The world they survived into was different — the population of neighboring nations had changed dramatically, the power relationships of the plains were shifting, and the increasing presence of American emigrants, soldiers, and settlers was adding new pressures.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, which had briefly created the conditions for the peace mission that killed Woman Chief, was itself a symptom of the changing world.

The U.S. government was attempting to manage relationships with plains nations as part of the broader project of facilitating American emigration and expansion — and those attempts would eventually produce the series of military campaigns that would fundamentally alter the political reality of the northern plains.

Woman Chief lived and died before the worst of this.