The Northwestern Shoshone have lived in the heart of the intermountain west of North America since time immemorial. Their debia’, or homeland, stretches across present-day northern Utah and southeastern Idaho, as well as portions of Nevada and Wyoming. Prior to the arrival of Euro-Americans, extended groups of families traversed the Northwestern Shoshone territory throughout the year in search of fish, game, nuts, berries, seeds, roots, and other food sources. As Northwestern Shoshone historian Mae Timbimboo Parry explained, her people “looked upon the earth not just as a place to live; in fact, they called the earth their mother—it was the provider of their livelihood. The mountains, streams, and plains stood forever, they said, and the seasons walked around annually. The Indians believed all things came from Mother Earth.” Acquiring horses granted the Northwestern Shoshone greater mobility and enabled them to hunt bison with their Eastern Shoshone kin in present-day Wyoming. Leaders known as dai’gwahni’ (later translated imperfectly as “chief” by Euro-Americans) organized subsistence gatherings, acted as mediators for internal conflict resolution, and served as intermediaries when interacting with other groups. Visitors were welcome in the Northwestern Shoshone debia’ if they obtained permission and if there were sufficient resources to sustain the additional population.¹

The arrival of Euro-Americans in the nineteenth century—first fur traders, then migrants on the overland trail, and finally members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—dramatically altered the world of the Northwestern Shoshone. Unlike earlier groups that were transient sojourners in the Northwestern Shoshone debia’, the Saints came to stay, viewing the Great Basin as a safe haven from persecution and a place where they could build Zion in the mountains. This would involve transforming what they perceived as wilderness into “civilization,” characterized by Euro-American ideas of agriculture, order, and progress.² In order for Indigenous peoples to survive this transformation, the Saints assumed that they would abandon their “savage” hunting and gathering lifeways and adopt the Saints’ “civilization.” Although Latter-day Saints retained many Euro-American racial prejudices toward Native Americans, the church’s religious vision for the Great Basin also included evangelizing Native peoples, whom church members believed to be descendants of the Lamanites, an Israelite people in the Book of Mormon.³

These millennial expectations were almost immediately challenged. Ute, Shoshone, and other Indigenous peoples cautiously welcomed the Saints as trade partners and potential allies.⁴ But tensions rose as church members planted themselves in the Salt Lake Valley and expanded south and west in search of sufficient water to sustain agriculture, timber to build houses and fence their fields, and grasses to feed their cattle and horse herds. The Saints initially misapprehended the impact their expansion would have on Timpanogos Ute and Goshute subsistence patterns, and they did not comprehend the diplomatic significance of reciprocity and gift-giving in maintaining peaceful relations with Native peoples. Increasingly frustrated and hungry Ute and Goshute began targeting Latter-day Saint grain fields, cattle, and horses as a survival tactic. Whereas Native Americans evidently viewed these acts as compensation for resource use, Euro-American Latter-day Saints interpreted them as theft and responded with expensive and sometimes bloody militia campaigns intended to punish perceived offenders and signal that such actions would not be tolerated. In 1851, Brigham Young and other Latter-day Saint leaders, citing financial and humanitarian concerns, began urging local church and community leaders to pursue more conciliatory methods of conflict resolution.⁵

Latter-day Saint expansion into the Weber and Box Elder valleys north of Salt Lake brought them into sustained contact with the Northwestern Shoshone, some of whom targeted crops, burned fence poles, and confiscated cattle and horses as a form of protesting the settlers’ presence. Although the Saints did at times utilize posses and the militia to punish perceived thefts, bloodshed was usually averted through diplomatic negotiations between Weber Valley dai’gwahni’ Little Soldier, local community leaders, and Young in Salt Lake.⁶

Other Northwestern Shoshone welcomed the newcomers for trade and other opportunities.⁷ Among them was “Indian John” or Ech-up-wy—later known among white Latter-day Saints as John Moemberg—a prominent Northwestern Shoshone leader. In his obituary published in the Logan Journal, John was remembered for owning “some very fine horses” and for his honest dealings with whites.⁸ Some Euro-American Latter-day Saints brought orphaned or displaced Shoshone children and youth into their homes, often as indentured servants under an act passed by the Utah Territory legislature, providing shelter, clothing, and some schooling in exchange for the child’s labor.⁹ Two Shoshone men raised in northern Utah households later chose to affiliate with the Saints. These were James Brown (whose Shoshone name is unknown), who evidently lived with the James M. and Adelaide Exervia Brown household in Ogden, and James Laman, known among the Shoshone as Nan-oke-to-enip, who resided with the Alvin and Virginia Wright Nichols family in Brigham City. In the 1870s they both joined John and the emerging Latter-day Saint Shoshone community in northern Utah, serving as interpreters and intermediaries with the broader settler society.¹⁰

