Whether the specific Crow categories that explained her situation to her contemporaries can be mapped onto modern English terms is a genuinely difficult question that historians continue to work through.

The respectful approach is to acknowledge the complexity, to resist forcing her story into frameworks that may not fit, and to let the documented facts speak for themselves as much as possible.

What is clear is that she lived a life that exceeded the conventional expectations for women in Crow society, and that she did so with the recognition and support of her community.

The specific cultural meaning she and her contemporaries attached to that life is less recoverable than the life itself.