Willie Ottogary spent decades of his life as an advocate for the Northwestern Shoshone people and journalist for Washakie, Utah. He balanced these duties with those of a father, farmer, and devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Willie was born to mother Sots-ze-ump and father Peter Otahgary, or O-tah-get, in Mantua, Utah Territory, on 6 July 1869.¹ He was raised during a period of trials and uncertainty for his people following the Bear River Massacre of 1863 and federal pressures to relocate to reservations.² His father was a survivor of the massacre and often shared stories about the harrowing experience with his descendants.³ Willie was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on 10 June 1878, three years after his father and presumably his mother were baptized.⁴

Over the next decade, Willie and his family worked with Euro-American Latter-day Saint missionaries to establish a viable Shoshone farming community in southern Idaho and northern Utah. O-tah-get obtained a homestead near present-day Elwood, Utah Territory, as part of a community informally called Lemuel’s Garden, and the Ottogary family maintained a farm there until Willie’s death in 1929.⁵ The Ottogarys also owned property in Washakie, and Willie was part of the first wave of children to attend the Washakie day school.⁶ Willie and his family moved back to Elwood more permanently around 1914 when their records were transferred from the Washakie Ward to the Elwood Ward, but they maintained close ties with the Northwestern Shoshone community at Washakie and attended church, school, and community activities there regularly.⁷

Willie began his family with Alice, or Pishey-boo-ey, sometime around 1898 when Alice bore their first child.⁸ After Alice’s death in 1902, Willie married Nancy Smith civilly on 26 October 1903.⁹ In 1912, they received their endowments and were sealed in the Logan Temple.¹⁰ They had five children together, three of whom survived to adulthood: Chester (1908–⁠1987), Custer (1910⁠–⁠1930), and Louise (1912⁠–1992). Nancy and Willie separated in 1916 and split custody of the children, Chester and Custer staying with Willie and Louise going with Nancy.¹¹

Beginning as a young man, Willie served in leadership positions in the Washakie Ward. In 1890, when he was twenty-one years old, he was called as the first Northwestern Shoshone Sunday School secretary, recognizing his literacy skills.¹² Two years later he was called as the first Shoshone Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association secretary in Washakie.¹³ In 1907, Willie and his brother-in-law Ammon Pubigee were called as seventies and later served a mission together along with another Shoshone Saint from Washakie, Charley Broom. They served among their Goshute relatives in Tooele County, Utah, at Deep Creek and Skull Valley in 1913.¹⁴

Willie also had a prolific career as a local journalist. Between 1906 and his death in 1929, he wrote over 450 letters to local newspapers that give valuable insights into the daily lives of the Northwestern Shoshone at Washakie during the early twentieth century.¹⁵ His reports on the Sun Dance especially demonstrate his own identity as both a devout Latter-day Saint and a Shoshone man enthusiastic about his culture.¹⁶ Willie also used his literacy skills and his familiarity with Euro-American society to advocate for Northwestern Shoshone rights under the 1863 Treaty of Box Elder. He wrote to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1914; in 1915, he was the first Northwestern Shoshone to travel to Washington, DC. While there, he petitioned the federal government to honor rights granted in the Treaty of Box Elder.¹⁷ This initial trip to Washington did not produce immediate results in the form of land reclamation or the establishment of a reservation for the Northwestern Shoshone. Though Willie did not live to see the results of this advocacy, it set the stage for a series of lawsuits that resulted in land loss compensation in 1968.¹⁸

In 1918, Willie was arrested as one of the ringleaders of the World War I draft protest among the Goshute. When the soldiers involved vacated the area after the arrest, a group of Goshute and Shoshone women, most likely wives of the arrested men, ransacked a federal Indian Agency.¹⁹ Willie’s activism strengthened the foundations for Northwestern Shoshone sovereignty claims and produced some explosive results, especially among the Goshute. After building a legacy as a voice of the Washakie, Shoshone treaty rights champion, father, church member, community builder, and farmer, Willie died at his home in Elwood on 18 March 1929. His cause of death was identified as an “Acute dilation of Heart.”²⁰ He was subsequently buried in the Washakie cemetery.²¹