Native Saints: The Washakie Ward is a digital history resource that celebrates and illuminates the historical and ongoing relationship between the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation (NWBSN) and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This project would not have been possible without the collaboration of NWBSN History and Culture Specialist and Tribal Librarian Patty Timbimboo-Madsen, Cultural Resources Specialist Rios Pacheco, Vice Chairman Bradley Parry, and former Tribal Chairwoman Gwen Timbimboo-Davis. These Elders devoted considerable time and attention to working with project historians David W. Grua, Jeffrey D. Mahas, and Joshua Rust to conceptualize this project, provide linguistic and cultural guidance, and ensure that interpretation is consistent with NWBSN protocols. We thank Tribal Chairman Dennis Alex and his successor, Jason Walker, as well as members of the Tribal Council, for their support of Native Saints: The Washakie Ward. We also thank retired Executive Director George Gover, and Maria Moncur, Director of NWBSN Public Relations and Communications, for providing invaluable assistance and support.

We are grateful for the support of leadership and employees in the Church History Department (CHD). Elder Kyle S. McKay, Church Historian and CHD Executive Director, has been a consistent advocate of the project. We thank Publications Division leadership, including Director Matthew S. McBride and managers Brent M. Rogers, Amber Taylor, and Petra Javadi-Evans, for their support and assistance. CHD historian Jonathan A. Stapley was instrumental in the project’s early stages, especially in developing project management workflows. We are also indebted to Christopher Bowman Rich Jr. and Jason Young, who helped research and write biographies of Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints. Lead editor Catherine Reese Newton, editor McKinsey Kemeny, and reference editors Emma Taylor, Samuel Lambert, and Keaton Reed have provided superb editorial support. Hannah Lenning assisted with images and obtaining intellectual property permissions, while Kaytee Johnson built the Native Saints page on the Church Historian’s Press website. Product manager Nathan Waite assisted in developing the project’s webpage, interfaced with other church departments, and, with CHD Senior Communications Specialist Jenda Nye, coordinated publicity efforts. We are indebted to the Church History Library’s Metadata Initiatives Manager Brittany N. Alleman Ayers for developing indexing tools, training project historians and missionaries in their use, and guiding the refinement of the data. Lis Allen Walker, who oversees content management for the Church History Biographical Database, also helped develop the Native Saints data for inclusion in the database.

We thank administrators and leaders in the Family History Department (FHD) and the Salt Lake City Headquarters Mission for supplying teams of senior and service missionaries who indexed the Washakie Ward records. Russell Lynch, an FHD liaison working in the CHD, arranged with Dallas Kidman, manager of missionary teams, for FamilySearch missionaries to index Washakie Ward records during the early phases of the project. The team was led by Vivian Craig and included Michele Bryant, Lloyd Campbell Jr., Myrna Conder, Vivian Craig, Renee Garner, Judith Hansen, Gladys Knudsen, Diane MacCabe, Wayne MacCabe, Pamela McAllister, Ann Saxton, Marie Seifert, and Teresa Tully. We thank them for their work. Salt Lake City Headquarters Mission Leaders Ronald L. and Rebecca Craven as well as Special Projects Zone Leaders Larry Walters and Brian Nelson have been constant supporters of the project. Nan DeGood provided crucial leadership and project management expertise as the inaugural team leader. Jerry Winder applied his extensive professional background in database management to the project, served as an interim team lead after Sister DeGood’s departure, and worked with project historians to research and write biographies. We also thank Larry and Hazel Abraham, Karinne Bernhard, Thomas C. Clark, Brian and Laurie Hahn, Stan Harding, Randall Heiner, Bonnie Jo Huber, Janet Newbold, John Charles Pearce, Ferrell Peterson, Darrell Pitcher, Maer Robertson (team lead), Sterling and Carol Thomas, Alan Warnick, Susan Young, and Timothy Zundel, for consecrating their time and talents to Native Saints. Paula Watkins, a former CHD missionary and longtime volunteer at the NWBSN Tribal Library, conducted significant oral history interviews that tremendously aided the project.

We are indebted to academic scholars for lending their subject-matter expertise to the project. Church History Library archivist and historian Scott R. Christensen—the biographer of Sagwitch Timbimboo, the dai’gwahni who led his people into the church in the 1870s—shared his research and expertise on the Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints. Christensen, who has spent four decades cultivating a relationship with the Northwestern Shoshone, introduced Grua and Mahas to NWBSN Tribal Elders, served as an indispensable adviser to the project, and reviewed the Native Saints essays and biographies. Farina King, Horizon Chair of Native American Ecology and Culture and Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, served as an important adviser to the project and as a reviewer. Matthew E. Kreitzer, editor of The Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary, Northwestern Shoshone Journalist and Leader, counseled the Native Saints team and served as a reviewer. Finally, W. Paul Reeve, the Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies and Director of the acclaimed Century of Black Mormons database, also served as an adviser to the project and as a reviewer.

We are grateful to archivists and staff at various repositories for answering research queries and providing support for Native Saints. At the Church History Library, we thank Audrey S. Dunshee and her team for reviewing access requests and answering questions about sacred, private, and confidential records, Brandon Metcalf for assistance with vault items, and Trevor Wylie and his team for their expeditious efforts to digitize materials related to the project. We thank Alan Morrell and Carrie Snow at the Church History Museum for allowing us to photograph artifacts used as illustrations. We are indebted to multimedia archivist Duston Mazzella and the staff at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library’s Special Collections for providing scans of important Northwestern Shoshone oral histories. We also thank Sarah Berry, digital archivist at Utah State University’s Merrill–Cazier Library, for overseeing the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation Tribal Archive and for facilitating access to digital recordings of oral histories. And we are grateful to the archivists at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library for timely responses to digitization requests.

Native Saints: The Washakie Ward has been as much about building relationships as it has been about historical research. During the life of this project, NWBSN Elders, project historians, and project missionaries have broken bread together, visited the historic Washakie Chapel and the community cemetery, commemorated lives lost in the Bear River Massacre of 1863, and planted trees to help restore and heal that hallowed ground and river. Native Saints: The Washakie Ward is a tribute to generations of faithful Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints who made Washakie their spiritual and tribal home. We thank their descendants for entrusting Native Saints: The Washakie Ward with their story.