12/04/2025
My hunka 🖤🌻✨✊🏾
There were brave women on the battlefield too.
Among them stood Moving Robe Woman, a proud Hunkpapa Lakota—Sitting Bull’s own people.
From a young age, she walked the warrior’s path. At just 17, she joined a war party against the Crow. By July 1876, around age 23, she was camped with the Sioux and Lakota at the Greasy Grass—what history calls the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
That morning, she was simply digging turnips when a rider thundered past, warning the women to flee with their children. Custer’s soldiers were coming. Moving Robe Woman hurried back to her lodge, only to hear the news that would carve itself into her heart—her brother, One Hawk, had been killed in an earlier clash with Custer’s men.
Grief turned to fire. She braided her hair, painted her face the bold red of battle, mounted her horse, and lifted her brother’s war staff. With fierce resolve, she rode straight into the fight.
“I was a woman,” she later said. “But I was not afraid.”
Her courage strengthened the warriors around her, pushing them to defend their homeland with everything they had. By day’s end, the Native forces achieved a legendary victory—Custer and all 268 of his men were dead. History says at least one fell by Moving Robe Woman’s own hand.
But victory did not mean celebration. “No one danced that night,” she recalled. “We mourned our own dead.”
Moving Robe Woman lived a long life, passing away in 1935 at Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota, around the age of 81. Her story remains a testament to courage, grief, and an unbreakable spirit. 🐎🔥🌾