Folklore of Utah's Little Scandinavia

Folklore of Utah's Little Scandinavia

BY WILLIAM A. WILSON

THE SANPETE-SEVIER REGION OF UTAH, located some distance from major thoroughfares and isolated geographically from the rest of the state, has over the years produced a distinctive body of folklore. To understand fully the history and culture of the area, we must know and understand this lore.

Briefly, folklore consists of those stories, songs, rhymes, proverbs, jokes, and anecdotes that are sung or told to us by neighbors, friends, and relatives and that we, in turn, sing or tell to other neighbors, friends, and relatives. It does not, as some believe, indicate falsehood. Folklore may, to be sure, originate in fancy, but it may also be based on fact. It is simply that part of our cultural heritage that is kept alive and is passed through time and space not by the written word nor by formal instruction but by the process of oral transmission, the process of hearing a story and then repeating it to someone else.

In arguing that folklore may be based on fact, I am not arguing that it is always factually accurate. Indeed, as stories are passed from person to person, they are often reshaped (probably unconsciously) to reflect the attitudes, values, and concerns of the people telling them. For example, when the first Mormon settlers arrived in the Manti area late in 1849, many of them lived in dugouts on what later was to become Temple Hill. During the spring thaw, hundreds of rattlesnakes crawled out of crevices in the rocks above the dugouts to plague the settlers. Written accounts of this event state simply that no one was bitten or injured. But in the folklore accounts, the people are saved by the intervention of God. One story says that the snakes' mouths were sealed so they were unable to bite. Another states: "In all that time not one person was bitten. The Lord watched over the Saints so they could do the great work they had been called to do."

What we learn from stories like these is not necessarily what actuallyhappened at a place like Temple Hill but what the people believe happened there. For this reason, some scholars have tended to reject folklore references as unreliable research data. But what we must realize is that in our day-to-day living we are motivated not by actual fact but by what we believe to be fact. The great value of folklore, then, is that it gives better insight into what people believe about themselves and about the localities in which they live than we can often get from more customary sources. The reason for this is simple. People tell stories about those things that interest them most or are most important to them. Because folk stories are kept alive by the spoken word only, stories that fail to appeal to a fairly large number of people will not continue to be told. Thus, in the Sanpete-Sevier region, as well as in any other area, folklore serves as a kind of barometer for what is going on in the society, or as a kind of cultural mirror, reflecting the group's dominant attitudes, values, and concerns.

But folklore not only reflects the beliefs of the people, it also influences their behavior in significant ways. In the snake story, for instance, the folklorist sees not only a reflection of the people's belief in divine providence but also an example of folklore functioning in their lives as it convinces them of the rightness of their cause and persuades them to push steadfastly forward, trusting in God to come to their aid in times of need.

In what follows, as we look more specifically at the lore of the Sanpete-Sevier region, I shall try to demonstrate the points made above: that this lore has taken shape from the beliefs and attitudes of the people in the region and that it has functioned in their lives to help them meet deeply felt needs.

Richard Poulsen argues that when Scandinavian immigrants to the Sanpete-Sevier area gave up their language, they also gave up their Scandinavian culture. I agree with this statement in general, but I think it would be a mistake for any of us to assume that because the Scandinavians adopted the building techniques of the earlier Yankee and English settlers they also wholly accepted other elements of their culture. As Dr. Poulsen points out, gravestones in the area, though related to gravestones elsewhere, became distinctly Mormon in their use of symbols. And such was the case wdth the culture in general. The Scandinavians in the Sanpete-Sevier region did not become Yankees or English; they became Mormons—which is what the Yankees and English also became. Elsewhere in the United States immigrants from Europe brought with them their native church, and the church helped them keep up ties with the Old World and retain their ethnic identity in the new one. Just the opposite was true in Utah, where pioneer settlers labored to establish a new Zion in which people would put aside ethnic and national differences to become members in a community of Saints.

