New Resource Highlights Stories of Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints

Working with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation (NWBSN), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has published a new digital history resource, “Native Saints: The Washakie Ward” from the Church Historian’s Press.

“The collaboration is something we’ve always wanted,” said Brad Parry, vice chairman of the NWBSN. “I think this is something that our ancestors have wanted.”

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“Native Saints: The Washakie Ward” highlights stories from one of the first Indigenous congregations in the Church’s history. This project builds on earlier work, including “Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days,” which also includes experiences of Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints.

The Church Historian’s Press website includes historical essays, biographies, maps of Washakie and the Northwestern Shoshone homelands, historical photographs and other materials that cover the history of the Washakie Ward through the unit’s closure in 1966. Wards are geographically organized congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ.

The Washakie Ward was founded in 1880, just four miles south of the Utah-Idaho border. Washakie became both a physical and spiritual home for Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints.

“The Washakie Ward was where the Northwestern Shoshone became Indigenous Latter-day Saints and where they passed on their history, culture and language to subsequent generations,” said David W. Grua, a senior historian in the Church History Department and lead historian of the Native Saints project. “This work of cultural preservation laid a foundation for their perseverance as a people and as a nation today.”

In December 2023, Church historians began working closely with Tribal Elders to conceptualize the project, share research on the Washakie Ward and its members, and review written materials. “Working closely with the descendants of the Washakie Ward members to tell their story has been tremendously gratifying,” Grua said.

“These are my grandmother’s stories coming back to life,” Parry said. He grew up hearing stories about Washakie from his father and grandmother, Mae Timbimboo Parry, the great-granddaughter of Sagwitch Timbimboo.

Sagwitch Timbimboo, a chief and survivor of the Bear River Massacre of 1863, is one of many prominent individuals profiled in the dataset’s biographical essays. His biography details some of the spiritual manifestations that persuaded hundreds of tribal members to accept baptism into the Church in the 1870s.

“The Washakie Ward” also features approximately 1,600 profiles of Northwestern Shoshone individuals whose names appear in Church records. The profiles are primarily based on the efforts of volunteer missionaries at the Church History Library and FamilySearch who spent two years indexing the Washakie Ward records.

Rios Pacheco, a Tribal Elder and cultural advisor for the NWBSN, was involved in this project and believes that this publication captures an important part of the tribe’s culture and history.

“It’s important because we can see that they survived a great tragedy, yet they continually called upon our Father in Heaven through prayer to help guide them and to help take care of their families and to search for a place that they would be able to gather and meet as a family and as a community,” he shared.

Pacheco hopes that these stories, once passed down orally, will continue to be read for generations to come.

“I can’t talk to every youth, but those words will talk for me,” he said. “Those stories of our people will talk.”

About 

The Church Historian’s Press was announced by the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2008. “The Joseph Smith Papers” was the first publication to bear the imprint. The press publishes works of Latter-day Saint history that meet high standards of scholarship.

NWBSN is a federally recognized tribe. Members of the NWBSN are the direct descendants of the survivors of the Bear River Massacre.