Sagwitch Timbimboo was a prominent nineteenth-century Northwestern Shoshone dai’gwahni’, or chief, and a survivor of the Bear River Massacre of 1863, who led his people in joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1873.¹ He was born around 1822 near present-day Bear River City, Utah, to mother Woowahrotoquap and father Pininnetze.² As a child, he was known as Sagwip, a Shoshone term for “mud puddle.” Although not physically imposing, he was an athletic youth and became a skilled hunter and trapper.³ At some point he acquired the name Sagwitch, which means “orator” or “talker” in Shoshone.⁴ This may have coincided with his accession to the position of a dai’gwahni’, which entailed coordinating subsistence gatherings and all “activities concerning the entire band.”⁵ According to his great-granddaughter and Northwestern Shoshone tribal historian Mae Timbimboo Parry, Sagwitch “had a way of speaking to his people that made them listen and obey. He knew the power of words.”⁶

Sometime in the late 1830s or early 1840s, Sagwitch married his first wife, Egypitcheeadaday, or Coyote’s Niece. Together they had a son named Soquitch, which means “many buffaloes.” Coyote’s Niece died of natural causes at an unknown date. He also married Hewitch, or Mourning Dove, evidently in the late 1840s or possibly in the 1850s. They named their son Da-boo-zee, meaning “cottontail rabbit,” but he was later known as Yeager. Mourning Dove died of natural causes in 1862 and was buried in Mantua, Utah Territory. Sagwitch also married Dadabaychee, meaning “the sun.” She had two sons from a previous marriage, Hinnah and Botong. In the late 1850s, Sagwitch and Dadabaychee had a son named Beshup, meaning “red clay” (he was later known as Frank Timbimboo Warner), and a daughter, whose name is unknown.⁷

The arrival of Euro-American Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 substantially altered the Northwestern Shoshone debia’, or homeland. According to Northwestern Shoshone oral tradition, Sagwitch cautiously welcomed the newcomers.⁸ He entered the written record in 1857, when Nauvoo Legion commander Marcellus Monroe described meeting “Sagua” and his people at their camp in northern Utah, perhaps in Cache Valley. Monroe noted that he “had a smoke with them & gave them some tobacco, all felt well.”⁹ By the early 1860s Sagwitch was interacting regularly with whites, who recorded his name variously as “Sagwitch,” “Sagwich,” “Sagwicks,” and “Sige-watch.”¹⁰ Peter Maughan, an influential bishop in northern Utah Territory who favored the latter spelling, explained in February 1862 that “Sige-watch and his band are the friendly ones, they have always been so since the settlement of this Valley and we hope they will continue their friendship.”¹¹

Less than a year later, however, Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, commander of the California Volunteers stationed in the territory, blamed Sagwitch and the Northwestern Shoshone for numerous crimes against emigrants. Connor attacked the Shoshone winter encampment on the Bear River on 29 January 1863, killing more than three hundred men, women, and children.¹² The massacre was a devastating blow for Sagwitch and the Northwestern Shoshone. Although the dai’gwahni’ escaped with his life, he was shot twice in the hand.¹³ Sagwitch’s wife Dadabaychee and his stepsons Hinnah and Botong were all killed. His sons Soquitch, Da-boo-zee, and Beshup all lived. Beshup reported in 1918 that he carried “seven wounds . . . as a souvenir of that merciless battle.” The fate of Sagwitch and Dadabaychee’s unnamed daughter is unknown.¹⁴

Following the massacre, the Northwestern Shoshones struggled to survive as they competed with emigrants, miners, and Latter-day Saint settlers for scarce resources. Sagwitch—traumatized by the loss of so many of his people—briefly reversed his policy of peaceful relations with the Saints, who he believed had aided the soldiers in the massacre. Around this time, he married a woman named Tank-go-wish-i. In an effort to force Sagwitch to constrain his people from stealing, Latter-day Saint settlers detained Sagwitch and Tank-go-wish-i in a church in Paradise, Utah Territory. Protesting her treatment, Tank-go-wish-i went on hunger strike and died before their release.¹⁵ Sagwitch subsequently married his final wife, Beahwoachee, the widow of his fellow dai’gwahni’ Bear Hunter, who was killed at Bear River. They apparently had no children together.¹⁶

By May 1863, Sagwitch had reestablished friendly relations with the Saints, which continued for the remainder of his life.¹⁷ His people incorporated the white settlements into their annual subsistence cycles.¹⁸ In 1870, Peter Maughan described “Sigewatch” as “the most reliable Indian in this region, he has been with us from our first settlement of this Valley and has prevented a collision between us and the Indians several times, he positively refuses to join any party against the Mormons.”¹⁹ Although whites in the 1870s continued to spell his name as “Sagwitch”—and a close variant, “Segwitch”—Euro-American Latter-day Saint missionary and amateur Central Numic linguist Dimick B. Huntington evidently introduced a new rendering, “Tsigwitch,” likely in an effort to more accurately capture its opening sound.²⁰

Following the establishment of the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho Territory, federal officials began pressuring the Northwestern Shoshone and other Great Basin Natives to abandon their homelands for the reservation. Huntington wrote in December 1871 that Sagwitch and other leaders “feel hard towards the Government about their Lands.” Disgusted by the government’s treatment of Native people, the leaders asked Huntington to tell Brigham Young that “we are all his friends” and that their friendship could “not . . . be broken by the Gentiles,” meaning non-Latter-day Saints.²¹

