The observers’ surprise at their coexistence reveals their assumptions more than it reveals anything about her.

The Crow World in the 1850s

By the time of Woman Chief’s death in 1854, the world that had produced her was already changing in ways that would be devastating to the Crow nation and to the plains nations generally.

The smallpox epidemics of 1837 and subsequent years had killed enormous numbers of plains people — the Mandan, who had been powerful neighbors of the Crow, were reduced from a population of perhaps 15,000 to fewer than 200 in a single year.

The Crow were struck hard but survived as a functioning nation.