It should scarcely come as a surprise, then, that almost all the folklore collected in the Sanpete-Sevier region grows out of the Mormon experience. Though this lore touches a broad range of subjects, it can be reduced to four main themes: the struggle to settle a new and hostile land, the struggle to build and maintain a temple, the struggle to come to terms with polygamy, and the struggle of Scandinavian converts to come to terms with a new language and with their own human nature. Space will permit only a few examples from each of these themes.

SETTLEMENT LORE

The lore of settlement focuses on three main events: the migration of the Latter-day Saints from Scandinavia to their new homes in Utah, the struggle with the natural environment, and conflict with the Indians. All of this lore emphasizes for a later, more happily situated, generation how hard life was for their forebears. The stories tell of sufferings in the handcart companies, of a Danish convert burying his wife and four children on the plains. 8 They tell of struggles with snakes and grasshoppers and drought, and, perhaps most dramatically, they tell of struggles with the Indians, particularly during Chief Walker's War in 1853 and the Black Hawk War of 1867, when the residents of Sevier County had to evacuate their homes en masse. The following story is typical:

There was a farm that was south of town. My grandfather was about fourteen years old, working out for wages or whatever he could earn. He and another boy were supposed to go to this farm to help do grain. They had gone by foot, and the sagebrush and grass was so tall that it was like trees. These boys were just about to this farm, and they could hear these Indians whooping and carrying on, so they got down and crawled through the grass over to where they could see this ranch. The father must not have been at home at that time, and there was the mother and a little boy and then a baby. The little boy had run and hid and got away from them, and the Indians didn't pursue him; but they took the mother and tied her across a horse and whipped the horse and made it run with her. They took the baby and swung it around and hit its head on a tree and killed it. Then they set fire to the farm.

In a number of these stories the settlers rather than the Indians emerge victorious. In these stories, told probably to belittle the Indians and to give the settlers a feeling of superiority, rugged pioneer women frequently stand up to and then face down marauding Indian warriors, who usually respond admiringly with the statement: "Heap brave squaw!" In some stories, however, as in the following, the "heap brave squaw" overcomes her adversary with woman's ingenuity:

After the Indians and the white people had become a little friendly up there, they didn't go to the fort quite as often. This one day there was this girl down in town and she was washing. They lived quite close to the hills and Indians were camped quite close in the foothills. This girl was washing; she had a washing machine that was an old wooden one that had a wheel that would turn. This Indian brave came down and he had long braids. Fie came down and he started acting smart to her and talking smart to her and she couldn't understand him. He wanted different things that she had there at her home; she wouldn't give them to him. When she wouldn't give them to him, he grabbed her and started throwing her around. She grabbed one lock of his hair, his braid, and hurried and put it into the wringer and wound it up tight and fixed it so it couldn't run back, and then she turned and fled while he was tied to the wringer.

Though most of these settlement stories emphasize that life was hard and full of difficult trials, they also make clear that final victory was certain since God, as he had been with the children of Israel, was on the side of the Saints. When, as we have seen, snakes threatened their lives, the mouths of the snakes were sealed. W r hen grasshoppers destroyed their crops, the Lord provided pigweed, a spinachlike plant which the women boiled for greens. One account states:

The place where the weeds were gathered was down on the south side of the stone quarry where the Mormons first camped. After each day a-gathering, there was none left for the next day. But like the food miraculously supplied to the Israelites in the wilderness, each day, just so the Lord provided for this supply of pig weed each day.

According to the stories, the Lord also sent his Book of Mormon disciples, the Three Nephites, to help worthy settlers in times of need. According to Mormon tradition, these ancient followers of Christ in America still walk the earth ministering to the needs of the people. In Manti, for example, a man who had to leave his unplowed fields to attend a funeral returned to find that in his absence the fields had been plowed by three strangers. These strangers were believed to be the Three Nephites. Another man, traveling Fairview Canyon by foot, was caught in a bad snowstorm and seemed doomed to die until a stranger, later assumed to be a Nephite, came out of nowhere, helped him build a fire, and then disappeared.

