[1] On the fourth day after the Wounded Knee massacre, when a US Army detail went out to bury the dead, Zintkála was found on the battlefield under a covering of snow, still tied and protected on her frozen mother's back.

Although the exact member of the search party who found her is disputed, Charles Eastman and George E. Bartlett were among the physician team.

Zintkála Nuni received several other names within the first month of her discovery, including Maggie C. Nailor, Brings White Horse, Okicize Wanji Cinca, and Margaret Elizabeth Colby.

Buffalo Bill Cody, alongside press agent Major John Burke also took interest in the baby, arranging for her to be given to the Nailor family in Washington DC.

When it was arranged that Colby should take custody of the child, Annie Yellow Bird took Zintkála Nuni to the nearby hostile Indian camp.

Colby, intent on taking his 'prized relic', disguised himself as a half-blood Seneca Indian and rode into Red Cloud's camp to demand the child.

[11] According to her biographer, because she was raised by a privileged, white family yet was sent to segregated boarding schools for her education, Zintkála suffered through a childhood of prejudice and rejection by both relatives and classmates.

[18] Later, she joined the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which had merged with Sells-Floto Circus for the 1914–15 season, before starting her own vaudeville entertainment business with husband and fellow-performer Dick Allen.

[21][22] During her youth, Zintkála Nuni was frequently visited by prominent Native American figures, including Hawaiian Queen Liluokalani, fellow Wounded Knee survivors, and Red Cloud.

[23] Based on speculation that she may have been the daughter of Black-Day Woman, youngest wife of Sitting Bull, Zintkála Nuni often attempted to reach the South Dakota tribe with whom she most identified with.

"[25] Zintkála Nuni formed a close friendship with fellow Wounded Knee child survivor Mary Thomas.

[27] In December 1915, Zintkála Nuni's allotment on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation was sold without approval, provoking her and her third husband to move from a hotel room to his parents' home in Hanford, California three years later.

The marriage took place in Washington because of miscegenation laws in the state of Oregon preventing Native American and Anglo-American inter-marriage.

Her second son, Clyde, was born around the same time as her marriage to Keith and was given to a Native American woman in California in 1916, due to Nuni's inability to properly care for the child.