She did not survive to dictate memoirs or to interact extensively with American government officials in ways that would have created documentary records.

The fur traders who knew her wrote about her, but their accounts were specialized and not widely read.

The popular press of the era was not systematically documenting the lives of Crow chiefs.

She was known primarily through accounts that either distorted her (Beckwourth’s fictionalized memoir) or that were written in specialist contexts for specialist audiences (Denig’s ethnographic reports).

Neither channel was designed to produce the kind of popular historical memory that attaches to figures like Geronimo or Sitting Bull.

None of these reasons reflect anything about the inadequacy of her achievement.