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The Three Nephites in Contemporary Society

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The Three Nephites in Contemporary Society ARTICLES AND ESSAYS Freeways, Parking Lots, and Ice Cream Stands: The Three Nephites in Contemporary Society William A. Wilson IN THE 1892-93 ISSUE OF The Folk-Lorist, a publication of the old Chicago Folk-Lore Society, the Reverend David Utter, from Salt Lake City, published a short piece entitled "Mormon Superstition." He recounted Mormon beliefs about Indians, summarized briefly the contents of the Book of Mormon, and then told how, according to this book, three of Christ's new-world disciples called Nephites had been allowed to remain on earth until the Savior returned again. "Many of the saints now living," wrote Reverend Utter, tell that they have, at different times, seen one or more of these three immortal "Nephites." A daughter of Brigham Young, now a good Unitarian, has told me that her father told, with great and solemn pleasure, of an interview that he had with one of these remaining apostles in Liverpool, when he was there on a mission. The apostle met him at the chapel door, an old man with a long gray beard, made himself known, and spoke many encouraging and helpful words (Utter 1892-93, 76). So far as I know, this was the first reference in a scholarly publication to what has become one of the best known supernatural-narrative cycles in the United States — the legend of the Three Nephites. And for over three decades it remained the only reference. Then in 1938, in a short article entitled "The Three Nephites in Popular Tradition," folklorist Wayland Hand once again introduced the Nephite legend to the scholarly community, recounting stories of a mysterious stranger who reportedly had prepared the way for Mor- mon missionaries in a southern town (Hand 1938, 123-29). Hand did not continue his study of the Nephite tradition, but three other folklorists, Austin and Alta Fife and Hector Lee, had also become interested in the legend and had begun collecting stories in earnest. In 1940 and 1942 Austin Fife pub- WILLIAM A. WILSON, professor of English and Scandinavian, is chairman of the BYU English Department and director of the BYU Folklore Archives. He has served as editor of Western Folklore and on the executive board of the American Folklore Society; he has pub- lished widely on topics ranging from folklore and nationalism in Finland to the folklore of the Mormons. 14 DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT lished "The Three Nephites in Popular Tradition," a ground-breaking col- lection of fifty-two texts, and "Popular Legends of the Mormons," which contained a summary of the main features of the stories. In describing the Nephites, Fife gave a capsule summary of the legend that has served to the present day: In localities of Utah, Idaho, and other states where the Mormon faith is prevalent, one frequently hears accounts of the miraculous appearance and disappearance of kindly, white-bearded old men who bring messages of the greatest spiritual impor- tance, give blessings in exchange for hospitality, lead lost people to safety, and perform various other miraculous deeds. These old men are said by the people to be the "Three Nephites" (1940, 1). In 1947, building on the work of the Fifes and basing his study on an expanded corpus of 150 legends and their variants, Hector Lee wrote a dis- sertation on the Three Nephites; in 1949 he published the work as The Three Nephites: The Substance and Significance of the Legend in Folklore. In 1956, the Fifes turned their attention to the Nephites once again, devoting a rich chapter to them in their monumental Saints of Sage and Saddle: Folklore among the Mormons. As important as these works were, knowledge of the Three Nephites reached a national audience primarily through the efforts of Richard M. Dorson, dean of American folklorists and head of the prestigious folklore program at Indiana University. Drawing on the works of the Fifes and Lee, Dorson summarized the Nephite legend in his widely read American Folklore, published in 1959, and again in Buying the Wind: Regional Folklore in the United States, pub- lished in 1964. Mormons, of course, at least those from the Mountainwest, have needed no such works to make them aware of the Three Nephites. They know of them directly, sometimes through their own experiences, which they have interpreted as Nephite encounters, more often by hearing Nephite stories repeated in their homes and churches and by telling them to others. I remember well one such storytelling event from my own life. On a rainy night in early October 1960, a fellow high school teacher and his wife — Ray and Ann White — were driving me to Salt Lake City. As we dodged through the late-evening traffic, I listened fascinated as Ann told me that on these very roads in recent months an old hitchhiker had hailed rides with Mormon motorists, had warned them to store food for an impending disaster, and had then disappeared miraculously from the back seats of their cars. The hitchhiker was thought to be one of the Three Nephites. I believed the story, partly because of the mood in the car that night, but primarily because I had grown up with stories of Nephite visits and found this account compatible with my past experience. Two years later, now a graduate student at Indiana University interested primarily in Finnish folklore and literature, I met Richard Dorson, who was delighted to have a real Mormon in his program and who introduced me to the scholarly study of my own tradition. Inspired by his enthusiasm, I turned to Mormon faculty members and graduate students at the university and in 1964 Wilson: The Three Nephites 15 collected from them forty Nephrite narratives for Dorson's fieldwork course — seven of them variants of the story I had heard that rainy night in Salt Lake a few years earlier (Wilson 1969, 3-35). Dorson was surprised and pleased to discover that Mormon folklore could be collected outside Utah. And I was hooked — from that day to the present, in one way or another, the Nephites and their stories have been my companions. As I began collecting Nephite accounts, I expected my work merely to substantiate earlier findings of the Fifes and Lee. I was wrong. Both Austin Fife and Hector Lee had argued twenty years earlier that the number of Nephite accounts was at that time decreasing, and Lee especially believed the legend would not flourish in a more technological and rational age. But my collection showed that the legend was alive and growing, at least among my informants in Bloomington, Indiana. From twenty-one individuals, I easily collected my forty tales in a very short time — and could have collected more had the semester's end not been approaching. Lee also had argued that while older Nephite stories were still being told, new accounts were not surfacing. According to Lee, the legend developed slowly from 1830-55, grew more rapidly from 1855-75, reached its peak from 1875-1900, waned slightly from 1900-25, and after 1925 dwindled to only a few scattered narratives (1949, 31). The stories he had collected were, Lee argued, cultural survivals from the pioneer past and therefore useful primarily as a means of understanding "pioneer concepts, attitudes, and impulses" (1949,126). I certainly did collect some fine pioneer narratives. The following is a good example: This story is part of the family traditions on my mother's side of the family. It dates back, I believe, to the 1870s when my mother's grandparents lived in the central Utah area, more exactly in the region of Manti. My great-grandfather had a sawmill in the area and often would go up in the mountains to cut trees, and my great- grandmother would be left at home with the many children. Well, one time my great-grandfather was away, and great-grandmother was home watching the kids, and it happened that at the 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 [was] still sure that she would not be able to go. She met an old man at the front gate, and he said, "Sister Swenson, 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 Swenson, 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 Three Nephites and one of them had stopped to help my great-grandmother with the children so she could go to the temple dedication.1 1 This and all other Nephite stories given here, as well as names of collectors and names and comments of informants, are located in the Brigham Young University Folklore Archive, 16 DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT But I also collected stories far removed from a rural, pioneer setting.
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