Although the native cultures of North America were non-literate, oral tradition and contact with the white people have allowed us to know the names and stories of many of their chiefs and warriors. However, the situation changes when we talk about women, and at least in general terms, we barely know a few names, with the most famous being Pocahontas and Lozen. And if we talk about women who held the leadership of their tribe, even less. So today, we will focus on one whose real name is unknown and was called precisely that: Bíawacheeitchish, which means Female Chief.

As one might imagine, there is little data about her childhood, and the main source of her life is the work The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth: Mountaineer, Scout and Pioneer and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians, whose author, obviously, was James P. Beckwourth. He was a mulatto explorer, the son of a white man and a black slave, born in Virginia at the turn of the 18th to 19th century.

Emancipated by his father, he traveled west to earn a living in the typical occupations of that untamed territory, which he himself mentioned in the title of the book, although other professions would need to be added, such as hunter, trapper, gold seeker, gambler, hotelier, cowboy, merchant, and Indian agent. By the way, the account was not written by him because he could not write and was dictated to Thomas Bonner, an itinerant justice of the peace.

Bíawacheeitchish
Drawing of Pine Leaf included in Beckwourth’s book. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

In the midst of so much activity, Beckwourth lived several years with the Crow People. He was not kidnapped and raised by them since childhood, as a legend spread among the fur traders by Caleb Greenwood, a hunter from Virginia, suggested. He must have heard about him not only because he was married to a mestiza of French and Crow descent, but also because, after all, they were professional colleagues. In reality, Beckwourth had settled with the Crow as an adult, marrying the daughter of a chief, although he had several more wives, one of whom was black. Marriages between Indian women and frontier men were common because they facilitated trade relations.

But aside from benefiting the business, his stay in the tribe, which almost lasted a decade, allowed him two things: one, to reach a privileged status as head of the Dog Clan, which led him to become a war chief, leading raids against Blackfeet enemies; and another, to meet a person as unusual as the aforementioned Bíawacheeitchish. Or so it is believed, as he referred to her as Bar-Chee-am-PE or Pine Leaf, although they were almost certainly the same person.

It was in the 1820s, and Beckwourth’s account is considered exaggerated in almost everything, according to current experts, as he attributes to that woman the promise to kill one hundred enemies before marrying and even claims to have had a romance with her, including a wedding, although it only lasted five weeks because he left. A historian specializing in the subject, Bernard DeVoto, stated in 1931 that Beckwourth’s version is reliable except when it comes to quantities, the romance, and his own importance.

Bíawacheeitchish
James P. Beckwourth circa 1860. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

So, going by the most agreed-upon data, we have a girl born around 1806 somewhere in the northern part of what would later become the state of Montana. It is unknown what name her parents gave her, as they belonged to the Gros Ventre people (big belly), a French term for the indigenous people also known as Atsina (although this term is now obsolete because it is the pejorative word given to them by the Blackfeet People); they referred to themselves as A’ani or A’aninin, which means white clay people. They had no contact with the white people until 1754, and by the time the protagonist of this article was born, their relationship with them was not the best because they provided weapons to their mortal enemies, the Cree Assiniboine.

Furthermore, they were adversaries of the Crow, and it was the latter who took her prisoner when she was about ten years old, after a raid on their camp. It was a fairly common practice among the Native Americans to adopt children captured from the enemy and raise them as their own, so she became the goddaughter of a warrior (Christianized, according to an unlikely version) who had lost his children in the war. He, seeing her inclinations, raised her just like the boys, teaching her to ride horses, shoot a bow, and hunt bison, so she became as skilled as any warrior, and upon her father’s death, she became the leader of her clan.

Such behavior, where an individual assumed the behavioral patterns of both sexes, was not rare; the Spanish left testimony of several cases. In fact, today they are referred to with the Ojibwa expression two spirits (or twisted spirit, according to the translation) to mark that difference, although each tribe had its own terminology; the Zapotecs of Oaxaca (Mexico), for example, used the word muxe. A two spirit male could fight and perform exclusively male ceremonies, such as the purification sauna, while performing tasks traditionally assigned to women, like cooking, while two spirits females did the same but the other way around.

