Pretty-Shield

Pretty-Shield lived from 1856 to 1944 and is the main character of the book, Pretty-Shield. She was an elderly woman of the Crow Nation at the time she was interviewed from the book by Frank Linderman. She provided the first record of Native American life from a woman's perspective.

Pretty-Shield was born to her mother, Kills-in-the-Night and her famed warrior father, Crazy-sister-in-law. She was one of eleven children, the fourth. He grandfather named her at four days old. When she was three, she left her mother to live with her aunt, Strikes-with-an-Ax because her aunt had lost her two daughters. She grew up going back and forth between River and Mountain Crow.

Pretty-Shield claimed to have a happy childhood, during the days when the Crow roamed among the buffalo herds. She grew up happy and married Goes-ahead when she was sixteen, after Goes-ahead had taken her older sister in marriage...