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    James Brown Sr.
    (ca. 1849–1914)

    James Brown Sr., often known as Jim, was an early Shoshone convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.1 His knowledge of English and his willingness to serve in a variety of ecclesiastical roles made him a prominent member of the Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saint community and a trusted envoy for Euro-American church leaders. James was born in the vicinity of present-day Elko, Nevada, to father Wo-so-ho-no and mother Mahaguenua in 1849 or 1850.2 Little is known about his childhood including his Shoshone name. As a young man, he experienced a serious illness. One night he dreamed that he died, his spirit left his body, and he watched people dig a grave for him. James woke up very frightened. He washed his body in a spring and prayed to Tamap, whom he described as the Great Spirit.3 James promised that he would be a good person if Tamap would let him live, and he attributed his survival to a divine blessing.4

    Although the precise circumstances are unknown, at some point James lived in Ogden, Utah Territory, with the family of James Brown, from whom he took his English name.5 A friend, Willie Ottogary, later recorded that James was “raise[d] with white man in his boyhood.”6 It was probably in the Brown home that James first learned to speak English. Throughout his life he maintained friendly relationships with a number of families and individuals in the vicinity of Ogden and Brigham City, including Alvin Nichols, the Euro-American bishop at Brigham City. In later years, he would camp in front of the bishop’s house whenever he was in town. It is likely that during a visit he also became acquainted with James Laman, or Nan-oke-to-enip, another Northwestern Shoshone who was living in the Nichols home.7

    In spring 1873, Latter-day Saint missionary George Washington Hill baptized over one hundred Northwestern Shoshone in the Bear River. By this time, James spoke English reasonably well and had spent significant time living with Latter-day Saints. He later explained that he was “converted to Christianity after many years of association with the white men.”8 It is not certain when James was baptized,9 but by mid-June 1875, he had received his endowment in Salt Lake City. For the next several months, he served in the Endowment House as an interpreter for other Latter-day Saint Shoshone and helped to administer the ceremonies. While there, James worked with several Northwestern Shoshone who spoke English, including James Laman, and a woman named Jane.10 It is likely that he married Jane soon after.11

    Summer 1875 was extremely busy for James, who regularly traveled between the Endowment House and the Shoshone camps in northern Utah. On 24 July, he took part in Pioneer Day celebrations at Brigham City with three hundred other Latter-day Saint Shoshone. He bore “testimony of the Lord’s visitation among the Lamanites” and articulated the desire of these new Shoshone converts “to become one with the ‘Mormons’” and to adopt Euro-American methods of agriculture.12 About two weeks later, James formed a brief partnership with James Laman and twelve other Shoshone men to start a farm in the vicinity of Willard, Utah.13 He also maintained close connections with a much larger farm near Bear River City that was attracting hundreds of Shoshone converts from Fort Hall and the Wind River Reservation.14

    On 10 August 1875, James returned to the Bear River farm after serving in the Endowment House. He passed through the railroad town of Corinne and discovered that the residents, principally non-Latter-day Saints, had grown frightened of the large number of Shoshone moving into the area. He quickly reported to Hill that the people had “telegraphed to Camp Douglass for soldiers stating that the Indians were about to attack Corinne.”15 Over the next several days, James helped Hill and Shoshone leaders respond to the “Corinne Scare.” He attended meetings with Army officers and other municipal representatives. Because of his ability to speak English, James was also sent into Corinne as a spy to determine conditions among the people there. But despite their efforts, the Shoshone were ultimately forced to leave their farm on the Bear River.16

    Between 1876 and 1880, James helped to establish two new farms for Latter-day Saint Shoshone, one at Lemuel’s Garden—near present-day Elwood—and one at Washakie in northern Utah. To avoid a repeat of the Corinne Scare, he and other Shoshone applied for federal patents under the Indian Homestead Act to obtain legal title to the land.17 Around 1877, James followed Shoshone tradition and Latter-day Saint religious practice by marrying a plural wife, Minnie, or Pap-a-riss.18 James and Minnie would eventually have a son, James S. Brown Jr. (1886–1957).19

