Note to readers • This episode contains spoilers for “American Primeval.”
It’s bleak. It’s bloody. It’s barbaric. It’s also the No. 1 TV show on Netflix. But what millions of viewers may misunderstand about “American Primeval” is that it is fictional.
While the six-part series is centered around real places, a few real events and some real people — ranging from the Utah War and the Mountain Meadows Massacre to mountain man Jim Bridger and pioneer-prophet Brigham Young, the show is not a docudrama. It gets many historical facts “wrong,” though the filmmakers weren’t necessarily trying to get everything “right.”
Did, for instance, any Latter-day Saints die in the Mountain Meadows Massacre carried out by Mormon militiamen? Did Native tribes participate in the atrocity? Did Brigham Young order the massacre? Did Latter-day Saints torch Fort Bridger? And are the portrayals of Young, Bridger and various Native American tribes accurate?
(Matt Kennedy | Netflix) Kim Coates, center, portrays Brigham Young in an episode of "American Primeval."
Answering those questions and more are Barbara Jones Brown, director of Signature Books and co-author of the critically acclaimed “Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath,” and Darren Parry, former chair of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and author of “The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History.”
Listen to the podcast:
