PRETTY SHIELD

(1856–1944)

Medicine womanof the Apsáalooke (“Children of the Large-Beaked Bird,” often now calledCrow) during the 19th-century transition to reservation life. She told her life story to Frank Linderman through an interpreter and using sign language, and he published it asRed Mother(1932), later reprinted asPretty-Shield:Medicine Woman of the Crows. This includes Pretty Shield’s narration of everyday life, as well as hermedicinepractice anddream visions, and is considered “easily the feminine equivalent of Neihardt’sBlack Elk Speaks.” Her husband, Goes Ahead, was one of the scouts for the U.S. Seventh Cavalry’s assault on theLakotathat culminated in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Pretty Shield’s granddaughter, Alma Snell, authored a memoir of life with her grandmother,Grandmother’s Grandchild(2000).