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150 Utah Historical Quarterly 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.2 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.3 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." 1 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. 2 W. H. Lever, History of Sanpete and Emery Counties (Ogden, Ut., 1898), pp. 1 4 - 1 5 ; Florence N. Bagnall, " T h e Story of Gray Hill," in These . . . Our Fathers: A Centennial History of Sanpete County, 1849-1947, ed. Daughters of the U t a h Pioneers of Sanpete County, U t a h (Springville, U t . : Art City Publishing Company, 1947), p. 1 1 ; Adelia B. Sidwell, "Reminiscences of Early M a n t i , " in Song of a Century: A Centennial History and Memory Book of Manti, 1848-1949, ed. Centennial Committee of Manti (Manti, Ut., 1949), pp. 15-16. 3 Barbara Lee Hargis, "A Folk History of the Manti T e m p l e : A Study of the Folklore and Traditions Connected with the Settlement of Manti, U t a h , and the Building of the T e m p l e " (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1968), p. 8. 4 Collected by Larry Johnson in Provo, Utah, 1972. Unless otherwise noted subsequent references to items of folklore will give the collector, place of collection, and the year of collection. All items used in this paper, including background and informant data, are on file in the Brigham Young University Folklore Archive.