Check out American Primeval on Netflix. Bring questions for Tuesday’s livestream.

American Primeval on Netflix Is the Mormon History Show Nobody Asked For (And Everyone Needs to Watch)

Netflix just dropped a six-part miniseries set in 1850s Utah, and it does not blink. American Primeval covers some of the most contested, violent, and spiritually complicated terrain in American religious history: the Utah War, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Brigham Young's territorial power, polygamy, and the brutal collision between Mormon settlers and Indigenous nations including the Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute peoples. If you have been waiting for mainstream television to take this period seriously, your wait is over. The Mormon Stories Podcast community is already talking about it, and a livestream discussion is scheduled for Tuesday.

This is not a faith-promoting film shown in a Sunday School classroom. It is prestige television with real violence and real moral ambiguity, and that combination makes it one of the more important cultural moments for Mormon history in recent memory.

The Historical Period at the Center of American Primeval

The 1850s were arguably the most turbulent decade in Latter-day Saint history. Brigham Young was serving simultaneously as LDS Church president and territorial governor of Utah. The federal government viewed the Saints with deep suspicion, and that suspicion eventually exploded into the Utah War of 1857 to 1858, when President Buchanan sent federal troops to replace Young as governor.

That same year, a wagon train of emigrants from Arkansas was attacked in southern Utah. At least 120 men, women, and children were killed. The event, known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, remains one of the most painful and disputed events in LDS history. The Church's own Gospel Topics Essays acknowledge that local LDS leaders and members participated in the killings, alongside Paiute individuals who have their own complex history in the account.