The main character of "The Woman Who Loved a Bear" is Walks with the Sun, a young Cheyenne woman who, while helping her father retrieve some buffalo meat, is taken prisoner by a Crow raiding party and made a slave. Little space is given to describing her, except that she was beautiful. One learns of her character primarily through her behavior, rather than through exposition. She is submissive to the Fifth Man Over, her Crow owner and husband, and she does not defy Fifth Man Over's two other wives, who abuse her every chance they have. This quiet submission does not bode well for her development into a strong person, but she is intelligent and perhaps realizes that Crow hunters would be able to track her down if she ran away.

Being a slave does not seem to offer Walks with the Sun opportunities...