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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

"The Darkness Is The Whole Thing": Environment, Belief, And Community In The Wampus Legend Of The Retsof Salt Mine, Ashley Gorrell Purser May 2005

"The Darkness Is The Whole Thing": Environment, Belief, And Community In The Wampus Legend Of The Retsof Salt Mine, Ashley Gorrell Purser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

"The Darkness is the Whole Thing" is an examination of a legendary animal known as the wampus that makes its home in the Retsof salt mine. Various forms of wampus creatures found in other settings are introduced, followed by discussion of the ways in which environment influences the adaptation of occupational legend. The article considers how belief in the wampus facilitates the expression of fear, an increased sense of awareness, and the development of community in a unique and dangerous work environment. The telling of the wampus legend is considered a narrative tool for solidifying and preserving occupational identity.


No Place To Call Home: The 1807-1857 Life Writings Of Caroline Barnes Crosby, Chronicler Of Outlying Mormon Communities, Edward Leo Lyman, Susan Ward Payne, S. George Ellsworth Jan 2005

No Place To Call Home: The 1807-1857 Life Writings Of Caroline Barnes Crosby, Chronicler Of Outlying Mormon Communities, Edward Leo Lyman, Susan Ward Payne, S. George Ellsworth

All USU Press Publications

Caroline Crosby's life took a wandering course between her 1834 marriage to Jonathan Crosby and conversion to the infant Mormon Church and her departure for her final home, Utah, on New Year's Day, 1858. In the intervening years, she lived in many places but never long enough to set firm roots. Her adherence to a frontier religion on the move kept her moving, even after the church began to settle down in Utah. Despite the impermanence of her situation, perhaps even because of it, Caroline Crosby left a remarkably rich record of her life and travels, thereby telling us not …