History & Claims

Mary Josephine Estep

(1909 or 1910 – December 1992)

Claims are this papoose, cradle board belonged to Mary Jo and she is still very active in spirit.

She was a Shoshone child survivor of the Battle of Kelly Creek, “the last massacre” of Native Americans in the United States, in

1911.

Early life

Mary Josephine Estep was born in 1909 or 1910, to Wenega Daggett. Her grandfather was Mike Daggett, also known as “Shoshone Mike” after his death.

She was a little more than a year old when her mother was killed near Winnemucca. In Nevada, February 1911 Mike Daggett and band killed four White stock men at Little High Rock Canyon. A posse responded by confronting the twelve members of the Daggett band at Kelly Creek. Four children, including Estep, survived the subsequent shootout, and were taken to the jail in Reno for protection. Only Estep was still alive by 1913.(The other three had died of diseases).

Estep, who was found to have tuberculosis after the massacre, was adopted by Maj. Evan W. Estep and his wife, Orrell Marietta “Rita” Garrison Estep. Maj. Estep was the white superintendent of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho. She lived with her adoptive parents in Montana and New Mexico before landing at the Yakama Indian Reservation in Toppenish, Washington in 1924, and finally in Yakima, Washington in 1930, after Evan Estep’s retirement. Evan died in 1950, and Rita died in 1955.

Later life

Mary Jo Estep studied music and attended Central Washington University. She was an elementary school music teacher for about forty years, before her retirement in 1974. Mary Jo Estep learned the details of her origins in 1975, when novelist Dayton Hyde was researching Mike Daggett’s story and sought her out. She died in 1992, aged about 82 years, in Yakima, after she was given the wrong medication in a nursing home.

Medium Impression by Violet Bloom

The beginning of Mary Jo Estep’s life was very difficult. She was born into the Shoshone Tribe in 1910. Her mother’s name was Wenaga Daggett and when Mary was only a year old, her mother was killed near Winnemucca, Nevada. Legend has it that Mary was cut from the papoose cradleboard on her dead mother’s back. Her grandfather Mike Daggett and his men killed four white men at Little Rock Canyon. A posse came after them, and the only survivors were Mary and her three siblings. By the time Mary Jo was 3 she was the only one who survived.

A couple adopted Mary Jo and the papoose cradle is the only thing that still exists. As Mary Jo grew up, I believe she felt different from other children-not because of the way she looked, but I feel she was moved by things, that many of us ignore. She felt every living thing has a spirit and she listened to the sound of the wind in the trees. I believe she subconsciously translated this to a love of music and spent her life teaching music to children.

I believe Mary Jo’s spirit attached to the cradleboard and the new keeper may experience a myriad of emotions, mostly fear, from her past. I also feel snakes are somehow connected to Mary Jo and her cradleboard. I believe her new keeper can expect unusual paranormal experiences, including very colorful, but possibly disturbing dreams. I would be surprised if she engages with ghost-hunting gadgets, but I feel connecting with her, holding this cradleboard, may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.