John Moemberg was a highly influential Northwestern Shoshone tribal leader and was known as “Bishop John” in the nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint Shoshone community.¹ He was born in the mid-1820s at the City of Rocks in present-day Idaho.² His Shoshone name was variously recorded as Ech-up, Ech-up-wy, or Egippetche, meaning “wolf” or “coyote.”³ In the late nineteenth century, assistant church historian Andrew Jenson reported that John was the son of a prominent Shoshone dai’gwahni’, or chief, known as Moembugie who led a band of Northwestern Shoshone in the mid-nineteenth century.⁴ However, in Latter-day Saint temple records, John consistently identified his father as Ti-Wad-ze, while Mo-go-berg—evidently the same individual as Moembugie—was identified as John’s uncle.⁵ Regardless, Ech-up-wy was raised with close family ties to tribal leadership. He was a cousin and close associate of dai’gwahni’ Sagwitch Timbimboo.⁶

In July 1847, when Ech-up-wy was about twenty years old, the Latter-day Saint pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley. Although Shoshone and other Native groups in the Mountain West had long dealings with Euro-American fur traders and other whites passing through their debia’, or homeland, the presence of permanent white settlements within their territory would drastically alter the course of Ech-up-wy’s life. On 31 July 1847, a few days after the pioneers arrived in the valley, a party of twenty or thirty Shoshone visited the pioneer camp to greet the strangers, trade goods, and reinforce territorial divisions between the Ute and Shoshone. Despite the challenge of communication, both the Shoshone and the Latter-day Saints apparently came away with favorable impressions from this initial contact. Decades later, Ech-up-wy stated that he had been among the Shoshone who visited the pioneer camp that day and that he had first met Brigham Young on this occasion.⁷

Sometime in the late 1840s or early 1850s, Ech-up-wy married Pobehope, and together they raised at least five children who lived to adulthood: Joseph (ca. 1858–1916), Womruatz (1859–1893), Eunice (1863–1936), Bill (ca. 1865–1908), and Hank (ca. 1869–1904).⁸ At some point, Ech-up-wy also married Pobehope’s sister Goo-se-quan-sup and had at least one child with her, although they had separated by 1863.⁹ Both Ech-up-wy and Pobehope were recognized as bo’hagunt, or recipients of spiritual power.¹⁰ According to an 1881 account, Ech-up-wy’s first visionary experience came in 1859, when “an Indian man” visited him in a dream just before he left for a hunt. The visitor told Ech-up-wy not to eat the blood of the animals he hunted and gave him counsel on how to pray. To demonstrate the power of his message, the visitor showed Ech-up-wy a golden medallion on a chain and told him where to go to find it. The next day, Ech-up-wy and his family found the medallion where he had been told to go in his dream. Unfortunately, the 1881 account of Ech-up-wy’s vision is incomplete. Decades later, a Euro-American Latter-day Saint familiar with the vision clarified that an arrow in the medallion would show Ech-up-wy where to go to obtain food. After several years, Ech-up-wy dreamed that the medallion was lost and awoke to find that it had gone missing in the night.¹¹

As Latter-day Saint settlers continued to arrive in the region and encroach on the Shoshone debia’, Ech-up-wy favored cooperation with the newcomers over resistance. He apparently learned some English and began working for Latter-day Saint ranchers as they settled Cache Valley. He may have even managed his own herds of cattle or horses traveling between Cache Valley and Promontory Point.¹² Likely in part because of Ech-up-wy’s openness to this new way of life, he was not present at the time of the Bear River Massacre, although Pobehope’s family, including Ech-up-wy’s former wife Goo-se-quan-sup, were likely killed in the attack.¹³ Sometime prior to the 1870s, Ech-up-wy adopted the English name John and was often known as Indian John or John Indian.¹⁴

John often traveled with his cousin Sagwitch, who was described as “the leading chief when all the Indians got together.”¹⁵ Like John, Sagwitch had chosen friendship with Latter-day Saint settlers. According to Sagwitch’s great-granddaughter and Northwestern Shoshone tribal historian Mae Timbimboo Parry, John at times served as an interpreter for his cousin.¹⁶ In the late 1860s, the federal government began to pressure the Northwestern Shoshone to remove to the Fort Hall Reservation, requiring Sagwitch, John, and other Shoshone leaders to deliberate over what course of action was best for their people.¹⁷