    During the late 1870s and early 1880s, James donated labor to help build the Logan Temple.20 In March 1885, he was sealed to Minnie in the temple and performed proxy work for his deceased father and brother.21 During this same period, he began a series of missions to various Native groups, where he acted as a translator. In August and September 1883, he was part of a company led by apostle Moses Thatcher that traveled through Yellowstone National Park to the Crow Agency, then south to the Wind River Reservation. He apparently developed a close relationship with Thatcher and frequently accompanied him while hunting. The following year, Thatcher asked James to join him on a second mission to Wind River.22 In 1887, the Eastern Shoshone leader Washakie asked James to return to Wind River again. James preached and bore testimony to Washakie’s son Dick, and many Shoshone were baptized.23 He served another mission to Wind River in 1888, and the following year was sustained as a Malad Stake missionary.24

    James remained committed to the Latter-day Saint faith for the next twenty-five years. In 1892, he was invited to speak during the Malad Stake Conference and translated for assistant church historian Andrew Jenson during a church service at Washakie.25 His son, James Jr., was baptized three years later.26 James was asked to undertake another mission to Wind River in 1901, but Minnie had recently been injured and he demurred.27 Still, church records indicate that he regularly paid tithes and fast offerings, bore testimony during ward meetings, and visited local families as a teacher.28 On 24 July 1912, he again participated in Pioneer Day festivities, this time in Salt Lake City. He wore a “scarf of many colors” and proudly told the spectators that he had once addressed the Saints in Brigham City at the invitation of Brigham Young.29 James also honored his Native heritage. In July 1899, it was reported that he planned to attend a Sun Dance in Wyoming.30 He was considered “a great dancer” and an “outstanding leader in their dancing.”31 In 1910, he created a “dramatic troop” called the Sioux Indian Medicine Show and performed throughout northern Utah.32 He also spent significant time traveling to Nevada and Fort Hall to see various friends and relatives.33

    James Brown Sr. died on 28 December 1914 at Washakie after living alone for twelve years. He was remembered as “a wonderful fellow” who was well-known in the community.34 Many people attended his funeral service in the old frame chapel at Washakie.35 A few days later, Willie Ottogary, a Shoshone journalist and political activist, recorded his impressions of James, whom he remembered primarily as an interpreter who had formed lasting relationships among the Shoshone and Euro-American settlers—but also as a “very good member in the Church of Jesus Christ.”36

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    James Brown Sr.(ca. 1849–1914), Native Saints, accessed May 28, 2026 https://www.churchhistorianspress.org/native-saints/biographies/james-brown-sr

      Footnotes

      1. [1]“James Brown Sr.,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org.

      2. [2]Logan Temple Sealings of Living Couples, 1884–1957, microfilm 178135, vol. A, p. 36, 4 Mar. 1885, FamilySearch Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City (FamilySearch Library hereafter cited as FSL); 1880 U.S. Census, Plymouth Precinct, Box Elder Co., UT, enumeration dist. 6, p. 34; Utah Death Certificates, 1904–51, DGS 4121220, file no. 165, 28 Dec. 1914, familysearch.org. Some sources identify James’s father as Chonkaveth. James also had a brother named Wo-a-bo-go-nah who died around 1866. (Washakie Ward Record of Members, 1885–1886; 1938, pp. 20–21, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City [Church History Library hereafter cited as CHL].)

