(RNS) — What does the popular new Netflix series, “American Primeval,” get wrong about the Utah War? Just about everything. Utah historian and author Barbara Jones Brown explains why that matters in the below guest column. — JR
Though highly fictionalized and only loosely based on actual history and geography, popular new Netflix series “American Primeval” is stirring up national interest in a long-forgotten but explosive episode of America’s past.
As a historian of 19th-century Utah, I’ve been excited to see how the series is generating popular interest in a place, time and people often overlooked. Countless people have been peppering me with questions and asking for book recommendations. Amazon bears out this trend — books about the Mountain Meadows and Bear River Massacres, along with biographies of Brigham Young, “Wild Bill” Hickman and Jim Bridger, are popping up on bestseller lists.
While I’m encouraged by people wanting to delve into the actual history, I’m equally concerned about an increase in religious bigotry, including threats against Latter-day Saints, that I’ve seen expressed on social media by some viewers of the series.
Barbara Jones Brown, co-author of “Vengeance Is Mine.” (Photo courtesy Oxford University Press)
“‘American Primeval’ on Netflix built up hatred for Mormons I didn’t even know I had,” posted one woman. “Them mountain jews are ruthless,” a man posted. Another wrote, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, something should have been done about the Mormons a long, long time ago.” These posts received a large number of “likes” and are just a few examples of many similar posts and videos.
These folks don’t seem to understand that the depiction of hood-wearing, sinister Mormons slaughtering emigrants, U.S. Army troops and Shoshone people all within a few days is a sensationalized fabrication intended to “entertain.”
To help viewers distinguish between fact and fiction, here are answers to some of the questions people have been asking:
What was the Utah War?
In 1857–58, Latter-day Saint settlers of Utah Territory waged a war of resistance against the federal government when a newly elected U.S. president sent troops to occupy the Salt Lake Valley. Concerned about the Mormons’ expanding theocracy in the West — Brigham Young was not only the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but also Utah’s governor — President James Buchanan’s advisers urged him to replace Young with a new governor, accompanied by an army contingent. Buchanan, who called the Mormons “delusional,” tapped Alfred Cumming of Georgia as Utah’s new ruler — one of the few men willing to take the job.
Young was willing to allow his replacement and other appointed officials into Utah, but he insisted the U.S. Army troops accompanying them must not enter. Young believed the soldiers were coming to persecute his people and he used violent rhetoric to rile up Latter-day Saints to resist them.
Young’s fear was not unfounded. Missouri militiamen had massacred a group of Mormon settlers in Missouri in the late 1830s and violently driven the Mormons from that state. In 1844, Young’s predecessor and church founder, Joseph Smith, was taken into government custody, then assassinated by a mob in the Latter-day Saints’ new gathering place in Illinois. After migrating to the Salt Lake Valley beginning in 1847, Young and his people determined to “no more submit to oppression” in 1857.
How true to life was the geography depicted in the series?
Not very. Only three places depicted or mentioned by name in the series were real: Fort Bridger (located in the southwest of what is Wyoming today), the Salt Lake Valley and the Wasatch Mountain range that lay between them. Though most of the events depicted in the series took place not far from Fort Bridger, in reality, Brigham Young lived in Salt Lake City more than 100 miles away. So the scene from “American Primeval” where we see Brigham Young riding around Fort Bridger is wrong; he was nowhere near the U.S. troops as they were approaching.
Did the Mormons actually purchase and burn down Fort Bridger?
Yes, though their motivations for doing both were different than those portrayed in “American Primeval.” They purchased the fort in 1855 — two years before any of the events depicted in the series took place. They bought it to be a trailside way station to supply thousands of emigrants making their way to Utah. When Mormon militiamen burned down the fort on Oct. 7, 1857, they did so to thwart the approaching troops during the Utah War. In “American Primeval,” the Mormons purchase and burn down the fort in the last episode. It’s unclear exactly why, but it appears to be because Young doesn’t care for Bridger and the heavy-drinking, riotous crowd that frequents the fort.
Did Mormon militiamen really wipe out a contingent of the U.S. Army?