Bíawacheeitchish
Territory of the Gros Ventre. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

All of this was a reflection of the different native conception, spread throughout the continent, of the social roles of sex; in fact, most did not recognize only two but up to four: male, female, male-female, and female-male. In theory, the two-spirits were respected but also feared, which is why, under certain circumstances, they were killed. The norm was that they acted as shamans and healers, among other similar roles (fortune-tellers, matchmakers, bards…), although two-spirits women had their roles expanded to action and even leadership, as in the case we are discussing. They were also attributed visionary powers, and the best example would be the Chiricahua Apache Lozen, sister of the famous Victorio and loyal to Geronimo.

Beckwourth even mentions two other warrior women: Biliíche Héeleelash and Akkeekaahuush, and we know of more in other tribes. But Bíawacheeitchish added the role of chief (bacheeítche), as indicated by her new name. And as such, she led her people when going to war and even personally led a group of warriors with whom she repeatedly fought the Blackfeet People, with the most renowned being one where she attacked the Swartfotten fort, where they had taken refuge alongside white settlers.

She stole horses, fought hand-to-hand if necessary, and practiced scalping, like any of her people. She gained enough prestige to be admitted into the council of chiefs, where she reached the third position among the one hundred sixty male representatives.

Bíawacheeitchish
Portraits by Edwin Thompson Denig and one of his wives. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

As we said before, Bíawacheeitchish maintained her female attire but took four wives, which, besides being significant from a sexual point of view, would also be so from a socioeconomic one, as only someone who had achieved a certain level of wealth could afford such an expense. It is no surprise that legends circulated about her and her clan, comparing her to the queen of the Amazons. It was the work of other white people who met her, as in addition to the aforementioned James Beckwourth, she also had contact with Edwin Thompson Denig, a fur trader who, being the son of a doctor, had some training and often helped scientists gather specimens for the Smithsonian Institute.

Starting in 1851, responding to a request from Father Pierre-Jean De Smet (a Belgian Jesuit missionary working among the Indians on the border between the U.S. and Canada), Denig began taking notes on the customs and daily life of the native tribes. This ethnographic documentation was not only useful to the priest but also to the famous geographer and ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft and to his own memory, as it was published in 1930 under the title Indian Tribes of Missouri. By then, Denig had been dead for seventy-two years, although he left abundant descendants with his three Native wives. His work is not one hundred percent reliable, critics say, but it provides important details about Bíawacheeitchish.

In 1868, it would be Pierre-Jean de Smet who persuaded Sitting Bull to accept peace negotiations with the U.S. government and end the war between white people and native people. This was formalized in the Fort Laramie Treaty, the second treaty with that name. The first was signed on September 17, 1851, and marked the end of hostilities caused by the invasion of Indian territories by waves of immigrants eager to start a new life as settlers, along with the many adventurers who had to cross the Great Plains to reach California, attracted by the Gold Rush of 1848. The U.S. government made agreements with the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara nations.

Bíawacheeitchish
Map created by Pierre-Jean de Smet of the Indian territories recognized in the Fort Laramie Treaty. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Among those who chose to lay down their arms was Bíawacheeitchish, who represented the Crows in the negotiations. Or at least part of them, as not all accepted willingly, despite the treaty recognizing the tribes’ right to their territories in exchange for guaranteeing safe passage between east and west, the so-called Oregon Trail. The truth is that the agreement was violated from the very beginning by both parties.

On one hand, Comanches and Kiowas refused to even attend the meeting with the government, which mistakenly believed it had signed with Native peoples in general, without distinguishing between them. On the other, the army was powerless to stop the flow of settlers and miners (even more so since 1858, after the new gold discovery in Kansas and Nebraska, in what became known as the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush).

In this context, there were internal conflicts among them. Lakotas and Cheyennes united against Crows, and the female chief was heading to Fort Union to achieve a final settlement when she fell into an ambush and lost her life. It was the year 1854, and the tragic paradox was that she was killed by Gros Ventre warriors, that is, from her own birth tribe.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on September 26, 2019: La historia de Bíawacheeitchish, la mujer jefe de los indios crow

SOURCES

James Pierson Beckwourth, The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth

Edwin Thompson Denig, Five Indian Tribes at the Upper Missouri

Gretchen M. Bataille, Laurie Lisa, eds, Native american women. A biographical dictionary

Harlan Pruden, Se-Ah-dom Edmo, Two-Spirit people. Sex, gender & sexuality in historic and contemporary Native America

Wikipedia, Woman Chief

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