Pine Leaf — Badass of the Week

It needs to be mentioned here that the story of Pine Leaf is generally comprised of two different accounts.  The first is from a grizzled old hardcore mountain man named Bloody-Arm Beckworth, who lived with the Crow for a while in the 1820s and told stories of a badass warrior woman he calls Pine Leaf – most likely due to a pretty hilarious fuck-you she gave him that I’ll get into more detail below.  The second accounts come over a decade later, from two traders named Denig and Kurz, who wrote about a commanding and powerful Crow leader named Woman Chief who led her people not only in combat but also in attempts to make peace with neighboring peoples and tribes.  The physical description and backstories these guys give for Pine Leaf and Woman Chief are fairly similar (though not completely identical), the timelines and locations of these stories more or less line up, so most historians just assume these are both the same woman and call it a day.  So that’s my plan as well.

You’re probably wondering about that Bloody-Arm Beckworth dude right about now, so let’s start with his account.  His birth name was James, but he earned the badass nickname “Bloody Arm” because he was really fucking awesome at hacking people into top sirloin with a cavalry saber and spraying their blood and guts all over his heaving biceps.  Born into slavery in Virginia, Beckworth escaped that shit, fled West, learned the Crow language, and eventually fell in with them during his adventures shooting, drinking, and fighting around the hills and countrysides of Montana.  As he was riding with them, he met a woman named Pine Leaf, who captured his attention pretty much immediately, and he spends a lot of his memoirs writing about her exploits.

Pine Leaf (Barcheeampe in Crow) was born around 1806, a member of the Gros Ventre, a neighboring tribe in the foothills of Montana.  Around the age of ten, her home was raided by the Crow, who captured her and brought her back to their village.  She was raised by foster parents among the Crow, but instead of being happy doing the same boring stuff the other girls were doing, she was interested only in combat.  She practiced and excelled at horseback riding, archery, rifle marksmanship, and hunting, and, before long, became known among her people as the best shot and the fastest rider in the village.  When her foster brothers were killed or captured in battle, Pine Leaf’s father encouraged her “to be as a son”, and she honored him by swearing to avenge the fallen brothers.