Pine Leaf in Beckwourth’s memoir is a dramatic figure who performs feats of prowess that strain credibility, who has a romantic relationship with Beckwourth himself, and who exists primarily as a vehicle for adventure narrative.

This version is entertaining.

It is not reliable.

The more subtle version of romanticization appears in accounts that emphasize her “warrior woman” status in ways that treat her as a mythological Amazon rather than a specific historical person in a specific cultural context.

The “Absaroka Amazon” label that Denig and Kurz applied to her was their version of this romanticization — useful as a way of conveying her extraordinary character to outside audiences, but misleading as a description of how she was understood within her own community.

Within the Crow community, she was not an Amazon — a mythological figure from outside their cultural tradition.