The settlement stories also make clear that just as the Lord seemed eager to aid those who served him, he was equally quick to punish those who attempted to thwart his purposes. For example, one story tells that a man in Denmark who opposed the Mormon church and tried to prevent converts from immigrating was paralyzed as a result and remained "helpless for the rest of his life." On this side of the Atlantic, in the village of Wales, when a Mormon used deceptive means to gain title to land rightfully belonging to his church, a church authority cursed the land. Since then "it has had several owners—some have died shortly after acquiring it, some have lost it through bankruptcy."

The picture that emerges from this settlement lore, then, is a picture of a migration to and settlement of the Sanpete-Sevier region that was divinely inspired and divinely controlled, a migration and settlement in which heroic men and women were required to endure great trials but were assured of final victory in a cause that could not fail. For those who told and listened to the stories, they served a variety of functions. They persuaded people who at times doubted the wisdom of settling such a hostile land that settlement was indeed God's will, since he had personally intervened to assure its success. They also gave these people hope that if they would remain faithful themselves they too might be blessed with God's help. Today the stories continue to teach that obedience brings rewards. They also remind people of the price paid by their ancestors for this land and of the debt of gratitude that is therefore owed them, a debt that can be paid in good works.

TEMPLE STORIES

While Mormon settlers of the region were still struggling to subdue the land, they were directed by Brigham Young to build a temple where saving ordinances of the gospel (baptisms, endowments, sealings, etc.) could be performed for the living and, vicariously, for their dead ancestors. The lore generated by the construction of this building, the Manti Temple, gives an even more emphatic view of God's involvement in the affairs of his people than does the settlement lore. Story after story testifies to the fact that the temple was built by the commandment of God and under his direction. Years before the temple was even begun, a young man, later destined to become the temple president, supposedly saw the completed temple in a vision. Once the construction was underway the people donated the eggs their chickens laid on Sunday to help pay for the work. The chickens themselves, as one informant pointed out, "entered into the spirit of the thing" and laid more eggs on Sunday than on any other day. The men who worked on the temple, some of them in dangerous tasks, were evidently protected by divine providence since in the eleven years of construction none was killed and few received injuries more serious than a broken ankle. In the construction of the temple, these men, many lacking the requisite skills and all of them lacking the necessary tools, managed to build walls so straight that later builders and engineers marveled at their accomplishment. When a temple guide was once asked what kind of instruments were used, he replied that he could remember only one, a spirit level, with emphasis on the spirit.

Getting enough water for the temple was, as the following story makes clear, also regarded as a providential act:

The water for the temple is a miracle in itself. When the site was first dedicated for the temple, many people wondered how and where they would get water to pipe to the site. The hill it is on is nearly solid stone with very little indication of water except for a small trickle, not even enough for a small cow, coming out of the rock in the hillside. The people had drilled into the rock for irrigation and livestock purposes but never more than a trickle could be coaxed from the stone. After much prayer, drilling was tried again, but this time a stream of pure water burst from the rock, and it is this water that has been used for the temple and it has been used ever since.

According to some informants, as the need for water has increased, so has the spring's flow.

When the temple was finally completed, some of those at the dedication ceremony heard the voices of a heavenly choir, a sort of divine benediction on what had been accomplished. Attendance at the dedication was so important to the people that some, according to tradition, even received help from the Three Nephites in order to be there:

One time my great-grandfather was away, and great-grandmother was home watching the kids, and it happened at that time the Manti temple was to be dedicated. And my great-grandmother wanted very much to go, but she could find no one to watch the children because everyone in the area was going to the Manti temple dedication. On the morning of the dedication she met an old man at the front gate, and he said, "Sister, I see that you'd like to go to the temple dedication. I'm just passing through; let me watch your kids and they'll be all right as long as you're gone. Don't worry." My great-grandmother did not know the man, had never seen him before; but somehow she felt that he was a kindly old man and agreed. And she went to the temple dedication. When she came home from the temple dedication, she met the old man just coming out of the front gate, and he said, "Well, Sister, you have nothing to worry about," and he walked down the street. And she watched him go, and it seemed that as he just about turned down the path out of sight he met two other old men. And it was felt in the family tradition that these were the Three Nephites and one of them had stopped to help my great-grandmother with the children so she could go to the temple dedication.

