This diplomatic initiative was not a sideshow to her military career.

It was the work of a chief who understood that her responsibilities included managing the relationships between her people and the world around them.

The fact that this diplomatic mission ended with her death is one of the most tragic and revealing details of her story.

She rode toward the people she had been born to — the people her adoptive Crow nation had been fighting for her entire adult life — with the intention of building a peace.

And they killed her.