      3. [3]“From the Tomahawk to the Plow,” Deseret Evening News (Salt Lake City), 3 Aug. 1912, section 2, 11. According to Northwestern Shoshone tribal elders, the English transliteration Tamap is derived from the Shoshone word Damapa meaning “Great Spirit” or “our Father”; see also Shoshoni Dictionary, “ap,” “apa,” last updated 1 Apr. 2026, University of Utah, Shoshoni Language Project, https://shoshoniproject.utah.edu/language-materials/shoshoni-dictionary/dictionary.php. The anthropologist Julian Steward recorded that among the Shoshone, “Prayers were made occasionally either to one’s dreamed spirits or to Ap: (father). The theme was usually the same: a request for immunity against sickness and for longevity. Ap: was a vague being, not identified with the sun or with any other natural phenomenon. His characteristics were little known, though he had been seen by persons who had visited the land of the dead. . . . He was called the Creator.” Steward continues that Ap “resembled a man” and lived in the land of the dead, which was “green and pleasant.” (Julian H. Steward, Culture Element Distributions: XXIII, Northern and Gosiute Shoshoni, in Anthropological Records vol. 8, no. 3 [University of California Press, 1943], 286–87).

      4. [4]“From Tomahawk to the Plow,” section 2, 11; Glossary: “Bo’ha.”

      5. [5]This was most likely the household of James Morehead Brown. From 1855 to 1857, Brown served a mission to the Eastern Shoshone at Fort Supply in present-day Wyoming. He then returned to Ogden. (“Ogden’s Oldest Resident Dies,” Salt Lake Tribune, 27 Dec. 1924, 10; “Shoshone Mission,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org.) Descendants of Brown remembered that “Indians used to come and live in [the] back yard (many acres.) There was a cabin in the back of the property, originally built after [the] return from Fort Supply. Indians lived in and around [the] cabin.” (Joan Clark, interviews by Jenny Hale Pulsipher, 8 Sept. and 8 Oct. 2003, transcript, copy in possession of David W. Grua; “James Morehead Brown,” Church History Biographical Database, churchofjesuschrist.org.) However, there were several James Browns living in the vicinity of Ogden at the time. Another possible candidate is James Stephens Brown. James S. was a first cousin to James M., he lived in Ogden in the 1850s, and he also served in the Fort Supply mission. But James S. moved to Salt Lake City in the early 1860s and has no known association with the Northwestern Shoshone Mission. (Shoshone Mission Journal, May 1855–Oct. 1857, p. 1, CHL; List of Missionaries, 1855, Historical Record Book, 1841–74, CHL; James S. Brown, Life of a Pioneer: Being the Autobiography of James S. Brown [George Q. Cannon & Sons, 1900], 350–51, 361, 405, 407–8; “James Stephens Brown,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org).

      6. [6]Matthew E. Kreitzer, ed., The Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary: Northwestern Shoshone Journalist and Leader, 1906–1929 (Utah State University Press, 2000), 73; see biography of Willie Ottogary.

      7. [7]Mary Nichols and Mark H. Nichols, Alvin Nichols: Utah Pioneer, 1819–1899 (pub. by author, 1963), 45; Kreitzer, Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary, 71; “Alvin Nichols,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org; biography of James Laman.

      8. [8]“Utah’s Story of Progress Vividly Told,” Salt Lake Tribune, 25 July 1912, 1–2; “The Northwestern Shoshone Mission”; “George Washington Hill,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org.

      9. [9]Between May 1873 and August 1875, missionary George Washington Hill recorded that he baptized approximately ten Shoshone men named James, Jim, or Jimmy. (George Washington Hill, Journal, May 1873–Aug. 1875, pp. 1–10, George W. Hill Collection, 1840–1908, CHL; George Washington Hill, Missionary Report, 1 Oct. 1876, CHL.)

      10. [10]Endowment House Endowments of the Living, 1851–84, microfilm 183409, vol. J, pp. 4, 6, 15 June 1875, 5 Aug. 1875, FSL; Endowment House Sealings of Couples, Living and by Proxy, microfilm 183400, vol. J, p. 352, 5 and 9 Aug. 1875, FSL.