Since its dedication, the Manti Temple has continued to generate a large body of stories that testify to the importance of the work carried on there. One of these stories tells of a man on his way to the temple from Mount Pleasant. As he passed by the Ephraim cemetery he saw a large number of people who claimed to be his deceased relatives and who asked that he do their temple work for them. When he arrived at the temple, the recorder told him: "I have just received records from England and they all belong to you." The names were those of the people he had met on his way to the temple. Another story tells of a lady who had come to an impasse in her genealogical research. Leaving the temple one day she was met by an old man who handed her some papers, told her these contained the names she was looking for, and then disappeared. She assumed he was one of the Three Nephites, come to help her seek out and do the necessary work for her dead ancestors.

One of the most recent, and certainly one of the most widespread, of the stories tells of people on the way to the temple who pick up an old man hitchhiking along the road. He engages them in religious conversation, warns them that they are living in the last days, and then strongly urges them to get in the year's supply of food Mormons are encouraged to store in preparation for the dreadful days to precede the Second Coming of Christ. He then disappears miraculously from the back seat of the speeding automobile. Most people assume that the hitchhiker was one of the Three Nephites.

Although most of the temple stories are uplifting narratives designed principally to edify, a few take on a somber tone of warning for those who do not take sacred things seriously. For example, one story tells that two boys who were cleaning the baptismal font in the temple began to "horse around" and to conduct mock baptisms. One of them was struck dead by lightning. The General Authorities of the Mormon church supposedly would not allow him a regular funeral.

These temple stories, like the settlement accounts, reveal a God who is deeply interested in his people and takes a strong personal hand in directing their affairs, rewarding the righteous and punishing the sinful. More specifically, they persuade the faithful that genealogical research and temple work must be important to them and that if they are to be worthy church members they must actively engage in such pursuits.

STORIES OF POLYGAMY

Moving from stories like these to stories about polygamy, we enter into a different world. Not many of these can be called faith-promoting. A few accounts do emphasize harmonious polygamous relationships, though some of them in a rather humorous way. For example, the undertaker in one Sanpete town was quite a drinking man. "Every Saturday night he would come home in his mortuary rig and attempt to get down. At this point his three wives would emerge from inside the house and carry him in." Another story tells that when the wives of one polygamist heard he was coming to town to pay them a visit, they would make a big pot of beef stew and then boil it down until only pure vitamins remained. He would then eat this rich food and have strength enough for them all.

More often than not, however, the stories tend to reflect the disharmony and heartache that grew out of polygamy. Some focus on the bickering of wives trying to live together in the same household. Others stress the struggles of wives competing for the sexual favors of the husband. For instance, a story from Mayfield tells that a husband of several wives would put the key in the lock of the door of the wife whose turn it was to share his company that night; the other wives would often sneak the key out and put it in their own doors, thus stealing extra turns. Still other stories actually end in physical conflict. Consider the following:

Mother used to tell this story about a prominent family who lived in Ephraim. The first wife of this fella had quite a few children. She was heavy set and not too attractive. Later, her husband married a younger, more attractive girl. Now, their house was set up in such a way that to get to the kitchen you had to go through the bedroom. One day the first wife had to pass through the bedroom, and she was carrying some slop for the pigs. As she passed by the bed her husband threw back the covers, gave his second wife a nice swat and said to the first wife, "See, Mary Ann, what a nice shape she has!" Well, it made the first wife so mad that she threw the pig slop on both of them.

The polygamy stories circulating today are usually determined by the attitudes of the families towards polygamy. Those families that view that peculiar institution in a favorable light tell stories that reflect positive images of the institution; these stories, in turn, help reinforce their belief that polygamy was good. Just the opposite is true in families that view polygamy negatively.

Stories like the pig-slop narrative are particularly interesting. In these stories, the first wife appears in a favorable light, the second wife as an interloper, and the husband as a callous individual with little regard for his first wife's feelings. In the stories, the first wife comes out victorious. Most of these stories are told by women. However well polygamy may have worked when it was practiced, many modern Mormon women evidently identify with the first wife in these accounts, applauding her way of handling a problem they themselves would not want to live with and vicariously enjoying the victory of the mistreated first wife.

