He was trying to describe accurately.

The specific context of his meeting with Woman Chief on October 27, 1851 — introducing her to Kurz as “the famous Absaroka amazon” — reflects his genuine awareness of her fame within the region.

He was presenting her to an outsider as someone notable, and the framing he used (“amazon”) reflects his own cultural vocabulary more than her identity.

But the substance of what he documented about her — the war record, the chieftaincy rank, the household structure, the personal meeting — comes from direct observation and specifically from twelve years of personal acquaintance.

This is unusually strong documentation for a mid-nineteenth-century Native American woman of non-European heritage.