Buffalo Calf Road Woman, b. ca. 1844-1879

It was not until 2005 that Northern Cheyenne storytellers broke their silence about what really happened at the Battle of The Little Big Horn-known mainly to Native Americans as the Battle of Greasy Grass, and to non-Natives as Custer's Last Stand.

But it took more than a century before Buffalo Calf Road Woman, a Northern Cheyenne who was also known as Buffalo Calf Trail Woman-was revealed as the Native American heroine who played a pivotal role in the conflict's ending.

When Chief Comes in Sight, her brother, was wounded in the 1876 Battle of the Rosebud (as the United States called it ) and...