In summer 1872, Sagwitch and his cousin—fellow tribal leader John Moemberg (also known as Ech-up-wy)—reportedly experienced manifestations of bo’ha, or spiritual power. They were visited by three men who appeared to be Natives who convinced them that affiliating with the Latter-day Saints and adopting Euro-American methods of agriculture were necessary steps for their people’s survival. Sagwitch sent word to Brigham Young and others of their intentions, asking for George Washington Hill, a Latter-day Saint who had learned the Shoshone language in the 1850s, to preach to their people. Due to work commitments, Hill was unable to comply immediately, but on 5 May 1873 he arranged leave from his railroad job and traveled from his home in Ogden, Utah Territory, to the Shoshone camp near present-day Deweyville. To his surprise, Sagwitch reported that he had seen Hill’s arrival in a bo’ha vision. After preaching at the water’s edge, Hill baptized Sagwitch and more than one hundred Northwestern Shoshone in the Bear River.²² Three days later, on 8 May 1873, Huntington ordained Sagwitch an elder in Salt Lake City.²³

In May 1874, the Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints worked with Hill to develop a viable farming community not far from a traditional wintering campground near Franklin, Idaho Territory. A correspondent for The Salt Lake Daily Herald who was in Franklin described Sagwitch as about “sixty years old, and five feet eight inches in his moccasins.” The Bear River Massacre survivor gave a “quite eloquent” discourse on his “love and friendship for the whites” and his “desire to live in peace.”²⁴ That summer, the Northwestern Shoshone helped dig an irrigation canal, planted crops, built fences, and made other improvements. However, the Franklin area proved unsatisfactory to the Shoshone, and they returned to winter at Promontory near the Great Salt Lake.²⁵

The following year, on 22 February 1875, “Tsigwich” became the first Northwestern Shoshone to receive his endowment in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.²⁶ The same day, Wilford Woodruff sealed Sagwitch to his wife, Beahwoachee—by then using the name Mo-yo-gah—with the apostle noting in his journal that “the first Couple of Lamanites were [sealed] together as man and wife for time & Eternity at the Altar in the Endowm[en]t House according to the Holy Priesthood in the last dispensation & fulness of times.”²⁷

In May 1875, Sagwitch’s people and Hill established a farm outside Bear River City. That summer, hundreds of Shoshone from Wyoming and Idaho visited the farm, heard Hill preach, and accepted baptism. With the community growing from approximately one hundred and fifty to nearly one thousand in a matter of months, residents of the nearby non-Latter-day Saint town of Corinne became alarmed and in August demanded that the government send soldiers to disperse the Shoshone. Sagwitch asked an army officer “what he had Done who he had killed or what he had stolen that he must come with his soldiers to Drive him from the Bread he had been working for all summer”?²⁸ This query went unanswered, and the vast majority of the Shoshone dispersed under the threat of physical expulsion.²⁹

Sagwitch relocated to Fort Hall for a time following the 1875 Corinne dispersal. This was partly due to the traumatic memory of soldiers killing his relatives at Bear River and a fear of further violence.³⁰ According to Mae Timbimboo Parry, the move was also precipitated by a personal conflict with Euro-American Latter-day Saint missionary Isaac E. D. Zundel. Sagwitch lived at Bannock Creek on the reservation for two years and was the first person to plant potatoes in the area.³¹ A “Seg-witch” appeared on a Fort Hall census taken in November 1878, likely attesting to his residence there.³²

Most of Sagwitch’s people decided to remain in northern Utah, where they, with Hill’s assistance, established a new farming community known as Lemuel’s Garden—named for a figure in the Book of Mormon—near present-day Tremonton, Utah.³³ Sagwitch likely traveled back and forth between Fort Hall and Lemuel’s Garden during these years.³⁴ His cousin John Moemberg assumed leadership of the community in Sagwitch’s absence, which was recognized by both Euro-Americans and Natives who referred to him as “Bishop John.” However, persistent struggles at Lemuel’s Garden led the Shoshone Saints to move in 1880 to a church farm four miles south of the Utah–Idaho border and establish a community—and a congregation—known as Washakie in honor of the paramount Eastern Shoshone dai’gwahni’.³⁵

At some point, Sagwitch joined his people at Washakie.³⁶ His son Yeager Timbimboo later recalled his father laboring on the Logan Temple, suggesting Sagwitch was in northern Utah in the late 1870s or early 1880s.³⁷ In October 1883 “Tsyguitch” applied for a homestead at Washakie.³⁸ Following the dedication of the Logan Temple, Sagwitch and Mo-yo-gah, along with other members of the Washakie Ward, performed proxy work for deceased relatives in March 1885. The temple clerk inscribed his name as “Tim-bim-bo Seg-witch,” the earliest recorded use of Timbimboo—meaning “one that writes on the rock”—which later became the family surname.³⁹ By late 1886, Sagwitch had set aside his differences with the missionary Zundel—who was then serving as bishop of the Washakie Ward. During the 1880s, the United States government began prosecuting Latter-day Saint men and women who participated in the practice of plural marriage.⁴⁰ As a polygamist, Zundel was among those targeted, and he had been forced to go into hiding to avoid arrest. Sagwitch and other Shoshone took the bishop up into a canyon above the town. Sagwitch grew ill in spring 1887, and four men carried him down on a stretcher. He passed away just short of Washakie and was buried at that spot. Subsequently, community residents buried their dead around Sagwitch’s grave, thereby creating the Washakie cemetery.⁴¹ His legacy as a dedicated Latter-day Saint Shoshone was carried on by his descendants who were pillars of the Washakie Ward and who remain influential in the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation today.⁴²