She had spent her life demonstrating warrior courage.

At the end, she was demonstrating a different kind.

The Women in Her Household

The wives in Woman Chief’s household have received surprisingly little attention in most accounts of her life, perhaps because they don’t fit easily into the categories that outsider observers were most comfortable with.

They were real people, however, and the household they managed was a real institution with real social and economic significance.

Denig’s account notes that Woman Chief had “two or three young women as wives” at the time of his writing, with later sources bringing the number to four.