Netflix‘s new western series American Primeval is set in 1857 Utah Territory, a time and place defined by outbursts of violence over the future of the area. Indigenous peoples like the Shoshone and Paiute were fighting (in different ways) to maintain a grip on their homelands, while the early Church of Latter Day Saints were resorting to any means necessary to protect their chosen “Zion,” which they preferred to call “Deseret,” from non-Mormon settlers encroaching from the east.
This complex push and pull plays out in explosively violent ways in Netflix’s American Primeval. The first episode of the series ends with the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a real life event wherein the Mormon militia, aka the Nauvoo Legion, masked themselves as Paiute natives to murder over a hundred nonviolent pioneers camping in Utah Territory.
“The Mormon Church has taken responsibility for that crime,” American Primeval director and executive producer Peter Berg told Decider when we spoke to him about the show in November 2024. “Something that we try and do is offer some context as to at least understanding how tensions got so great in that area where Brigham Young and the Mormon leadership felt that the most prudent course of action for their self-preservation was this attack.”
“We don’t apologize for it, but we do offer some context for how tensions got so high.”
Brigham Young, the then leader of the Mormon Church, is played by Kim Coates in American Primeval. While we never see Young get his hands dirty with the blood of others, the implication is he condoned this violence being made in the faith’s name.
“Going into it, it was so beautiful to try and figure this [Brigham Young] out,” Coates told Decider. “Once I found out how he dressed and how he looked and the color of his hair and how many wives he had at that moment and what what it all meant to him and what this Mountain Meadows Massacre meant to him.”
“Was he somewhat responsible? Did he have nothing to do with it? Like we had to make choices. Peter and I had to make choices with Mark L. Smith, the writer, and we did.”
Most of the characters we meet in American Primeval meet grisly, untimely ends, but how does Brigham Young die? Does Brigham Young even die in American Primeval? What really happened to the legendary leader of the early Mormon church?
American Primeval: How Did Brigham Young Die?
Brigham Young doesn’t die in American Primeval and with good reason. In real life, Young wouldn’t perish until 1877. That’s a good twenty years after the events of the Netflix show.
So how did Brigham Young die? A contemporary report in The New York Times alleged Brigham Young suffered from “cholera morbus and inflammation of the bowels.” Modern doctors believe he died of complications from appendicitis.
Today he is remembered as one of the most important figures in Mormon Church history and the influential academic institution Brigham Young University is named after him.
The post ‘American Primeval’: How Did Brigham Young Die? appeared first on Decider.
