Moroni Zundel was a prominent Shoshone member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century, an early seventy, and the first Native Sunday School superintendent of the Washakie Ward.¹ Moroni was born around 1857 in either northwestern Utah Territory or Ruby Valley in present-day Nevada to father Ohonto kowitch (also spelled Oom-woot-a-poor-gun) and mother Inkapa.² Although apparently born to a Western Shoshone family, he evidently joined the Northwestern Shoshone band led by Sagwitch sometime before 1873. According to a later genealogical note by Euro-American missionary George Washington Hill, Moroni was among the approximately one hundred Northwestern Shoshone baptized on 5 May 1873 near present-day Deweyville, Utah.³ However, uncertainties over Moroni’s Shoshone name and irregularities in the English spelling of Shoshone names preclude a positive identification in Hill’s contemporaneous records.⁴ At some point after his baptism, he was given the name Moroni from the Book of Mormon.⁵ The earliest extant example of that name comes from the financial accounts for the construction of the Logan Temple in 1878 and 1879, where he was identified as Moroni.⁶ His August 1881 federal homestead application for land near the heart of the recently established settlement of Washakie, Utah Territory, similarly identified him as “Moroni (Indian),” indicating his religion through an adopted name from the Book of Mormon as well as a racial identifier.⁷

Sometime in the 1870s, Moroni and Cohn Shoshonitz—the daughter of prominent Northwestern Shoshone converts Alma and Sarah Shoshonitz—married according to Shoshone custom. The couple had at least three children, two of whom survived into adulthood: Nephi Zundel (circa 1875–1951) and Lucy Zundel (1889–1966).⁸ On 7 December 1882, Moroni and Cohn traveled to the Endowment House in Salt Lake City, where they received their endowments and were sealed together for time and all eternity. There, as on his homestead application, he was identified as “Moroni (Indian).”⁹

Although many of the details of his early religious life with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are lacking, in the early 1880s Moroni emerged as a leading member of the Washakie Ward. On 27 January 1884, he spoke at a conference of the Box Elder Stake, stating that “he felt well to meet with the Saints.” According to the minutes, Moroni said, “since I was babtized I listen and follow.” He evidently then encouraged the white Euro-American Saints at the conference to likewise follow the church’s teachings, particularly the religious health code known as the Word of Wisdom.¹⁰ Apostle Wilford Woodruff, who was present, noted in his journal that “Moroni the Lamanite spoke to the people” just before Woodruff’s own remarks.¹¹

Three months after he spoke at the Box Elder Stake conference, Moroni was ordained to the priesthood office of a seventy. Two years earlier, in part as a response to the success of missionary work among the Northwestern Shoshone, President John Taylor had received a revelation instructing the Twelve Apostles to call upon the seventies quorums of the church to assist in “introducing and maintaining the gospel among the Lamanites throughout the land.”¹² Over the next two years a significant effort was made to reorganize and revitalize seventies quorums throughout the church, and as part of these efforts, Box Elder Stake leaders asked bishops to submit names of men who could help fill up the recently organized Fifty-Second Quorum of the Seventies.¹³ Isaac E. D. Zundel, first Euro-American bishop of the Washakie Ward, chose Moroni and his father-in-law, Alma Shoshonitz, as two of the three representatives from Washakie; Moroni was ordained by Elder Seymour B. Young on 12 April 1884.¹⁴ Thereafter, Moroni regularly attended his priesthood meetings, though few of his comments or remarks were recorded. A few months following his ordination, he told his fellow seventies that “it is a benefit to us to meet together” and that he “wanted to do right.”¹⁵ Seven years later, Moroni likewise stated that he “felt like attending his meetings and learning the ways of the Lord.”¹⁶

While ordaining him to the office of seventy, Young felt inspired to give Moroni a new surname: Zundel, after Isaac E. D. Zundel.¹⁷ According to the bishop’s daughter Phoebe, Young initially proposed that in addition to taking on his name, Moroni should be adopted to Bishop Zundel as a son according to a common Latter-day Saint sealing practice at the time.¹⁸ The bishop’s first wife, Elizabeth Harding Zundel, objected to the proposed adoption, arguing that as the only member of his family to join the church, Moroni had an obligation to do the proxy temple work for his own family.¹⁹ Although the adoption never took place, Moroni and his family retained the Zundel surname. In 1885, a year following Elizabeth Zundel’s suggestion, Moroni went to the Logan Temple and performed proxy temple ordinances for his father and other deceased relatives.²⁰

In the late 1880s, Moroni’s prominence among the Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints increased. In September 1888, he joined Bishop Zundel, his brother Abraham Zundel, and fellow Shoshone convert James Brown on a mission to the camp of Shoshone Chief Washakie in Wyoming Territory. Unfortunately, once they arrived at the camp, the missionaries learned that Washakie could not meet with them, so they turned back. During the mission, Abraham Zundel repeatedly noted Moroni’s skill as a hunter and fisher.²¹ Three months later, Moroni was called as a “home missionary” at the quarterly conference of the Malad Stake.²² He also served as an interpreter for white church leaders visiting the Washakie Ward on at least one occasion.²³

Sometime around 1890, Moroni was called as the first Native Shoshone Sunday School superintendent of the Washakie Ward.²⁴ In this role, he presided over bilingual worship services for over fifty Shoshone Latter-day Saints.²⁵ According to Andrew Kimball, who visited the ward in 1892, these services consisted of singing from an English hymnbook, English recitations or readings, and then classes presumably taught in their native Shoshone. Two older men served as “ward teachers,” “instructing them, settling any difficulties, . . . and enquiring after the general interest and spiritual welfare of the people.”²⁶ In a January 1892 letter to church president Wilford Woodruff, Seymour Young praised Washakie’s Sunday School and described Moroni as one of the leading figures in the ward “and in every way an exemplary man.”²⁷

Tragically, a month after this tribute, Moroni contracted typhoid fever followed by the flu and died on 8 February 1892.²⁸ Three years later, Young eulogized him and the recently deceased John Moemberg as ward leaders who were “celebrated for their influence as peace makers.”²⁹