After the creation of the Utah Territory in 1850, Brigham Young was appointed governor and superintendent of Indian Affairs. Blending his governmental and ecclesiastical roles, he used federal resources to provide customary presents to Native peoples and advocated instructing Indigenous peoples in Euro-American farming methods. Although these efforts were broadly consistent with federal Indian policy, United States Indian Office officials nevertheless doubted their cost effectiveness and alleged he was benefiting the Saints at the expense of other Euro-Americans.¹¹ Illustrative of Young’s blurring of the lines between his roles, he cultivated a relationship with Washakie, widely considered to be the paramount Shoshone dai’gwahni’, offering to send gifts and missionaries who would instruct his people.¹² In the mid-1850s, Young made good on the offer by sponsoring hybrid proselytizing and agricultural missions among Washakie’s Eastern Shoshone near the Green River in present-day Wyoming, as well as among Shoshone people near the Salmon River in present-day Idaho. Both missions closed after a few years—largely as a result of the Utah War of 1857—but they anticipated later interest among some Shoshone in both Euro-American agriculture techniques and the Latter-day Saint religion.¹³

In the late 1850s Latter-day Saints pushed farther north into Cache Valley, bringing with them large herds of cattle. These cattle subsisted on wild wheat grasses, the seeds of which constituted an essential component of Northwestern Shoshone diets. On 4 June 1857, local church leader Peter Maughan reported to Young that a group of Northwestern Shoshone were angry that the Saints had not given them customary presents and that “they were very hungry and that we was liveing on their Land.” Although Maughan defused the situation by gifting them a cow, the encounter foreshadowed more explosive interactions.¹⁴

Northwestern Shoshone dai’gwahni’ responded in different ways to overland emigrant and Latter-day Saint incursions. Pocatello became the principal leader of a group that raided emigrants crossing through his debia’ and he initially remained aloof from the Latter-day Saints.¹⁵ In contrast, Latter-day Saint settlers identified Sagwitch and his people as “the friendly ones.” Maughan wrote in 1862 that “they have always been so since the settlement of [Cache] Valley and we hope they will continue their friendship.”¹⁶ Nevertheless, Cache Valley settler Seth M. Blair reported that Sagwitch and other Northwestern Shoshone “claim our fields Towns &c as their Lands & want many presents to appease” them. This heavy tribute created resentment among some Euro-American Latter-day Saints who had little understanding of the role such gifts played in diplomatic relations and maintaining peace.¹⁷

The discovery of gold in present-day Montana further increased traffic through Northwestern Shoshone territory and led to a concomitant increase in raids on Euro-Americans. Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, commander of the California Volunteers stationed in the Utah Territory, launched a punitive campaign against Northwestern Shoshone under the leadership of Sagwitch, Bear Hunter, and Lehi at their winter encampment on the Bear River on 29 January 1863. Connor’s men killed more than three hundred Northwestern Shoshone men, women, and children; it was the largest massacre of Indigenous peoples perpetrated by United States troops in the nineteenth century.¹⁸ Latter-day Saints who visited the massacre site were appalled by what they saw. After hearing “the most sickening accounts” from Shoshone survivors, Israel J. Clark described “the inhuman acts of the Soldiers” and alleged that the troops had executed the wounded and “ravish[ed]” Shoshone women, “which was done to the very height of brutality.” Other church members, exhausted by the Shoshone demands for gifts and raids on settler herds, callously praised Connor’s attack as “an intervention of the Almighty.”¹⁹

The trauma suffered on 29 January 1863 crippled the Northwestern Shoshone, but it did not break them as a people. The survivors picked up the pieces of their lives and rebuilt their communities. In July 1863, the United States government made a series of treaties with various groups of the Shoshone nation, including the Treaty of Box Elder with the Northwestern Shoshone. These treaties pledged peace, promised annuities, but also sought to guarantee that Euro-Americans could cross Shoshone territory unmolested. The survivors of the massacre attended treaty negotiations at Brigham City, Utah Territory; Sagwitch, who was shot by an unidentified assailant and was unable to sign the treaty, was consulted on the terms.²⁰ In 1868, the United States government established the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming Territory for the Eastern Shoshone and the Fort Hall Reservation in southeastern Idaho Territory for the Northern Shoshone—including the Northwestern Shoshone—and Bannock peoples. Although some Northwestern Shoshone such as Pocatello moved to Fort Hall, Sagwitch and other leaders chose to face an uncertain future among the Latter-day Saints in their debia’ along the Bear River in northern Utah and southern Idaho.²¹