During summer 1872, Sagwitch and John were camping together when they experienced a manifestation of bo’ha. Three strange men who appeared to be Natives came to their lodge and began talking about the Latter-day Saints and the Book of Mormon. According to Mae Timbimboo Parry, “Sagwitch and John listened and understood. They are telling us things we have always known they said.” John later reported that the strangers told him “he must go to the ‘Mormons,’ and they would tell him what to do, and that he must do it; that he must be baptized, with all his Indians.” Both Sagwitch and John then reportedly received visions of a community in northern Utah with several farms and homes occupied not by white settlers, but by Natives. When their visions closed, the strangers were gone.¹⁸ Latter-day Saint leaders who later learned of this experience and others like it interpreted them as a fulfillment of the promises of the Book of Mormon.¹⁹ Using various channels, Sagwitch and John then contacted Brigham Young and other Latter-day Saint leaders, asking that missionaries be sent to the Northwestern Shoshone.²⁰

On 5 May 1873, Euro-American Latter-day Saint missionary George Washington Hill traveled to Sagwitch’s camp along the Bear River and there baptized more than one hundred Northwestern Shoshone; John was apparently the third person baptized. Hill initially identified him as “John” in his journal, but subsequently revised his name to “Ech-up” in a later report.²¹ Three days later, John (identified as “E-jah” in missionary records), Sagwitch, and two other Shoshone men were ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood office of elder by Dimick B. Huntington.²² Over the next two years, Hill continued to baptize Shoshone, seeking to establish various farms in southern Idaho and northern Utah. John’s role in these efforts is unclear; however, he remained committed to his newfound faith. On 22 March 1875, John traveled to Salt Lake City to receive his endowment in the Endowment House. There he was identified as “Echup or John” and he received his endowment alongside Too-boo-by or Antelope Jack, another bo’hagunt whose visions—which were similar to the ones reported by John—led hundreds of Goshute and Western Shoshone to seek baptism at Deep Creek in the mid-1870s.²³ Five months later John, this time identified as “Its-up-bitz-ey,” returned with Pobehope and the two were sealed together by President Daniel H. Wells.²⁴

On 24 July 1875, John and around three hundred other Shoshone who had accepted baptism attended Brigham City’s Pioneer Day celebration. At the invitation of apostle and community leader Lorenzo Snow, John and James Brown, another Shoshone Latter-day Saint, addressed a crowd of three thousand Latter-day Saints, their remarks translated by Hill. According to newspaper reports, they spoke with “great zeal and spirit, bearing testimony of the Lord’s visitation among them,” stating that they “wished to become one with the ‘Mormons’” and, adopting the language of Euro-American Latter-day Saints, “desired to become civilized, build, plant, and become like their white brethren.” Following their remarks, Snow stated that “the Spirit of God had rested upon the speakers” and called upon the joint congregation of white and Shoshone Latter-day Saints to join him “in the holy and sacred shouts of ‘Hosanna.’”²⁵

In August 1875, less than a month after the triumphal Pioneer Day celebration, the citizens of Corinne, Utah Territory—who were generally hostile to the church—became alarmed at the presence of so many Latter-day Saint Shoshone farming on Bear River City land near their community and demanded that the government send soldiers to disperse them. Sagwitch and John attended meetings with Hill and representatives from Corinne and the military to find a solution. Ultimately the Shoshone dispersed under threat of physical expulsion.²⁶ Following this setback, John dictated an impassioned letter to Hill that was subsequently published. Writing on “behalf of Tsyguitch’s [Sagwitch’s] band,” John denounced the hypocrisy of white settlers who had settled, mined, built railroads, and hunted on the Shoshone debia’ but who refused to allow the Shoshone to remain on their lands. “All I want is to be let alone,” John stated, “with the priviledge of making a small farm for the benefit of my people, and to be allowed to live on it in peace. I have not gone into the white man’s country and intruded on him, and I do not think it is fair for him to come into mine and drive me from my own lands without any cause.”²⁷ Although John asked for government relief, none was forthcoming.

