Sagwitch Timbimboo, Shoshone Chief

Sagwitch — 'Orator' — led a band of the Northwestern Shoshone, the Newe, whose homeland was Cache Valley and the Bear River country. On a frozen January morning in 1863, U.S. soldiers fell on his people's winter camp and killed some 250 to 400 — among the West's deadliest massacres of Native people. Sagwitch survived, wounded; his wife and sons did not. Later he led his people to build Washakie, a Shoshone farming town that held for eighty years. It has faded, but the Band endures — his descendants insist Bear River was no battle, but a massacre.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Preston and Napoleon Dynamite — 21 mi
  A farm town in the north end of Cache Valley that a former student turned into a set in the summer of 2003, without changing much of anything.
• Boa Ogoi (Bear River Massacre Site) — 21 mi
  The Northwestern Band bought back the ground where its people were killed in 1863, and is turning farm fields back into the river bottom they knew.
• American West Heritage Center — 24 mi
  A living history farm spanning 160 acres of Cache Valley
• Logan — 25 mi
  A vibrant college town tucked into a stunning mountain valley

More markers nearby

• Martin Harris Gravesite — 10 mi
• Hampton's Bear River Crossing — 13 mi
• Newton Reservoir — 14 mi
• Hansen Dairy — 15 mi