Shoshone Community Builders in the Washakie Ward

Native Saints: The Washakie Ward set out to document and share the history of the Washakie Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through historical essays, biographies, maps, photographs, a chronology, and a guide to sources. The project revealed to us, historians on the project, the inspiring ways Shoshone Saints contributed to their community and ward and preserved the records of their people.

The Elders of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation taught us that many of the most active members of the Washakie Ward, such as Sagwitch and Willie Ottogary, were also key parts of Shoshone nation-building efforts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sagwitch led his people while learning a new religion and way of life. Ottogary was the first Northwestern Shoshone Sunday School secretary while also advocating for Northwestern Shoshone treaty rights in the 1863 Treaty of Box Elder. But Sagwitch and Ottogary were not the only members who constantly balanced work, faith, and tribal advocacy and leadership throughout their lives. We were astounded to see that the Washakie Ward, which never had more than a few hundred members, seemed to be an integral part of a network of early Shoshone nation builders across the Intermountain West.

The Washakie Ward dataset shows us that families uprooted their lives to join a predominantly Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saint community. Historians and missionaries alike pored over 50,000 indexed entries from more than 25 church record books to find names such as Thomas Pabawena Jr., Amy Hootchew, Johnny Timmock, and Harry Tootiaina and identify them as active members of the Washakie Ward. Other names, such as Harry Preacher and Timook, appear only once or a few times. We were surprised to discover that some of these individuals were also core leaders of the Western Shoshone bands of eastern Nevada, more than 250 miles away. Harry Preacher was the first democratically elected leader of the Western Shoshone in 1896. Harry Tootiaina was one of Preacher’s successors. Timook is the namesake leader for the Te-moak Tribe, located near present-day Elko, Nevada.

Records of attendance, Sunday School, and sacrament meeting give us a more personal look into the lives of Shoshone leaders. They did not forget their Western Shoshone roots upon their move to Washakie and their subsequent conversions; instead, they continued to advocate for Western Shoshone rights. Their integration into the Washakie community and into Northwestern Shoshone political circles is an example of a shared Shoshone identity stretching across regional lines that, in this case, was strengthened by religious bonds.

James Pabawena saw Christianity as an idea compatible with Indigenous sovereignty rather than a sign of assimilation. He demonstrated Christian faith and activism in the same breath in a letter to an agent at the Indian Office in 1915: “But we wishes like to have our own land and able to handling the plow handle so far. should be the rights of all American Indians who had prior possession the soil. … Because my fore fathers was not a foreigners like the whites are now. God created the heaven and the Earth and also created my great grandfather. I was created here on this American soil.”

James’s brother, Thomas Pabawena Jr., also balanced his enthusiastic participation in the Washakie Ward with tribal activism. In 1929, he helped petition to remove an unpopular Indian agent from the Ibapah reservation in southwestern Utah; just one month later, he gave a talk in which he said that “God would bless those who kept his commandments.”

For others, such as Harry Preacher, a singular tithing donation is a tantalizing hint to the role church membership played in nation builders’ lives. Still, Preacher’s association with the Northwestern Shoshone Saints reveals the reach this Latter-day Saint group had within the Shoshone community and provides evidence and context for the network of Indigenous nation builders in the early 20th century.