The idea of a Native American woman who had built a warrior career and achieved political authority through that career was not a role that the mythology knew what to do with.

Beckwourth’s memoir, which gave Woman Chief a version of popular reach through the figure of Pine Leaf, actually made the problem worse in some ways.

His Pine Leaf was a romantic figure — dramatic, exotic, ultimately centered on her relationship with Beckwourth himself.

The real Woman Chief was not a supporting character in anyone else’s story.

She was the subject of her own.

The recovery of her real story requires pulling it out of both the romanticized Beckwourth version and the outright absence of most popular historical accounts, and grounding it in the documented reality of Denig’s account.