Woman Chief represented the Crow world — the most accomplished warrior the Crow had produced in living memory, a chief with a war record that Denig described as unprecedented, traveling with the kind of confidence that someone of her status would naturally carry.

The encounter was recorded by both Denig and Kurz, and the accounts are illuminating precisely in what they reveal about the observers as much as about the observed.

Kurz found her “modest in manner and good-natured” — a description that captures something real about the impression she made, but that also reveals his surprise, the implicit assumption that someone with her reputation would be fierce or fierce-seeming in casual social settings.

The scalp she presented to Denig on that occasion — a Blackfoot scalp from a recent battle — was presented in a matter-of-fact way.