Throughout its history, the American West has been under attack. The land has been ravaged and scarred by extractive industries, the rivers polluted and drained off to serve massive cookie-cutter housing developments, and its original inhabitants herded into impoverished reservations and victimized.
The story of these chapters in American history too often whitewash the role of the victors in these wars of development (‘Yellowstone’: Low Noon, or How the West Was Lost, PW, 2/15/22). Always the underlying theme has been the desecration of the West in order to pave the way for power and profit.
Modern handmaidens of these profits like prodigious writer/director/producer Taylor Sheridan serve as apologists for corporate capitalism and the White culture of his beloved “Cowboy Way.” Sheridan’s works, from Yellowstone and 1883 to 1923 and Landman are a compendium defense of the property of the European settlers who dispossessed the Native populations and the large corporations which succeeded them.
Sheridan ends up romanticizing the early settlers and exoticizing the Natives. Exploitation is either depicted as inevitable or for some greater good, often that of enriching the few at the expense of all others.
American Primeval, the new television mini-series by veteran Director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Rundown) and versatile writer Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, The Boys in the Boat, Twisters) has at least rescued a piece of this history accurately.
Smith and Berg have created a serious, sophisticated, multi-layered look at the forces that developed the West. Their clear-eyed look may at times be brutal and violent graphically. It’s honesty in dealing with settlers, Natives, and especially the Mormon Church’s land seizures in Utah elevates American Primeval over the ahistorical, idealized, dewy depictions.
Primeval’s story centers on the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre of 1857 perpetrated by Mormons disguised as Native Americans. The Mormon militia, inspired by Latter Day Saint teachings against outsiders and Mormon hostility to the United States government, massacred 120 members of the Baker-Fancher wagon train heading across Utah toward California.
Against the backdrop of the massacre and the cover-up by Mormon participants and supporters, American Primeval tracks the struggles of Sara Holloway (Betty Gilpin), her son, and guide Isaac Reed (Taylor Kitsch) across Utah.
Gilpin’s character development as a strong woman at jeopardy because of her personal secrets is well-defined character development. In Holloway we see 19th century woman on the frontier coming to terms with male violence and natural forces. Gilpin reveals the resources a clever, ambitious headstrong needs to survive. In what could have been a stereotypical throwaway, Gilpin shines brightly.
Bounty hunters led by Virgil Cutter (Jai Courtney) pursue the Holloway party. Shoshone natives, survivors of the massacre, and pioneer trading post leader Jim Bridger (Shea Wigham) help them. The series takes its time exploring the conflicted motives and behaviors of all of these participants.
It should be noted that not everyone enjoyed the content as much as this reviewer. The all-too-predictable condemnation of the show by the Mormon Church attacks the series for what it characterizes as “an inaccurate portrayal reflective of an entire faith group.” The church particularly denounced the portrayal of Brigham Young as “egregiously mischaracterized.”
It seems to this reviewer, who studied the period and has taught American History at the collegiate level, that the conclusions reached in the series depictions were accurate and took pains to differentiate the actions and beliefs of all those portrayed. Viewers should be encouraged to make their own conclusions after watching American Primeval.
American Primeval is streaming on Netflix.
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