By the time Joseph Medicine Crow returned to Montana, he had touched or struck an enemy in combat, taken an enemy weapon, successfully led men through danger, and captured enemy horses.

The elders of his nation recognized that he had fulfilled the old requirements.

He came home a war chief.

That dramatic fact has become the most famous part of his life.

It is also the easiest part to misunderstand.

Medicine Crow was not simply a warrior whose story happened to survive into the modern age.

He was an anthropologist, historian, educator, writer, veteran, public speaker, cultural bridge-builder, and one of the last people alive to have learned the Battle of the Little Bighorn directly from someone who had been there.

He became the first member of the Crow Nation to earn a master’s degree.

Decades after the war, the United States awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

France honored him for his wartime service.