One group of polygamy stories enjoyed by most Mormons, even those who do not like polygamy, are the stories about shrewd polygamists who outwit legal authorities bent on putting them in jail. In these stories the legal authorities appear as rather witless dupes and the polygamists as clever tricksters who manage to continue practicing polygamy despite the prohibition against it. Like the stories about outwitting Indians, these narratives probably have given their tellers a feeling of superiority over their enemies. I find it rather ironical, however, that contemporary Mormons, who pride themselves on their obedience to the law, still take great pleasure in telling stories in which their ancestors successfully flaunt it. The following two accounts are typical:

Annie Burns was forced to give her two children to Elenora and exile herself to protect her husband, Ingelbert. Upon her return to the family, she became pregnant with Ingelbert's third child. One night while near the birth of this child, Federal Marshals came to the home demanding the arrest of Ingelbert, wanting to use Annie as evidence of polygamy. Hearing the commotion, Annie fled into a driving storm to the nearest home. The butcher, knowing the situation, called to his sleeping wife to hide under their bed. He demanded Annie to get into the bed. When the Federal Marshals arrived, the butcher replied that he had only one woman in his bed. Annie and Ingelbert again were spared the law.

Once a Fountain Green man and six wives were summoned to Provo to face charges of polygamy. When they arrived at Provo, the man sent his wives into the cemetery to rest in the shade of the trees while he went on into town. In court the judge asked him if the charges stating he had six wives were true. When he answered that the accusations were based on truth, the judge wanted to know where the wives were. "In the cemetery," the man replied, "every one." The judge, taking pity on the man, dropped all charges against him and let him go free.

The following story, however, suggests that the legal authorities were at times not the only dumb ones:

It seems that the deputies were looking for a Scandinavian man who was hiding in his barn under a sled and some sleigh bells. They asked the wife if anyone was hiding there and she said there wasn't, so they kicked at the pile of sleigh bells and a voice went: "Yingle, yingle."

SCANDINAVIAN IMMIGRANT TALES

This last account brings me to my final group of stories—the Scandinavian immigrant tales. A story is told of a fellow who came into Ephraim, where the population is heavily Danish, looking for a man named Edwin Jensen. Approaching the "smart bench" next to the post office, he asked the men loitering there if they could direct him to Jensen's home. None of them had ever heard of the man. The stranger then said: "I think he is sometimes called Eddie Butcher or something like that." To which one of the men exclaimed: "Eddie Butcher! My God, that's me!" In an area where practically everyone shared his Scandinavian name with at least three or four other people it is not surprising that one might forget who he really was. Nor is it surprising that the people would resort to nicknames like Eddie Butcher to tell each other apart. What is unusual about this practice is the names they often gave each other. Consider just a few of them: Olof Coffee Pot, False Bottom Larsen, Chris Golddigger, Stinkbug Anderson, Fat Lars, Dirty Mart, Peephole Soren, Alphabet Hansen, Absolutely Anderson, Bert Fiddlesticks, Otto By-Yingo Anderson, Pete Woodenhead, Long Peter, Little Peter, and Salt Peter.

The people who made up these names were people who, in spite of hardships suffered, had obviously not lost the ability to laugh at themselves and at their circumstances. Indeed, this humorous approach to life is the most distinctive feature of the folklore of Little Scandinavia. Nowhere is this humor more evident than in the numerous dialect jokes still circulating in the area.

