Moroni Timbimboo was a prominent leader in the Washakie Ward, serving as the congregation’s first Shoshone bishop.¹ He was a grandson of Sagwitch, the dai’gwahni or chief of the Northwestern Shoshone, and the only child of Yeager and Yampitch Wongan Timbimboo to survive into adulthood.² Born on 1 August 1888, he was among the first generation of Shoshone Latter-day Saints raised at Washakie, a farming community in the Malad River Valley four miles south of the Utah-Idaho border. On his ninth birthday—1 August 1897—he was baptized and confirmed a member of the church by Moroni Ward, the second Euro-American bishop of the Washakie Ward.³ As a child, he contracted smallpox and his parents believed he would die. As he later recounted using Latter-day Saint terms, while he was sick he dreamed that angels in “heaven” discussed his fate and decided he would live. He saw a yellow autumn leaf descend into his room. A “beautiful angel” descended to Moroni’s side and covered the leaf. He concluded that the dream “meant that [he] should remain on earth to fulfill [his] mission.”⁴

Around 1905, Moroni married Phebe Ann Shoshonitz, a granddaughter of early Washakie leaders Alma and Tickamadakey (Sarah) Shoshonitz. This was apparently a customary Shoshone marriage, as no marriage license has been located. Moroni and Phebe Ann had one daughter together, Edna (1907–1910). The marriage evidently ended in 1908.⁵ On 29 November 1910, Moroni civilly married Amy Hootchew, a Western Shoshone who was also raised at Washakie.⁶ The following March, Moroni and Amy went to the Logan Temple, where they received their endowments and were sealed together. They spent the next sixty-four years together and had nine children, six of whom lived to adulthood: Joanna (1911–1991), Hazel Evelyn (1914–2000), Mae Olive (1919–2007), Frank Leonard (1922–1992), Grace Irene (1925–2006), and Katherine Ivy (1927–1953).⁷

Although Moroni received only a rudimentary education at the Washakie day school, supplemented for a time by attending school in Malad, Idaho, he and Amy always supported their children’s educational pursuits and ensured that they had clean clothing for school.⁸ In the 1920s, the federal government permitted Washakie children to attend boarding schools to further their education. According to their daughter Mae Timbimboo Parry’s later recollection, George M. Ward, the third Euro-American bishop of the Washakie Ward, sought to stop Moroni and Amy’s daughters from enrolling in the schools, saying that they were “sending [their] girls away to the devil.” Although the Timbimboos normally acquiesced to the direction of church leaders, in this instance they prioritized their children’s education over Ward’s counsel. The boarding school experience had mixed results for Native children, with many suffering neglect and abuse. Parry, however, later explained that she and her sisters had positive experiences at school, where they developed tools to think critically and advocate for their rights.⁹

Beginning as a teenager, Moroni served in leadership positions in the Washakie Ward. At the age of seventeen, he was called as second assistant to Sunday School Superintendent Ammon Pubigee in 1905.¹⁰ He was called as both Sunday School superintendent and ward clerk in 1913, placing him in charge of religious instruction and keeping the ward’s records.¹¹ On 14 April 1929, he was called as first counselor to Joseph Parry, the fourth Euro-American bishop of the Washakie Ward.¹² In 1935, he served a short-term proselytizing mission among the Assiniboine on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. Euro-American Samuel A. Hendricks, who served in the Malad Stake presidency in the 1930s, recalled that stake leaders viewed Moroni’s mission as preparatory to being called as a bishop.¹³

Moroni was also a dedicated genealogist who performed proxy work for his Shoshone ancestors in Latter-day Saint temples. In April 1933, he spoke at a conference sponsored by the Genealogical Society of Utah in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, sharing the program with his father, Yeager, and son, Frank. “It makes me glad to see my people take their right place in the work of God,” he told the assembled audience. “My whole heart and soul is in this work. I have a testimony of the gospel. I know it is true. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and I know that the book of Mormon is a true record.” After testifying of temple work and the sealing power that bound his family together, Moroni said, “I believe this has brought me more satisfaction than any other one thing in life.”¹⁴

Prior to his call as a bishop, Moroni had a close brush with death and viewed his survival as providential. After shopping in Tremonton, Utah, he tried to catch a moving train with his arms full of parcels. He missed the step and his leg became caught, dragging him behind the train. After saying a prayer, he managed to grab the guardrail and pull himself up. Miraculously, he still had the parcels in his arms and his hat somehow remained on his head. He believed that his preservation, first as a child from smallpox and then as an adult from the train, signaled divine assurances that his life had been spared because he had a “special mission” to fulfill on earth. When he was called as the first Shoshone bishop of the Washakie Ward in early 1939, he concluded that the calling was the realization of those promises.¹⁵ Latter-day Saint apostle George Albert Smith set Moroni apart as bishop on 22 January 1939, the same day that a new brick chapel was dedicated in the community. He selected two Shoshone counselors, Nephi Perdash and Jim John Neaman, with Henry Woonsook as ward clerk, and together they composed the first all-Native bishopric in the church’s history.¹⁶ As Moroni later recalled, “I went on and took care of my ward the best as I know how.”¹⁷

During World War II, employment opportunities in the defense industry pulled many Shoshone Latter-day Saints, including Moroni and Amy, away from Washakie.¹⁸ In 1943, they both found employment in the defense industry, first at the Defense Depot and then Hill Air Force Base near Ogden. This precipitated their move to Clearfield, Utah. Moroni commuted to Washakie on the weekends to fulfill his duties as bishop and care for his farm.¹⁹ He was honorably released on 4 March 1945. After the release, Moroni and Amy continued to attend the Washakie Ward, with Moroni subsequently being called as a counselor in the bishopric and Amy serving in the Relief Society presidency.²⁰ Moroni retired from Hill Air Force Base in 1959 and, after seventeen years in Clearfield, the couple moved back to Washakie.²¹

Community members continued to see Washakie as their perpetual home even as the defense industry pulled residents away. With declining membership numbers, the unit was reclassified as a branch in 1960 and then closed altogether in 1966.²² Without consulting Moroni, Euro-American church leaders decided to sell the church farm, including the Washakie townsite. In 1969, under the direction of local church leaders, a farm employee burned some houses—many of which still contained personal papers and other property—to prepare for the sale. Moroni and Amy personally witnessed some of these traumatic burnings. Perhaps out of deference to their church service, the Timbimboo home at Washakie was not burned.²³ With their beloved community gone, in 1969 the Timbimboos moved to Plymouth, Utah.²⁴ During Moroni’s final years, the couple was lauded for their skills “in handiwork, fashioning articles from leather and accenting each article with intricate beadwork.”²⁵ At the age of eighty-six, Moroni Timbimboo died on 25 April 1975 of natural causes at a hospital in Ogden, Utah. He was buried in the Clearfield City Cemetery.²⁶