She was doing what men did, and being recognized for what she did, while maintaining the visual presentation of a woman.

This distinction complicates any simple analysis of her life as “gender reversal” or “cross-dressing” — both terms that have sometimes been applied to her but that don’t quite capture what Denig’s careful account describes.

The James Beckwourth Question

Any account of Woman Chief has to reckon with James Beckwourth and the complicated document his memoir represents.

James Beckwourth was a mixed-race frontiersman — his mother was enslaved, his father a Virginia gentleman — who worked as a trapper, scout, and trader in the American West during the early and middle nineteenth century.

He spent time among the Crow, learned their language and customs, and eventually dictated an autobiography that was published in 1856 under the title The Life and Adventures of James P.