      11. [11]In early August 1875, Latter-day Saint interpreter Dimick B. Huntington asked for a “Jim” and “Jane” to accompany a group of Shoshone converts to receive their endowments. They were married by 1880, according to the U.S. census of that year. (Dimick B. Huntington to George Washington Hill, 9 Aug. 1875, Indian Records, 1873–76, George W. Hill Collection, CHL; 1880 U.S. Census, Plymouth Precinct, Box Elder Co., UT, enumeration dist. 6, p. 34; “Jane Brown” and “Dimick Baker Huntington,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org.)  

      12. [12]“Pioneers’ Day,” Ogden (Utah Territory) Junction, 28 July 1875, [2]; “The Northwestern Shoshone Mission”; “Lamanite Identity,” Church History Topics, churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics.

      13. [13]Amos Warner to George Washington Hill, 2 Aug. 1875, Indian Records, George W. Hill Collection, CHL. Willard featured relics of a large settlement built by the prehistoric Fremont people, and the area had great spiritual significance to the local Shoshone. (Steven R. Simms, First Peoples of Great Salt Lake: A Cultural Landscape from Nevada to Wyoming [University of Utah Press, 2023], 94–97).

      14. [14]See “The Northwestern Shoshone Mission.”

      15. [15]Endowment House Sealings of Couples, Living and by Proxy, microfilm 183400, vol. J, p. 352, 5 and 9 Aug. 1875, FSL; Hill, Journal, 10–12 Aug. 1875.

      16. [16]Hill, Journal, 10–12 Aug. 1875; “The Corinne Fraud,” Ogden Junction, 14 Aug. 1875, [2]; “The Northwestern Shoshone Mission.”

      17. [17]1880 U.S. Census, Plymouth Precinct, Box Elder Co., UT, enumeration dist. 6, p. 34; Utah Tract Books, DGS 7115138, vol. 23, p. 4, familysearch.org; Salt Lake Co., UT, Homestead Records, 1868–1946, DGS 102115313, images 251–74, familysearch.org; An Act Making Appropriations to Supply Deficiencies in the Appropriations [. . .] [Mar. 3, 1875], The Statutes at Large: The United States from December, 1873, to March, 1875, and Recent Treaties, Postal Conventions, and Executive Proclamations (Washington, DC, 1875), 43rd Cong., 2nd Sess., chap. 131, p. 420; “The Northwestern Shoshone Mission”; “The Washakie Ward.” James’s friend James Laman also applied for a federal land patent at Lemuel’s Garden. However, for unknown reasons, James Laman’s patent request was cancelled in 1884, and James Brown applied for a patent on the same land in 1885. Nevertheless, between 1904 and 1909, James Laman received annual lease payments for the property. This seems to indicate that James Brown made every effort to support his friend in later years. See biography of James Laman.

      18. [18]1900 U.S. Census, Washakie, Box Elder Co., UT, enumeration dist. 207, p. 14A; Moroni Ward to Lorenzo Snow, 24 Apr. 1900, First Presidency Divorce Case Files, 1877–1918, CHL; Moroni Ward to George Reynolds, 27 Apr. 1900, First Presidency Divorce Case Files, CHL; “Minnie Brown,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org. Either Minnie or Jane may have been the daughter of a Shoshone man named Old Jake, or Dogawich. Prior to the Bear River Massacre in 1863, Jake was known as a consistent friend of the Latter-day Saints who was sometimes the target of retribution by other Shoshone. The descendants of bishop Alvin Nichols remembered that “Jim Brown married Old Jake’s daughter who had a flower tattoo in the middle of her forehead.” (Alvin Nichols to Col. Davies, 11 Jan. 1861, Deseret News (Salt Lake City), 13 Mar. 1861, 14; Nichols and Nichols, Alvin Nichols, 42, 45.)

      19. [19]Washakie Branch, part 1, image 158, Record of Members Collection, CHL; 1900 U.S. Census, Washakie, Box Elder Co., UT, enumeration dist. 207, p. 14A; “James S. Brown Jr.,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org. James and Minnie also had a daughter who was born around 1889 and died on 23 June 1892. (Washakie Ward Record Book, 1887–1909, image 14, CHL; “[Infant] Brown [ca. 1889–1892],” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org.)