The dialect joke is a unique form of American folklore resulting from migrations of non-English-speakers to this country. Wherever ethnic groups settled in large numbers, as the Scandinavians did in the Sanpete-Sevier region, the children and grandchildren of the original settlers told stories in which they mimicked the strange dialect and the malapropisms resulting from their parents' attempts to speak English. For example, the following Ephraim story could really have come from almost any place in the United States:

Shimmy Soren and Shingle Pete are lamenting the childless state of their good neighbors, Brother and Sister Nielsen. "Shingle Pete, issn't it yoost too bad dat poor Sister Nielsen iss unbearable." "Oh, now Shimmy Soren, you shouldn't say dat about sveet Sister Nielsen. Du vis dat effery vun luffs her, so unbearable cannot be de right vord. It is better you should say dat she iss inconceivable.'" "On, no, Brodder Shingle Pete, ve all know dat Sister Nielsen cannot haf any little vuns, so her condition is not inconceivable. I belief de right vord ve vant in dis situation is to say dat she iss impregnable"

But the dialect stories from Utah's Little Scandinavia, though similar to dialect stories told elsewhere, also differ from them, even from those told elsewhere in the Mormon West. The following story comes from Malad, Idaho, where the majority of the settlers were Welsh and where any Scandinavians were in a distinct minority:

A certain bishop noticed some contention between a Welsh and a Danish brother in his congregation, so he called the good Danish brother into his office and said, "What's the problem here between you and Brother Jones?" The Danish brother replied: "Vel, dat old Velshman called me a Danish s. of a b. Now, vouldn't dat make you upset with him?" The bishop replied: "No it wouldn't bother me at all; I'm not Danish." Whereupon the Danish brother defensively asked: "Vel, den, vat if he called you dat kind of s. of a b. vat you are?'

The humor here arises, of course, from the conflict between opposing ethnic groups. Other dialect jokes grew either out of the settlers' attempts to accommodate themselves to strange American ways or, at times, from character traits of the immigrants themselves. But although these themes can be found in the Sanpete-Sevier jokes, the funniest and most revealing stories come, I believe, from tensions in the struggle to accommodate oneself to the demands of Mormon church membership. This point supports my earlier contention that Scandinavian immigrants to the area became not English or Yankees, but Mormons. The jokes, however, suggest that the transformation was not always easy. To say this is not to say that the people of Little Scandinavia were not good Mormons; it is merely to suggest that the people used humor as a safety valve to laugh at their problems and to give release to pressures that might otherwise have been their undoing.

In spite of all the stories telling of help received from the Three Nephites and of divine intervention in times of trouble, the Scandinavian settlers, faced with the struggles of day-to-day living, must have wandered at times if the God of their new religion really cared about them after all. Thus Lead Pencil Peterson prayed to the Lord for rain in very pragmatic terms:

Lord, as you can see if you will look down upon us, ve haf a very bad drought—de vorst von dat I can remember. De crops in Cane Walley iss already burnt up. Der iss no vater in Gobblefield Ditch; Andrew Kinnikinick's potatoes are vilting right down, so how can he feed his twelve children? Even Mud Lane iss so dried up dat de cows come home without mud caked on der bags. Now Lord, we do vant you to send us rain. But ve vant it to be a yentle rain—a long, yentle rain. Ve do not vant a cloudburst dat vii bring a flood out of de canyon to put mud and boulders in our gardens and fields. And, Lord, ve do not vant a big hail storm like de vun you sent last year dat knocked all the heads off de hveat yost ven it was ripening. Ve vant a nice, yentle rain. And, Lord, ve know dat if you vii tink of it, you vii see the reasonableness of vat ve ask, and how it vii be an advantage to bote us and to you. Because if ve do not get the yentle rain dat vii safe de crops, neither vii you get your tithing.

The Mormon church's constant requests for financial aid—to build temples, to build churches, to support missionaries, to support the Perpetual Emigration Fund—were a heavy burden, becoming at times more than some of the Saints were willing to bear. Thus, when Brother Olsen was asked for a donation he pleaded poverty. "But Brother Olsen," the church leaders responded, "you have raised more wheat than anyone in town and sold it at a good price." "That's true," said Olsen, "and that's the very trouble, because—just think what the what sacks cost me."

