New Native Saints Database

A New Database of Native Saints

This month, discover a new digital history resource created in collaboration with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. Learn about the features and purpose of the project, then glean insights from a project historian about the community behind Native Saints: The Washakie Ward.

Native Saints cover, featuring a family of three Shoshone Church members in early twentieth century dress.

New Release

Native Saints: The Washakie Ward

The new joint publication of the Church Historian’s Press and the Church History Biographical Database highlights the stories of Washakie, Utah, the physical and spiritual home for Northwestern Shoshone Latter-day Saints and a distinctive Indigenous congregation within the Church’s organization.

The project features essays recounting the history of the Northwestern Shoshone, biographies and profiles of key community members, and more.

LEARN MORE

Historian Article

Joshua Rust:

Shoshone Community Builders in the Washakie Ward

Native Saints: The Washakie Ward set out to document and share the history of the Washakie Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through historical essays, biographies, maps, photographs, a chronology, and a guide to sources.

Historians and missionaries alike pored over 50,000 indexed entries from more than 25 church record books to find names such as Thomas Pabawena Jr., Amy Hootchew, Johnny Timmock, and Harry Tootiana. We were surprised to discover that some of these individuals were also core leaders of the Western Shoshone bands of eastern Nevada, more than 250 miles away.

The Washakie Ward, which never had more than a few hundred members, seemed to be an integral part of a network of early Shoshone nation builders across the Intermountain West.

READ THE ARTICLE

Final Footnote

From May’s JSP web release

Have you read the minutes of Joseph Smith’s meetings with the Sauk and Meskwaki Nations?

“Account of Meeting, 23 May 1844,” posted in last month’s upload of Documents, Volume 15, records a council Joseph Smith held with a delegation from these nations. The historical introduction and footnotes to these minutes detail other meetings with the Sauk, Meskwaki, and other Indigenous nations, including an 1841 meeting with Chief Keokuk (pictured here). Learn more in a footnote from the Joseph Smith Papers.

Open this email on desktop to view the image. Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis.

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