The Summit County Public Art Advisory Board has voted unanimously to have the county’s arts council bring a new traveling exhibit featuring the famed LDS chief to the area.
“Washakie: Through the Lens of Time” is curated and rented out by the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center. The exhibit features 17 framed images and educational materials about the Indigenous chief.
The Eastern Shoshone Tribe estimates its people have lived across western Wyoming and northeastern Utah, especially around the Wind River Mountains, for 12,000 years. Now the tribe lives on the Wind River Reservation in west-central Wyoming.
Chief Washakie was one notable member; another was Sacajawea, who guided explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to the Pacific Ocean.
Washakie was also known for his favorable attitude toward white Americans. He allied with the United States against enemy tribes, which included helping defeat the Lakota Sioux after the Battle of Little Bighorn.
A friend of Brigham Young, the chief was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His alliance with the U.S. resulted in a military funeral, and Wyoming commissioned a statue of him which stands in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.
North Summit High School has also commissioned a statue of Washakie. District Superintendent Jerre Holmes said the school will unveil the statue later this month.
It will go on the northwest corner of Washakie Field named for the chief in 2021.
The location for the traveling exhibit has not yet been determined. At the Oct. 3 board meeting, public arts council members voiced interest in splitting it between multiple locations around Summit County.
