To answer that question, you have to understand who she was, where she came from, what kind of world she moved through, and what kind of leadership she built in it.

You have to understand what the Crow meant by a chief, and what it meant for someone born outside the nation to rise to that position through nothing but her own capability.

Her story begins not on Crow land, but on enemy land.

Born to a Different People

The woman who would become Bíawacheeitchish was born, by most accounts, around the year 1806, to the Gros Ventre people — a nation also known as the Atsina, linguistically related to the Arapaho and occupying territory to the north and east of Crow country in what is now Montana and Canada.

The Gros Ventre and the Crow were not friends.

They raided each other’s horse herds.

They took each other’s people.

They fought over territory and resources in the competitive ecology of the northern plains.

The Gros Ventre did not know, and could not have known, that the girl born among them around 1806 would one day lead Crow warriors against Gros Ventre enemies.

When she was approximately ten years old, she was captured by a Crow raiding party.

The specific details of the capture — where it happened, what circumstances surrounded it, whether anyone was killed — are not preserved in the historical record with precision.

What is preserved is the result: she was brought back to Crow territory and placed in the care of a Crow man who adopted her as his own child.

This was not unusual.