After researching, writing and educating about the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre and its historical context for the past 19 years, I was looking forward to watching the new Netflix series, “American Primeval.”

The director toured the Mountain Meadows, located in southwest Utah, with my co-author a couple of years ago, and the series’ creators had copies of our non-fiction book on the subject, “Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath” and the book’s prequel, “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” (both published by Oxford University Press).

Because of this, and because the actual story is so suspenseful and dramatic that it needs no sensationalizing, I hoped that the series —billed as historical fiction — would be fairly well rooted in history.

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I also began watching the first episode with some emotional trepidation — no matter how many times I share the story, it’s still gut-wrenching to engage with the horrific details of how Mormon militiamen massacred an Arkansas wagon company of more than 100 men, women, and children. I prepared myself to feel this pain again as I started watching “American Primeval’s” visual depiction of it.

But what I ended up feeling was confusion and frustration. The chronology, geography, and context of the 1857-58 Utah War in which the massacre occurred, along with the depiction of the Shoshone, Paiute, Ute, Latter-day Saint settlers, Arkansas emigrants, and U.S. Army soldiers, were so far from reality as to be unrecognizable. Descendants of these Indigenous groups, descendants of the Arkansas emigrants, and historians of the U.S. Army, have shared their similar criticisms with me.

Fictionalized examples

I’ll talk about why all this matters, but first, since people keep asking about what’s fact vs. fiction in “American Primeval,” I’ll share a few of its fictionalized examples below (spoiler alert!):

Fiction: Hood-wearing Mormon militiamen carried out the “Meadows Massacre,” in the wintertime and not far from Fort Bridger, because the wagon train disobeyed Brigham Young’s martial-law orders to not pass through Utah.

Fact: Militiamen perpetrated the massacre in late summer, in a desert climate several hundred miles southwest of Fort Bridger. (The fort was located in what is today Wyoming). As territorial governor, Brigham Young declared martial law from Salt Lake City on September 14, 1857 (three days after the massacre) in response to U.S. Army troops’ continued advance on Utah in what became known as the Utah War. Militiamen in southwest Utah carried out the massacre as a cover-up after wagon train members learned that Mormon settlers were involved in what was supposed to be an “Indian-only” raid on their cattle — a raid that went awry and turned deadly when several emigrants were killed. After a five-day siege, and in the fear and hysteria of the Utah War, some 50–60 militiamen decoyed the emigrants from their encircled wagons under false promises of protection, then slaughtered them. The militiamen didn’t wear hoods — they didn’t have to because they carried out their intent to kill all witnesses besides 17 children aged 6 and under.

The site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre near Enterprise, Utah. | Kenneth Mays, Church History catalog

Fiction: Paiute men participated in the massacre so they could take captive and rape several white women who were spared the slaughter. One man, a Latter-day Saint who happens to be traveling with the wagon train, is nearly scalped but survives. Shoshone men soon encounter these Paiutes, murder them, then slit the throats of all the captive women except for one: another Salt Lake City-bound Mormon who happened to be traveling with the emigrants. The Shoshone then kidnap that woman, leading Mormons to wipe out an entire band of Shoshone people as punishment for the kidnapping.

Fact: In reality, no one over the age of 6 survived the Mountain Meadows Massacre. No Latter-day Saints were traveling with the wagon train when the massacre occurred, nor is there any evidence of scalping. The Southern Paiute and Shoshone did not kidnap, rape and murder white women, nor would they have interacted with each other, as their homelands were hundreds of miles apart. Latter-day Saints settlers did not massacre Shoshone, though some did kill Ute and Paiute Indians in other 19th-century conflicts further south.

Fiction: Shortly before massacring the Shoshone band, Mormon militiamen wipe out an entire U.S. Army contingent because they are investigating the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Fact: Although tensions ran high during the Utah War, remarkably, no pitched battles broke out between the two sides. Brigham Young and his advisors developed strategies designed to keep the troops out and convince Washington, D.C., to pull them back East. Mormon militiamen stalled the approaching Army on the plains of what is now Wyoming by burning army supply wagons, the way station of Fort Bridger, and grass along the trail that the Army’s draft animals needed to survive. The militia slowed the troops’ approach until winter snows set in, making overland travel impossible and forcing the troops to spend the winter in a tent city they created outside the burned-out remains of Fort Bridger, more than 100 miles from Salt Lake. When Congress met in early 1858, it rejected the proposal of President James Buchanan and his Secretary of War to raise additional troops to send to Utah, forcing Buchanan to broker a peace settlement with Mormon leaders instead.

Five years later, a different contingent of U.S. Army troops stationed in Utah massacred a community of Shoshone — more than 400 men, women, and children — in what is today southern Idaho. The atrocity is known today as the Bear River Massacre of 1863. U.S. troops also displaced and slaughtered thousands of Indigenous people of the West in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, the 1864-66 Long Walk of the Navajo, and the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, to name a few.

Squandered opportunity

Let me be clear. I’m not critical of “American Primeval” because it attempts to engage with the Utah War and the violence of the 19th-century American West. In fact I’m thrilled that it is raising interest about this era, leading some viewers to turn to well-researched, historical sources in order to learn more.

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My concern is that, on one hand, many viewers believe that the false tropes and sensationalized depictions are real, leading to an increase in the very stereotypes, suspicions and even hate that contributed to this 19th-century violence. Disturbing hate speech and threats of violence being expressed on social media by some after watching “American Primeval” bear this out.

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And on the other hand, the characterizations of Latter-day Saints, American Indians, the Arkansas emigrants, and the U.S. Army are so one-dimensional and over-the-top that they can simply be dismissed. When people don’t see themselves, their forebears, or their history reflected in contextualized and nuanced ways, it’s easy to find reason to not engage with the hard facts of the past rather than face them.

“American Primeval” could have inspired thought-provoking questions and introspection about the dangers of religious bigotry and zeal, of conflict between national and local government, and of the race-based and oft-violent imperialism on which the United States was built — issues that continue to divide our country today.

Unfortunately, the series squandered that opportunity, instead lazily relying on old and false tropes of the past — fanatical Mormons, savage Indians, saucy emigrants and “good guy” U.S. soldiers just tryna’ keep the wild, wild West safe for the spread of “civilized,” white colonization from the East.

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