Newspapers described conflicts through settler assumptions.

Native people often preserved their own versions through speech.

If historians accepted only written records, they risked treating the colonizer’s archive as the whole truth.

Medicine Crow knew this problem from the inside.

He had listened to White Man Runs Him and other elders.

He knew that their memories contained information that would never appear in military paperwork.

He also had academic training that allowed him to evaluate evidence critically rather than assuming every remembered detail was automatically perfect.

This placed him in a rare position.

He could defend oral history without pretending memory was infallible.

He could use written evidence without pretending documents were neutral.