The complete description includes the 1,000 horses shot on the plains south of the canyon, the lodges reduced to ash, the winter food stores burned, and the families who spent the following months on the Staked Plains without adequate shelter, food, or horses.

It includes the decision-making of leaders like Lone Wolf, Maman-ti, Iron Shirt, and Poor Buffalo — the specific people who were responsible for specific bands and who made specific decisions about how to respond to specific impossible situations.

It includes the families who came to the agencies through the winter and spring of 1874-1875, not as a defeated army but as people who had run out of material options.

And it includes the people who are the descendants of all of these — the enrolled members of the nations whose histories include this canyon and this battle — who exist today because the people who fled the canyon in September 1874 survived.