Kaúxuma Núpika
| Kaúxuma Núpika | |
|---|---|
| Ktunaxa dreamer, and expounder of dreams; adopted Chinook leader | |
| Personal details | |
| Died | Early 19th century |
| Known for | "Woman that carried a Bow and Arrows and had a Wife" |
| Nickname(s) | Qangon, Bowdash, Manlike Woman, Water Sitting Grizzly |
Kaúxuma Núpika, also called Qangon, Bowdash, and the Manlike Woman, was a Kootenai person who lived in the early 19th century.
Reports of encounters with Núpika were recorded by both David Thompson, famous pioneer surveyor, and by Sir John Franklin, of the Franklin Expedition to look for a Northwest Passage.
According to the entries Thompson made in his journal concerning her, one in July 1809 and the second in July 1811, she spent time as a sort of second wife to a man named Boisverd, who was one of Thompson's men. Thompson reports that she "became so common that I had to send her to her relations; as all the Indian men are married, a courtesan is neglected by the men and hated by the women." Presumably she was generating bad feeling by being a "loose woman". This was in 1803. Thompson encountered her next on Rainy Lake, near the Upper Columbia River, in July 1809. "She had set herself up for a prophetess," he writes, "and gradually had gained, by her shrewdness, some influence among the natives as a dreamer, and expounder of dreams. She recollected me before I did her, and gave a haughty look of defiance, as much to say, I am now out of your power."
She explained to his people that the whites had changed her sex. She adopted the masculine name of Water Sitting Grizzly.
It was 1811 before Thompson ran into the Manlike Woman again. This time, she walked into his camp seeking asylum for herself and a young woman he called his wife. Thompson describes her as "apparently a young man, well dressed in leather, carrying a Bow and Quiver of Arrows, with his Wife, a young woman in good clothing". Manlike Woman was in trouble with her adopted tribe, the Chinooks, for predicting diseases to them in her role as prophetess. Thompson says nothing of her own response to this request, but notes that his men found the whole thing a tale worth repeating. On August 2 her journal states that "the story of the Woman that carried a Bow and Arrows and had a Wife, was to them a romance to which they paid great attention and my Interpreter took pleasure in relating it."
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