The fine arts of Revolutionary America often used Indian "queens" or "princesses" to represent the newborn country in terms of prosperity, as seen in this 1778 engraving.
In comics and the majority of other cultural artifacts, though, Native American usually had no such exalted roles. The image of the "squaw" was that of a subservient female who accepted the duties assigned her by her tribe.
One of the few counter-examples comes from BILLY THE KID #56 (1966). This scant 8-page story, probably by the team of Joe Gill and Charles Nicholas, depicts a feisty Indian maiden riding into war alongside her braves, proclaiming herself "queen of the Apaches" and knocking Billy the Kid off his horse with her gun-butt. She takes him prisoner and makes her regular redskin beau jealous, so Billy has to fight the guy and escape-- after which Nura's threat just arbitrarily ends.
In this respect I tend to think canonical literature is no better than pop literature, since both tended to elide female Native Americans in favor of males. Even the crude jungle comics at least included a smattering of Black females who were evil plotters or voodoo queens. The idea of strong Native American women seems very rarely explored in any medium until such notions were explored in the pop culture of the 1970s.
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