After the expulsion from the Bear River City farm, Sagwitch—traumatized by the threat of renewed violence from soldiers—evidently moved for a time north to Fort Hall.²⁸ John remained in northern Utah hoping to fulfill his vision of a Shoshone agricultural community. With Hill’s help, he applied for a federal homestead near Tremonton, Utah Territory, on 19 May 1876—one of the first Northwestern Shoshone to do so. In filing his application, John made use of the surname Moemberg, apparently in honor of Moembugie or Mo-go-berg, the deceased dai’gwahni’ to whom he was related.²⁹ Although the spelling varied in some sources, this became the permanent surname of John and his family.

In Sagwitch’s absence, John took on a leading role among the remaining Northwestern Shoshone in northern Utah. Because of the lack of contemporary records, his exact role or title in the community is unclear. In early 1877, Hill published the earliest written account of the 1872 vision, based on information provided by “Ech-up-wy,” whom Hill identified as a “chief.”³⁰ In August 1877, Hill reported meeting with twelve major Shoshone and Bannock “chiefs” whose ranks included John (listed as “Ech up wy”) along with Sagwitch, Poketello, and others.³¹ Decades later, Phoebe Zundel Ward, daughter of Euro-American missionary Isaac E. D. Zundel, identified John as “the main chief” of the Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints in Utah.³² Around this time, he became known as “Bishop John,” and while this may have been an honorific title in recongition of his leadership, letters from Hill and Brigham Young in 1876 imply that there was a Native Shoshone functioning in some capacity as a bishop or in a bishop-like role.³³ Although his exact ecclesastical role is unclear, John presided over church meetings in the absence of the white missionaries or bishop.³⁴

In 1880, Shoshone Saints relocated to what became Washakie, Utah. Isaac Zundel was called as the ecclesiastical bishop, although John remained one of the leading members of the congregation and retained the honorific “Bishop John.” Throughout the 1880s, he was consistently identified as one of Washakie’s “principal men.”³⁵ Likely due to his stature in the community and his connections to other Shoshone people, John was called upon to facilitate a meeting with the First Presidency and Shoshone representatives from the Wind River Reservation in June 1884.³⁶ In 1889, missionaries at Wind River reported to the First Presidency that the great dai’gwahni’ Washakie, recognized as the leader of all the Shoshone nation, told them that he had sent a messenger “to see John the Indian bishop” to ask whether the Shoshone at Wind River should listen to the Latter-day Saints or others—likely emissaries of the Ghost Dance movement—who had recently arrived on the reservation. According to the missionaries, when the messenger returned, Washakie indicated that he would follow John’s advice and reject the Ghost Dance.³⁷

Meanwhile, John and his family continued to live and worship as Latter-day Saints. In March 1885, John, Pobehope, and several other members of the Washakie Ward—including Sagwitch, who had rejoined his people a few years earlier—visited the Logan Temple and performed baptisms and other ordinances for some of their deceased relatives. There John and Pobehope were identified with the surname Mo-go-berge, the name of John’s uncle, according to the temple records.³⁸

In 1892, Andrew Jenson visited the Washakie ward and met with “some Lamanite brethren” to discuss the history of the community.³⁹ Although not named in Jenson’s journal, John was his primary source for the early history of the Northwestern Shoshone and their relationship with the church. The history Jenson wrote based on this interview intertwined John’s personal history with the history of the community, and Jenson noted that his history was made “according to the statement of John (the Indian).”⁴⁰ On 11 December 1893, John spoke at the Malad Stake quarterly conference, his remarks being interpreted by Moroni Ward, the Euro-American bishop over Washakie. According to the conference minutes, “Bhp [Bishop] John of Washakie one of the Washakie Lamanites, spoke with a good spirit,” but no summary of John’s remarks was recorded.⁴¹

Just over a year later, on 26 December 1894, John Moemberg died after a lingering illness of three months.⁴² He was a remembered as a prominent man in the community who was celebrated for his influence as a peacemaker.⁴³ He had spent the last years of his life working to ensure the survival of his people and establishing the Shoshone Latter-day Saint community he had foreseen with his cousin Sagwitch. When word of John’s death reached Salt Lake City, the Deseret Evening News noted that he “died, as he had lived for many years, a faithful Latter-day Saint.”⁴⁴