She became an expert hunter and rider while still a child.

She trained in warrior skills in a society where those skills were assigned primarily to men.

When the crisis came — when a Blackfoot raiding party threatened a trading post and no male warrior stepped forward — she rode out alone and prevailed.

She built on that first recognition over decades.

She led war parties.

She accumulated war honors in the precise, publicly verified way that Crow warrior culture accounted for such things.

She became wealthy in horses, which was the currency of plains economic life.