SALT LAKE CITY—The Church History Department (CHD) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation (NWBSN) today announced the publication of a new digital history resource, Native Saints: The Washakie Ward. Founded in 1880 four miles south of the Utah-Idaho border, Washakie was the physical and spiritual home for Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints and a distinctive Indigenous congregation within the Church’s organization. Native Saints: The Washakie Ward highlights the stories of the community and its members. Project historians and Northwestern Shoshone tribal Elders have worked closely together to conceptualize the project, share research on the Washakie Ward and its members, and review pre-publication written materials.

Native Saints: The Washakie Ward is a joint publication of the Church Historian’s Press (CHP) and the Church History Biographical Database. The Native Saints page of the CHP website features essays recounting the history of the Northwestern Shoshone and Euro-American Latter-day Saints, the reported spiritual manifestations that persuaded hundreds of tribal members to accept baptism into the Church in the 1870s, and the story of the Washakie Ward from its founding in 1880 through the unit’s closure in 1966. The website also includes biographies of key community members, maps of the Washakie community and the Northwestern Shoshone homelands, historical photographs, and other supplementary materials. The Washakie Ward Dataset in the Biographical Database features approximately 1,600 profiles of Shoshone individuals whose names appear in Latter-day Saint missionary and Washakie Ward records, with each profile containing vital data and a timeline of affiliation with the Church. The profiles are primarily based on the efforts of project missionaries at the Church History Library and FamilySearch who painstakingly indexed the Washakie Ward records.

David W. Grua, a Senior Historian in the CHD and lead historian of the Native Saints project, said that “the Washakie Ward was where the Northwestern Shoshone became Indigenous Latter-day Saints and where they passed on their history, culture, and language to subsequent generations. This work of cultural preservation laid a foundation for their perseverance as a people and as a nation today. Working closely with the descendants of the Washakie Ward members to tell their story has been tremendously gratifying.” Brad Parry, Vice Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, added that “It was such a great blessing and honor to work with the Church History Department. It was a blessing to learn more about my family who lived at Washakie. Preserving this history is monumental.”

Native Saints: The Washakie Ward demonstrates the ongoing commitment of the Church Historian’s Press to publish and share the Church’s diverse history. The project builds on earlier work such as Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, which touched on aspects of Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saint experience.

About

The Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation is a Federally recognized Tribe, exercising inherent sovereign authority and Treaty rights set forth in the Treaty of Box Elder of 1863 (13 Stat. 663) and the Treaty of Fort Bridger of 1868 (15 Stat. 673) and organized under a Tribal Constitution and By-laws pursuant to the Indian Reorganization Act of June 18, 1934 (48 Stat. 984) as amended; and are the direct descendants of the survivors of the Bear River Massacre.

The Church Historian’s Press was announced by the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2008. The Joseph Smith Papers was the first publication to bear the imprint. The press publishes works of Latter-day Saint history that meet high standards of scholarship.

The Church History Biographical Database was launched in 2022 as an authoritative repository of individual Latter-day Saints who participated in specific Church events. The database’s mission is to build a self-serve research tool that categorizes key figures, institutions, roles, locations, events, and publications significant to Church history.