January 9 saw the release of a new Netflix series, American Primeval, set in the context of mid-19th-century Utah. Though the series is fictionalized, many of the events and peoples depicted are real, including the Utah War, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Mormon settlers, and the Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute Indians.
Historians Barbara Jones Brown and Darren Parry join host John Dehlin for this live podcast to answer viewer’s questions about which aspects of the series are factual and which are historical fiction. Barbara is co-author of Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath, and Darren is the author of The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History. Barbara and Darren offer a unique perspective because they are not only historians of this time period in Utah, they are direct descendants of peoples depicted in the mini-series–Darren is Northwestern Shoshone, and Barbara is a descendant of perpetrators of the horrific massacre at Mountain Meadows.
2 Responses
I personally think that this program was an intentional a smear on the Mormon Church. The history was horrible, but even if it was just a fictional depiction the history was so bad as to transcend any defense that it was just fictional entertainment. That said I have no regard for the Church and its truth claims nor it’s people considering recent political issues, but that is no excuse for the presentation of a movie that can’t even get the geography right let alone the narrative.
There was a question about Wild Bill Hickman. I have a book called ‘Brigham’s destroying angel’ by William Adams Hickman.
Wild Bill was a bodyguard of Joseph Smith Jr. and Brigham Young and also a Danite.