A little horror story of sorts.

Not too long ago, I sold almost everything and moved to Wyoming. I work for Job Corps as an instructor and there was an opening at the Wind River JC in Riverton Wyoming. I knew I was going to take a loss in my salary, but I was ripe for some change. Both Mom and Dad were gone. I had the house in Dudley Massachusetts and felt a need to have something different in my life.

In the past when I worked in the public school system (Job Corps is a year-round program) I'd take off to the West for my summers off. I'd travel around the nation to camp and varmint shoot with my Contenders. I was blessed to have met some people that are on this board as well as a host of others.

I really love Wyoming, just not the Riverton area, and my job centered on that area. At the time of the election I was concerned that things could turn out for the worse. So I made a decision to apply for a job in Maine at a job corps center. Maine still has some reasonably priced land for sale. Currently I own 35 acres and a small off grid cabin in Central Maine. It would be a hard sell to find that in Wyoming without going over the seven figure mark.

Thus I made a decision to move back east. I still have mixed feelings on the issue as Maine is not the Maine of my youth. It is more left of center and how can I say this, in the bigger towns there is too much influence from the alphabet people. Sorry but I know the difference between a bull and a cow.

While I was in the Cowboy State I explored as much of it as I could. I had a ton of fun, and it was one of the first times in my life I was not bored with any of my free time.

I did learn some things. One was the issues on the Wind River Reservation. Below is a short story from one of my experiences. I do hope you like it but let me know if it rubs anyone the wrong way.

I once had a student named Tristan who, in many ways, embodied the demeanor of several of my Native students. He was quiet, reserved, and deeply stoic. In the classroom, this made him difficult to read—one never quite knew what he was thinking or how he perceived the interactions around him. This reserve was especially noticeable among female students. In his tribe, there was a saying: “Talk to your uncle.” The phrase carried a cultural meaning—women were expected to speak primarily with male relatives rather than men outside their family. As a result, receiving feedback from female Native students could be challenging at best.
It was during a casual classroom discussion about fishing in Wyoming that this reserve briefly lifted.

For sportsmen, Wyoming—the Cowboy State—offers remarkable variety across its woods, fields, and waters. The state is home to roughly sixteen species of trout, and some of the finest trout fishing in the nation lies within the boundaries of the Wind River Reservation. Curious, I asked my students about trout fishing on the Rez.
That was when Tristan spoke.

“Mister,” he said quietly, “watch out for water babies. They come out near sundown.”

The room went still. His tone was serious, not playful. I paused. Water babies?

Later, I researched the term and uncovered a dark and unsettling element of Shoshone and Arapaho folklore. During times of famine and extreme hardship, it was once believed that some women drowned their infants in nearby bodies of water rather than allow them to starve to death. According to oral tradition, these drowned children did not simply disappear; they returned as vengeful spirits known as water babies.

Beliefs about water babies vary. Some say they seek revenge for their deaths, luring or dragging the unsuspecting into the water. Others believe they serve as guardians of rivers and lakes, protecting the waters from those who would pollute or exploit them. Still others hold that water babies punish those who abuse children. Regardless of interpretation, they are not benign figures.

Tristan’s warning carried weight. He looked me squarely in the eye as he cautioned me not to fish late in the day on rivers or lakes such as Bull Lake, just off Route 26. “You may never come back,” he said.

Outside the classroom, I shared lunch duty with another instructor, Casey, who taught the Medical Assistant Certificate program at Wind River. Over time, we became close friends. Casey had grown up in Wyoming and understood that, coming from Massachusetts, I needed guidance in learning the rhythms and realities of the state.
One day, he told me a story from his time working with Frontier Ambulance in Fremont County. Calls to the reservation were frequent and often grim—drug overdoses, alcohol poisoning, and domestic emergencies were common. But one call, he said, changed him forever.

The dispatch came in for an emergency on Ethete Road, a long diagonal stretch cutting across the reservation between Riverton and Fort Washakie. From the start, something felt wrong.

When Casey arrived at the scene, he discovered that an infant had been discarded in a porta-potty. The young mother had given birth to a full-term baby in a camper on her family’s property. In an attempt to conceal the birth, she strangled the infant with a string and disposed of the body in the portable toilet. Casey told me how he had to retrieve the baby from the container, submerged in waste and chemicals. The image never left him.

Years later, he admitted he was still in counseling because of that call. He said it explained his dark sense of humor—a shield, perhaps, against memories too heavy to carry unguarded.

The woman, Casey told me, is serving a life sentence at Rock Springs.

When I think back to Tristan’s warning about water babies, I no longer hear it as folklore alone. Instead, it feels like a story shaped by generational trauma—by grief, desperation, and acts so unbearable they transform into legend. In that sense, the water babies are not just spirits haunting rivers at sundown. They are reminders of suffering, of consequences, and of the ways communities remember what is too painful to forget.