The Persistence of Questions

After everything that can be recovered from the available record is recovered, significant questions about Woman Chief’s life remain genuinely open.

The question of her own understanding of her identity — how she thought about her gender, her origins, her position within Crow society — is completely inaccessible through any available source.

The outsider accounts that document her life do so entirely from outside perspectives.

What she knew, what she thought, what she understood herself to be: these are among the questions the historical record cannot answer.