The physical descriptions broadly overlap.

The time periods and geographic settings largely correspond.

The general contours of the warrior career are consistent.

But Beckwourth’s account cannot be taken as straightforward history.

His memoir is notoriously unreliable in its specifics.

He embellished, he invented, he adjusted his own role in events to make himself more central and more heroic.

The account he gives of Pine Leaf is rich with detail, but the detail cannot be verified against independent sources and has the character of romantic adventure writing more than documentary observation.

Denig, who was skeptical of Beckwourth’s reliability generally, did not identify Pine Leaf and Woman Chief as the same person in his own account, though he was clearly describing someone who fit the general profile of Beckwourth’s Pine Leaf.