From this thin record, historians have reconstructed the outline of an extraordinary life.

The reconstruction has gaps — enormous gaps, particularly around her early years and the specific details of most of her military engagements.

What we know is that she existed, that she achieved what Denig said she achieved, and that she died as he described.

The thinness of the record is itself a historical fact.

It tells us something about whose lives were considered worth documenting in the mid-nineteenth century American West.

Fur traders documented their own activities.