No. Though tensions ran extremely hot during the 1857–58 Utah War, remarkably, no pitched battles broke out between the two sides. Brigham Young and his advisers developed strategies to keep the troops out and convince Washington, D.C., to pull them back. Mormon militiamen not only burned Fort Bridger, but also army supply wagons and grass along the trail that the army’s draft animals needed to survive. This successfully slowed the troops’ approach until winter snows set in, making trails into the Salt Lake Valley impassable and forcing the troops to spend a miserable winter in a tent city they created outside the burned-out remains of Fort Bridger, more than 100 miles from Salt Lake City.
When Congress met in early 1858, it rejected President Buchanan’s proposal to raise additional troops to send to Utah, forcing Buchanan to broker a peace settlement with Mormon leaders instead. In the end, neither side got exactly what it wanted. The troops did enter and remain in the colonized areas of Utah, though they weren’t permitted to occupy cities. Instead they built and lived in an army post they named Camp Floyd, miles outside of Salt Lake City and other settlements.
Did Mormon militiamen slaughter a camp of Shoshone people?
No. In reality, U.S. Army troops stationed in Utah in 1863 wiped out a community of more than 400 Shoshone men, women and children on the Bear River in what is today southern Idaho (which, again, is not close to Fort Bridger as it’s portrayed in the series). The atrocity is known today as the Bear River Massacre.
Did Mormon militiamen massacre a group of emigrants in a wagon train?
A recent book about the history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, co-authored by guest columnist Barbara Jones Brown. (Courtesy image)
Yes. Though the Utah War has been called “bloodless,” in reality, Mormon militiamen in southern Utah perpetrated a horrific war atrocity on September 11, 1857, in a valley called the Mountain Meadows (which, again, is some 400 miles southwest of Bridger, not close by as it’s depicted in the series).
The history is that although Young and his people decried the occupation of Utah Territory by federal troops, they failed to recognize that they, too, were occupiers, having settled on lands the Shoshone, Ute, Goshute, Paiute and Navajo people had inhabited for generations. As part of their strategy to convince Washington to withdraw its troops from Utah, Mormon leaders endeavored to form alliances against the army with these Indigenous peoples, and in some cases, use them as pawns. Playing on racialized 19th-century stereotypes of Indigenous Americans as “savages,” Young warned that if the troops came to Utah, he would no longer “hold the Indians still” when people passing through the territory killed them, “but I will say to them, go and do as you please.”
While Young publicly blustered this warning, privately his interpreters encouraged and led Indigenous Americans in raiding the cattle of emigrant companies passing through Utah en route to California that summer and fall of 1857. When one such raid went awry at the Mountain Meadows, several civilians in a company of emigrants from Arkansas were killed. The entire company of men, women and children learned that Mormons were involved. In the heat of the war hysteria of 1857, local Mormon militiamen made the horrific decision to wipe out all the witnesses old enough “to tell tales,” in order to protect themselves and their community from the repercussions that would follow if they let those witnesses go.
Did Mormons wear KKK-like hoods as depicted in the series?
No. They did not need to, because they massacred all of the emigrants except for 17 children ages six and under. The militiamen blamed the entire massacre on the Paiute men they recruited to participate with them. These Paiute participated to receive cattle, not to receive and own surviving women as claimed in “American Primeval.” No Mormons were in the massacred train, also as fictitiously depicted in the series.
It should be noted that modern Latter-day Saints decry the Mountain Meadows Massacre and apologize for it, including myself. Not only am I a historian of the massacre, I am a direct descendant of one of its perpetrators.
The history of the Utah War has been thoroughly researched, documented and published in numerous books on the episode. Rather than shedding light on this actual Western history and compelling viewers to learn meaningful lessons from the past, the producers of “American Primeval” ironically chose to revive and perpetuate the very falsehoods and stereotypes that led to the prejudices, fear, divisions and violence of 19th-century America.
Readers can learn in detail about this period of Utah history in Barbara Jones Brown’s award-winning book, Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath (Oxford University Press, 2023), co-authored with Richard E. Turley Jr. Brown holds a master’s degree in American history from the University of Utah.
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