The most difficult principle for these coffee-loving Scandinavians to follow was the Word of Wisdom, the Mormon health code that prohibits the use of coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco. Speaking at the funeral of his friend, one Dane said, rather wistfully, that his friend had gone to that "happy hunting ground where there is no pain nor tears—nor Word of Wisdom." In a Mormon testimony meeting one day, a brother stood up, boasted that he did not use coffee, tea, liquor, or tobacco, and claimed that these things were only for the "yentiles." When he sat down, another brother jumped up and asked: "Brodders and sisters, vy iss it dat all the good tings shall be for the Yentiles." When another Dane, speaking in church, had to confess that he did drink a little coffee on occasion, he argued that it was all right because "it don't boil," a reference evidently to the prohibition against hot drinks. When Old Okerman was brought before a bishop's court to be tried for habitual drinking, he was raked over the coals and humiliated. When asked at the end of the session if he had anything to say for himself, he replied sadly: "Vel, Biscop and brodders, you haf all de time asked me how much visky I haf drunk, and scolded me for drinking it; but you nefer did ask me how tirsty I vas."

Perhaps the greatest struggle of all was the struggle to overcome self. The Mormon church demanded a perfection of its members that few, if any, ever reached. Thus, many of the stories treat humorously the failures of frail human beings to do what they know to be right. One example will have to suffice. Shortly after Salt Peter's wife had died, a local sister said to him: "Well, you had a wonderful life and a wonderful wife, a wonderful wife and a wonderful life with her. Maybe you ought to look around and maybe you can find another woman your age. There are a lot of widows in town that maybe you could find to marry that's about your own age, and that you could have quite a bit of companionship with." Salt Peter replied: "Yas, yas I guess if I was goin' to consider marryin' it'd be the smarrrt think to loook and find somebody in my own age; but ya know, the young 'uns are so temptin' ' [spoken in a slow drawl].

People from Sanpete have enjoyed these stories for years. Unfortunately, many of them have hesitated to share them with others, fearing the ridicule of outsiders. This is most unfortunate. The genuine affection I feel for people of the area comes in large measure from my acquaintance with these stories. In them I find something of myself. As a Mormon, I have had to struggle with the same issues the characters in the stories struggle with; and as a human being, I have had to admit, with Salt Peter, that my actions often fall short of my ideals. When we outsiders laugh at Wheat Sack Olsen or at Shingle Pete or at Salt Peter, we really are not laughing at them; we are laughing at ourselves, at the same human foibles we share in common with them. As a result, life is a little easier for all of us. The Scandinavian dialect stories, then, are at the same time the most distinctly regional and yet universal of the Sanpete-Sevier lore.

CONCLUSION

On the hill where Sanpete settlers once fought with rattlesnakes in their dugout homes, the Manti Temple now stands, dominating the landscape and symbolizing the religious values that originally brought settlers to the region. In the towns surrounding the temple, in church meetings, in casual gatherings of friends, in family circles, the descendants of these pioneers recount stories that tell something of the price paid—or at least of the price believed paid—by the settlers as they struggled to build the kingdom of God in this part of Zion.

The picture I have tried to draw of this struggle is certainly not complete since folklore collecting in the Sanpete-Sevier region has been sporadic at best. As a result, there are many gaps. Behind the goodhumored dialect jokes, for example, one catches hints of darker sentiments growing out of the Scandinavians' realization that in the egalitarian kingdom they were supposedly building, their Yankee and British brethren too often enjoyed privileged positions. But these hints, and others like them, must remain only hints until more systematic collecting can be carried out. Hopefully, this article will serve as an impetus for such work.

But even with more thorough collections to draw upon, the picture can never really be completed, at least so long as the pattern of life in the region continues to change. The stories collected to date focus mostly on the struggles to settle the land and to establish the kingdom. Of these stories, those concerning the temple will probably continue to be told as long as temple activity remains a central force in the life of the area; but as the world of Indian battles, of polygamy conflict, and of language struggle ceases to speak meaningfully to the present generation, stories growing out of those events will probably fade.

This does not mean, of course, that Sanpete-Sevier folklore will one day disappear. It means only that it will change. For just as the first settlers and their children created a body of lore as they responded to their circumstances, so too will present-day residents create new lore as they come to terms with the conditions of their lives. And this lore, this sensitive indicator of the public pulse, will, if carefully collected and studied, continue to enlarge our understanding of the Sanpete-Sevier region.

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