By Dr. John Roberts
Shoshone Episcopal Mission
Wind River Wyoming Oct. 11, 1934

Page 1 2

The Rt. Rev. John F. Spalding, Bishop of the Missionary jurisdiction of Colorado and Wyoming, sent me here in 1883 to establish the Shoshone Episcopal Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church. I arrived at the Shoshone Agency on February 10, 1883, after a hard journey over the main range of the Rockies from Green River, the nearest railroad station, a distance of 150 miles which took up to eight days traveling in a sleigh most of the way over the snow covered mountains. 

The next day after I arrived at Wind River, I went to the U.S. Indian office where a few aged Indians were assembled, the bulk of the tribal members being absent on their annual winter buffalo hunt.  Among those present was Bazil, one of the headmen, an aged and fine specimen of an Indian. 

I was introduced to Bazil by Dr. James Erwin, M.D., U.S. Agent in charge of the Shoshone Reservation. Bazil was able to talk English brokenly; I was also told he could speak French. The Agent then took me to Bazil’s camp, which was a hundred yards or so from the office, to see an aged woman who was called by him Bazil’s mother. 

The old woman was seated on the ground in a tepee; her hair was gray and she had the appearance of being very old. Bazil said she was his mother and that she was about a hundred years old, “very, very old.” Dr. Erwin alluded to her connection with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and he seemed to be keenly interested in that fact. I was interested in that fact. I was interested in the old woman because of her great age, for at that time I knew very little about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 

Bazil proved to be a very dutiful son to his mother. He was, in reality only an adopted son and nephew. He cared for her tenderly and had his daughters and other women of the camp see to her every need. His mother was well provided for. 

Photo of Chief Washakie and Sacajawea courtesy of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe.

Eastern Shoshone Home

Chief Washakie

Sacajawea

Crowheart Butte Battle of 1866

The Old Block House

Chief Washakie Plunge
(Hot Springs)

Education on the Wind River Reservation

The U.S. Agent issued her plenty of beef, flour, groceries and even tobacco, which she liked to smoke. Her own son Baptiste, alluded to me by name, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, lived about three miles above the Agency at the foot of the mountains. I came to know him well later on.

On the morning of April 9, 1884, the following year, I was told that Bazil’s mother had passed away suddenly during the night in the log cabin that was in the camp, on her shakedown of quilts, blankets and pelts. The Agent had a coffin made for her, and he sent employees to dig her grave on the eastern slope of one of the foothills, a mile and one half east of the Agency where there were four graves of white people who were killed by hostile raiding Indians.  This burial ground has been subsequently set aside by the Indian Office as a Shoshone Indian cemetery, but it still remains a part of the reservation. There are now several hundred Indian graves in it, thirty-seven of them being the graves of veteran Indian soldiers who served in the U.S. Army.

The burial took place late in the afternoon of the day on which she died. Those in attendance were her immediate relatives, the U.S. Agent and some of the employees. I read over her grave the Burial Service of the Episcopal Church. I little realized at the time that the heroine we laid to rest in years to come would become one of the outstanding women in American history, being the guide of the historic Expedition that saved for the Stars and Stripes the great states of the Northwest.

Continued on Page 2