Born: 1806 (circa), United States
Died: 1854
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Pine Leaf, Woman Chief
This biography was originally published in the World History Encyclopedia and was written by Joshua J. Mark. It is shared in line with the Encyclopedia’s policies under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Pine Leaf (probably the same person as Woman Chief) was a Crow warrior who became famous for her courage and skill in battle. She was born a member of the Gros Ventres nation but was kidnapped by a Crow raiding party when she was around the age of 10. Raised by the Crow as one of their own, she rejected traditional feminine roles and devoted herself to hunting and warfare, encouraged by her adoptive father who had lost his sons. Her victories over enemy nations elevated her to the status of chief, and she was referred to by Euro-American writers as Woman Chief, but the explorer and fur trader James P. Beckwourth describes this woman by the name Pine Leaf, leading many modern-day scholars to the conclusion that Pine Leaf was also known as Woman Chief. Disdaining ‘women’s work’, she married four women who kept house for her while she raided enemy villages and fended off encroachments by white settlers. Ironically, she was killed in an ambush by a Gros Ventres raiding party, dying at the hands of her own people.