George Washington Hill: In the early 1870s, Northwestern Shoshone leaders experienced spiritual manifestations that persuaded them to join the church and adopt Euro-American farming techniques. They contacted George Washington Hill, a trusted Euro-American Latter-day Saint who had first learned the Shoshone language while serving among the Lemhi Shoshone at the Salmon River Mission from 1855 to 1858. Hill baptized more than one hundred Northwestern Shoshone on 5 May 1873 and served as an instrumental guide in the early days of the Northwestern Shoshone Mission. Despite his own racial and ethnocentric biases common to nineteenth-century white Christians, Hill’s letters, journal, and reports are indispensable sources for understanding the early history of the Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saint community.²

Zundel Family: Isaac E. D. Zundel was called to serve in the Northwestern Shoshone Mission in 1875 and worked with the Northwestern Shoshone at Lemuel’s Garden near present-day Tremonton, Utah. He oversaw the move to the large farm in northern Utah Territory that was later known as Washakie, and he was set apart as the first Euro-American bishop of the Washakie Ward in 1880. His brother Abraham and wife Elizabeth also participated in the formative years of Washakie, and their records provide important context alongside Zundel’s. Zundel descendants also collected records and recorded reminiscences of the Zundel family’s participation at Washakie.³

Moroni and George M. Ward Family: Moroni Ward was called to serve in the Northwestern Shoshone Mission in the 1870s and was called as a counselor to Bishop Isaac E. D. Zundel in the Washakie Ward bishopric in 1881.⁴ In 1890, he was called to replace Zundel, serving as the congregation’s second Euro-American bishop until 1902. Moroni Ward was replaced by his son George M. Ward, who in turn served as bishop until 1929.⁵ Moroni Ward kept a journal that provided a day-to-day record of the community in the 1880s.⁶ During their respective tenures in Washakie Ward leadership, the Wards corresponded with the First Presidency, and their letters document significant aspects of the Washakie Ward’s history from the 1880s through the early twentieth century.

Seymour B. Young: Young, a general authority, acted as the eyes and ears of church President Wilford Woodruff while at Washakie from 1887 to 1898. His reports on the conditions of the Northwestern Shoshone at Washakie and the viability of the farm provide valuable insights into the early decades of the town.⁷

Washakie Ward: The Washakie congregation operated from 1880 to 1966.⁸ In accordance with general church guidelines, Washakie Ward clerks and secretaries (initially Euro-American and later Shoshone) kept minutes of meetings for sacrament services, priesthood, Relief Society, Sunday School, Primary, and youth organizations. Nearly all of the earliest record books were destroyed by fires in 1887 and 1891. However, a ledger containing Relief Society and Primary minutes and attendance rolls for 1883 through 1910 (LR 9928 22) somehow survived, as did a ward membership record book documenting births, baby blessings, baptisms, deaths, and other information for the 1890s and 1900s (LR 9928 25). A third book documented the proxy work of Shoshone Saints in the Logan Temple in the 1880s (LR 9928 26).⁹ Beginning in 1902, more than twenty record books survive documenting the regular worship meetings and practices of ward members in various congregational organizations. See here for a description of the CHL’s method of cataloging local records and the meaning of the series numbers.

Box Elder and Malad Stakes: Beginning in 1877, the Northwestern Shoshone Mission became part of the Box Elder Stake, and the Washakie Ward continued as part of the stake following the ward’s founding in 1880. In 1888, the Washakie Ward was transferred to the newly formed Malad Stake and remained in that stake until the unit was closed in 1966.¹⁰ These stake records contain organization rolls, annual statistical reports, ward finances, priesthood quorum records, Relief Society minutes, correspondence, and confidential stake leadership minutes that all reference the Washakie Ward and its members. These stake records are especially valuable for years when the Washakie Ward’s records have not survived.

Newspapers: The press is an important source for understanding the history of the Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints and the Washakie Ward. Notable reporters included Willie Ottogary, a Northwestern Shoshone leader and reporter who rose to regional prominence and reported on the daily goings-on of Washakie residents during the early twentieth century in the Tremont Times, Oneida County Enterprise, Box Elder Journal, Box Elder News, Salt Lake Telegram, and The Journal from 1906 to 1929.¹¹ Historian Matthew Kreitzer compiled many of Ottogary’s writings in The Washakie Letters of Willie Ottogary. In the 1930s, journalist Marion Everton wrote a series of articles on the history of the Logan Temple for the Logan Herald-Journal. Everton visited Washakie and interviewed Northwestern Shoshone such as Yeager Timbimboo about their memories of the early years of the community and their service helping to build the temple.

Mae Timbimboo Parry: A daughter of Moroni and Amy Hootchew Timbimboo, Mae Timbimboo Parry began recording the stories told by her grandfather Yeager Timbimboo at the age of twelve. She was a great-granddaughter of dai’gwahni’, or chief, Sagwitch Timbimboo. As an adult, she used the education she received at the Washakie Day School and at the Sherman Institute—a federal boarding school in Riverside, California—to research and write the history of her people.¹² Her collected materials are available physically and digitally at the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation’s Utah State Libraries Digital Collections and the Church History Library in Salt Lake City. Using her background with these records, Parry wrote various biographical sketches of prominent Northwestern Shoshone figures. Her historical work for the tribe culminated in the published articles “Massacre at Boa Ogoi” and “The Northwestern Shoshone.”¹³

CHL Oral History Projects: Various volunteers and historians conducted and recorded interviews with Washakie Ward members throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Paula Watkins, serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, led a notable oral history project titled “Remembering Washakie” from 2012 to 2016 in which she interviewed various tribal members and Euro-Americans who had memories of the Washakie community.

Various historians and anthropologists have conducted oral history projects and collected materials that shed light on the Northwestern Shoshone and Euro-American experiences at Washakie.