      20. [20]Marion Everton, “History of Logan Temple is Retold,” Herald-Journal (Logan, UT), 18 July 1936, 5; Logan Temple Financial Records, 1877–1914, Journal, 1878–1880, p. 68, 24 Aug. 1878, CHL.

      21. [21]Logan Temple Sealings of Living Couples, 1884–1957, microfilm 178135, vol. A, p. 36, 4 Mar. 1885, FSL; Washakie Ward Record of Members, 1885–1886; 1938, pp. 20–21, CHL.

      22. [22]“Trip to the National Park,” Deseret News, 29 Aug. 1883, 508; [Untitled], Deseret News, 12 Sept. 1883, 541; De Vallibus [Moses Thatcher], “Wonders of the Yellowstone,” Contributor (Salt Lake City), Oct. 1883, 5–8; Moses Thatcher, Diary, [21 July 1883], image 9; 17 Oct. 1884, CHL; Moses Thatcher to John Taylor, 11 Nov. 1884, First Presidency (John Taylor) Correspondence, 1877–87, CHL; “Moses Thatcher,” Church History Biographical Database, history.churchofjesuschrist.org.

      23. [23]Lorenzo Snow to John Taylor, 19 May 1887, First Presidency (John Taylor) Correspondence, CHL; Cynthia Hess, comp., John W. Hess (self-published, 2005), 197–99, John W. Hess Family History. 2005, CHL.

      24. [24]Abraham Zundel, Journal, 31 Aug.–24 Sept. 1888, CHL; Malad Idaho Stake General Minutes, 1888–1928, 1960–77, vol. 1, 16 Sept. 1889, CHL.

      25. [25]Malad Idaho Stake General Minutes, vol. 1, 13 Mar. 1892, CHL; Andrew Jenson, 6 July 1892, letter to the editor, Deseret Evening News, 30 July 1892, 4.

      26. [26]Washakie Ward Record Book, 1887–1909, image 26, CHL.

      27. [27]Moroni Ward to Joseph F. Smith and “Counsil,” 29 Oct. 1901, Joseph F. Smith Stake Correspondence, 1901–18, CHL. 

      28. [28]See, for examples, Historian’s Office Local Unit Financial Records, 1844–1963, Washakie Ward, Malad Stake, 1904–15, pp. 5, 54, CHL; Washakie Ward General Minutes, vol. 5, pp. 11, 186, 6 May 1906, 26 Apr. 1914, CHL. James and Minnie divorced around this time and never fully reconciled. (Kreitzer, Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary, 71–73.)

      29. [29]“Pioneer Day Is Observed by Vast Holiday Throngs,” Deseret Evening News, 24 July 1912, 1; “Utah’s Story of Progress Vividly Told,” 1–2. There is no record of Brigham Young having asked James to speak. He may have been recalling the time that he was asked to speak by Apostle Lorenzo Snow. (“Pioneers’ Day,” [2].)

      30. [30]“Washakie,” Deseret Evening News, 3 July 1899, 7.

      31. [31]Edward Gibbs, interview by Charles Dibble, July 1945, transcript, p. 13, CHL.

      32. [32]“Washakie Items,” Journal (Logan, UT), 15 Feb. 1910, 1; Kreitzer, Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary, 39, 54–55.

      33. [33]Kreitzer, Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary, 23, 30, 33.

      34. [34]Utah Death Certificates, 1904–51, DGS 4121220, file no. 165, 28 Dec. 1914, familysearch.org; Gibbs, interview, July 1945, p. 13; Kreitzer, Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary, 73.

      35. [35]Kreitzer, Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary, 72.

      36. [36]Kreitzer, Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary, 71–73; biography of Willie Ottogary.