years — from around 1806 to 1854 — in one of the most dynamic and dangerous periods in the history of the northern plains.

She spent most of those years in active military and political life, building and exercising authority in a society that had not been designed to give it to her.