Shoshones

WASHAKIE, Box Elder County — For most people, "ghost town" is just another term for "abandoned village."

But for members of the Northwestern Band of Shoshones, Washakie, Box Elder County — 50 miles north of Brigham City on I-15 — may look empty, but it's hardly abandoned. Spirits from the past in Washakie still form a vital community.

"I've sensed them," said Mae Parry, Shoshone historian and matriarch. "I'm sure others have, too."

Tom Pacheco, a tribal member, remembers visiting the Washakie graveyard and asking his wife the name of the Indian woman he saw hovering near her.

"What Indian woman?" his wife asked.

Pacheco says he suddenly realized it was the spirit of his grandmother.

Years ago, the town of Washakie was the cultural center for Utah's Shoshones. Tribal scribe Willie Ottogary filed his famous newspaper reports from there. Trains came through daily. Children chased along the ditches. In time, however, the number of people in the cemetery came to outnumber the living. Because of World War II and other strains, the town was eventually forsaken. Today, a polygamous group has moved in.

But just west of the town, the Washakie graveyard is still alive in the Shoshone heart. The recent census claims there are 589 Shoshones living in Utah. The census, however, forgot to count the spirits of their ancestors.

William Kennedy, the Pulitzer Prize novelist, said the dead — like the living — settle into neighborhoods. Such is the case in the Washakie cemetery. Scattered here and there — with plenty of elbow-room between them — honored Shoshone families huddle in family groups — the Pachecos, Newmans, Ottogarys and Timbimboos. Some lie in parallel mounds near the roadway. Others are tucked into the small groves of sage or lie alone and vulnerable on the hillside. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to the arrangements. But there is poetry. And there is also a sense of the sacred.

The Washakie graveyard is holy ground.

Holy places, in fact, are a vital part of Shoshone identity. And it's ironic the tribe that defines itself most by landmarks and landscape owns almost no land in Utah. Of its meager 187 acres, 75 acres are taken up by the graveyard itself.

That's a tiny patch of earth for a tribe that once spread across the entire Mountain West.

Originally known as the "So-So-Goi" (those who travel on foot), the Shoshones walked — and rode — their way throughout the West, settling over a five-state area. Some put down roots in the Wind River region of Wyoming, where Fort Washakie is now the tribal headquarters. Others ended up in Fort Hall, Idaho, under the leadership of Chief Pocatello.