Yeager Timbimboo was a prominent leader in the Washakie Ward, serving for more than two decades as the first Shoshone counselor in the ward bishopric.¹ He was born around 1848 on the Green River in present-day Wyoming to mother He-witche and father Sagwitch, an influential Northwestern Shoshone dai’gwahni’, or chief. As a child, he was known as Da-boo-zee, meaning “cottontail rabbit” in Shoshone. Da-boo-zee grew up traversing the Northwestern Shoshone debia’, or homeland, with his people during their seasonal subsistence migrations, diverting himself by participating in games, dances, and other social gatherings.²

Although Sagwitch and his band were known as the “friendly ones”—accommodating rather than resisting Euro-American traders, migrants, and settlers—they were nevertheless blamed for attacks against migrants and targeted by Colonel Patrick E. Connor’s California Volunteers on 29 January 1863 near present-day Franklin, Idaho, on the Bear River.³ As Da-boo-zee sought to avoid being hit by flying bullets, his grandmother Que-he-gup urged him to lie on the ground and pretend to be dead. When the youth opened his eyes, a soldier discovered him and aimed a rifle at the boy’s head, only to walk away without pulling the trigger.⁴ At some point, Da-boo-zee came to be known as Yeager, which is possibly derived from the Shoshone word meaning “to cry.”⁵

In the wake of the massacre, the remnant of the Northwestern Shoshone struggled to survive on a shrinking land and resource base as they competed with growing numbers of Latter-day Saint settlers and overland migrants. The Shoshone nevertheless claimed the right to remain in their debia’ and resisted federal pressures to remove to the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho. In summer 1872, Northwestern Shoshone dai’gwahni’ Sagwitch and John Moemberg, also known as Ech-up-wy, reportedly experienced spiritual manifestations, or bo’ha, that persuaded them to seek baptism as Latter-day Saints and to adopt Euro-American farming methods.⁶

Sagwitch called a tribal council to deliberate on how to respond to the bo’ha visions. The Shoshone decided to seek out Latter-day Saint missionaries. Mae Timbimboo Parry—Sagwitch’s great-granddaughter and Northwestern Shoshone tribal historian—reported that Sagwitch first looked west, sending Yeager and three other Shoshone men to Ibapah, a Goshute community on the Utah-Nevada border.⁷ When he spoke in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in 1926, Yeager recounted that “in [his] younger days [he] was sent with others to this country towards the west in search of a Great Spirit. . . . The company of Indians traveled by foot day and night, and endured hardships, hunger and thirst.” When they reached Ibapah, the delegates found Latter-day Saints there. “We were baptized by those elders,” he recalled. When Yeager remembered how he came into the church, his journey to Ibapah was foundational.⁸

Meanwhile, Sagwitch also sought to contact George Washington Hill, a Euro-American Latter-day Saint who had learned Shoshone while proselytizing among Northern Shoshone people in the Salmon River country in the 1850s. It took some time for Hill to be able to receive authorization from Brigham Young and to arrange time off from his work, but on 5 May 1873, he baptized more than one hundred Northwestern Shoshone in the Bear River. It is unknown if Yeager had returned from Ibapah by that time, or, if he did, whether he was rebaptized—a common nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint practice—with his people.⁹

During summer 1874, Sagwitch’s people worked with Hill to establish a viable farming community near Franklin, Idaho Territory. The Shoshone, however, were not satisfied by the area and wintered at Promontory Point in Utah. The following year, on 22 February 1875, Sagwitch and his wife Mo-yo-gah were the first Northwestern Shoshone to receive their endowments and be sealed together in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.¹⁰ On 5 April 1875, “Yeager”—the earliest unambiguous instance of the name he would use as an adult—received his endowment alongside his half-brother Soquitch in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.¹¹ The same day, “Ye-ager” was sealed to a Shoshone woman named Pam-py-yoke by First Presidency member Daniel H. Wells. Northwestern Shoshone convert James Laman, also known as Nan-oke-to-enip, served as a witness for the sealing; he presumably translated the ceremonies for his fellow Shoshone Saints.¹²

During summer 1875, Yeager presumably lived with Pam-py-yoke on the Latter-day Saint Shoshone farm between Bear River City and Corinne, Utah Territory. They evidently had one child together, a son, who died in infancy.¹³ The non-Latter-day Saint residents of Corinne, alarmed by the large number of Shoshone at the farm, petitioned the territorial governor to disperse the Natives with the military.¹⁴ Sagwitch, traumatized and fearful of a repeat of the Bear River Massacre, moved to the Fort Hall Reservation. Yeager likely went with his father: An 1878 reservation census listed “Seg-witch” and “Yu-ga” living in lodge 119. Pam-py-yoke was evidently not with him, and it is likely that their marriage had ended by that time.¹⁵ The two men, however, maintained ties with the Shoshone Saints, who in 1876 had started a new farming community called Lemuel’s Garden near present-day Elwood, Utah. By June 1879, Yeager was back in Utah Territory, volunteering his labor to help construct the Logan Temple.¹⁶ He later recalled “with pleasure” helping with the mortar and other tasks.¹⁷

In 1880, the Shoshone Saints began moving north from Lemuel’s Garden to what became Washakie. Around that time, Yeager married a Shoshone woman named Yampitch, the daughter of a prominent Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saint, James Wongan. On 9 December 1881, he applied for a homestead near Washakie as “Yager Tsyguitch (Indian).”¹⁸ On 16 February 1886, “Ye-gar”—by then using the surname “Tim-bim-bo,” which means “one that writes on the rock”—performed proxy baptisms for deceased relatives in the completed Logan Temple.¹⁹ The next day, he and Yampitch—with her name spelled Yam-pits-zah—were sealed together in the temple.²⁰ Yeager and Yampitch spent more than four decades together and had at least ten children; only Moroni (1888–1975) lived to adulthood.²¹

Yeager was a dedicated member of the Washakie Ward and was among the earliest Shoshone individuals to replace Euro-American missionaries in leadership positions. In fall 1891, he was called as superintendent of the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association, a position he filled for the next thirty-six years.²² In 1908, he was sustained as the first Shoshone counselor in the bishopric, serving for more than two decades with George M. Ward, the third Euro-American bishop of the Washakie Ward.²³ Although he never learned to read or write, he was attentive to teachings and worked diligently to remember what he was taught.²⁴ During his many years of service, he spoke on a range of subjects, including the Book of Mormon, obedience, the creation, redemption, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, tithing, the Word of Wisdom, honoring the Sabbath day, and temple work.²⁵ On 6 April 1926, Yeager became the first Native American to address the church’s general conference in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Speaking through a translator, he bore his testimony of the gospel and the blessings he had received as a church member.²⁶

On 4 April 1929, Yeager was released from the bishopric, with his son Moroni replacing him as first counselor.²⁷ Just over two months later, on 24 June 1929, Yeager’s beloved Yampitch died of a “cancer of the stomach.”²⁸ During his final years, he remained a devoted Latter-day Saint. During winter, the season traditionally dedicated by tribal Elders to storytelling, Yeager taught his grandchildren the stories of their people, enjoining them to remember his words and preserve their Shoshone heritage.²⁹ He recounted his traumatic memories of the Bear River Massacre, serving as a witness to the atrocity that happened there on 29 January 1863.³⁰ In March 1937, just months before he died, Yeager performed an “Indian song”—unfortunately, the clerk did not record its name—at the Washakie Ward’s annual reunion.³¹ He died of old age on 4 October that year and was buried near his father in the Washakie Cemetery.³²