Is ‘American Primeval’ a true story? Inside the research behind the series

The executive producer contacted The Revenant writer Smith to flesh out his idea for an authentic and daring show on the American frontier. Unbeknownst to him, the foundation of the show had already been laid. While working on the 2015 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Smith read all about pioneer Jim Bridger (who stars as a young boy in The Revenant) and wrote a pilot about the historical figure in 2016.

“I learned a lot about his character,” Smith told Netflix. “I knew I wanted to explore it more and this gave me the opportunity.”

Smith set American Primeval’s story at Fort Bridger with the famous mountain man 50 years after the events of The Revenant and the rest is, well, history.

So how true is it American Primeval? Let’s dive into the real facts about the show below.

Irene Bedard as winter bird

Matt Kennedy/Netflix

Which American Primeval are characters based on real people?

Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham)

The real-life pioneer found himself in the middle of warring factions, including natives, Mormons and the US government, after building Fort Bridger into a small town on the edge of civilization.

Brigham Young (Kim Coates)

Young was the leader of the Mormon Church at the time with its own army – the Nauvoo Legion. “For this type of story, it was very important that we stay authentic,” executive producer Smith said. “Even for all of Brigham Young’s sermons and speeches, I took much of his dialogue directly from text—real sermons that he had preached—and used his exact words.”

Wild Bill Hickman (Alex Breaux)

Hickman was a notorious lawman and member of the Nauvoo Legion.

Winterbird (Irene Bedard)

Although the Shoshone tribal chief is a fictional character in the series, she is based on a real chief who “was alleged to be a lesbian (and had) multiple wives,” Berg says.

James Wolsey (Joe Tippett)

Wolsey is inspired by a man who “was actually executed for his role in the Meadows massacre,” Newman reveals. “There’s always some inspiration (and) authenticity to every character. There’s nobody in the show that feels like a construct that wouldn’t have been part of the real story.”

Preston Mota as Devin Rowell and Betty Gilpin as Sara Rowell

Why is there conflict between the Mormons, the military, and the native tribes in the American Primeval?

Berg noted that in American Primevalthere are no heroes or villains, just people trying to survive.

“Brigham Young and the Mormons feel that the military is about to attack them at any moment, so they have started their own army called the Nauvoo Legion,” he explained. “The US Army is preoccupied with getting the Mormons out of Utah territory, so they are worried that they will die fighting the Mormons. The Shoshone and Paiute tribes are being pushed off their lands by both sides, so they feel that they are getting ready to die.The miners and trappers of Fort Bridger are all seeing their lives snuffed out by larger trapping companies coming in and pushing them out.Everyone is anxious from the start, and everyone is really fighting to stay alive.”

Is the Mountain Meadows Massacre Based on a True Event?

In the series’ first episode, a frantic Sara (Betty Gilpin) and her son Devin (Preston Mota) race for cover as arrows fly through the air and bodies fall all around them. The scene, which depicts Mormon soldiers dressed as natives attacking a group of pioneers heading further west, was inspired by real events.

“We chose it because there was this intersection between a couple of different Native nations, the U.S. government, the Mormons, and the American citizens who felt they had a right to move through this area,” Newman explained. “The Mountain Meadows Massacre happened … and it became, for our narrative purposes, an inciting event of conflict for our cast.”

Smith added that they aimed to portray a balanced retelling of the story. “It was run by the Nauvoo Legion, but we have to understand that they saw it as a threat,” he said. “They came in to defend their world. It’s just another step – a very violent step – in the lengths they went to.”

The Mountain Meadows Massacre sequence was a major undertaking, requiring about four months of planning and featuring about 280 actors shooting at once.

“It’s very violent, it’s very chaotic,” Berg noted. “We designed a big shot that goes on for about six or seven minutes. We play out the attack in real time and we stay with Sara and Devin and just try to survive. That was the strategy: Let’s visually present this event through this woman’s eyes. There was a lot of work blocking it, choreographing the action and then figuring out how and where the camera moves within a series of five or six shots that had to be stitched together.”

Check out the territory American Primeval

Is Fort Bridger based on a real place?

Yes. In the 1850s, the real Fort Bridger was a trading post for those migrating west.

“It was used by all the pioneers (and) the Mormons. It was the stopping place,” Smith said. “When President Buchanan decided he wanted control over Brigham Young and what was growing in Utah, he stationed his military there. Fort Bridger was the rallying point for everyone.”

It took a concerted effort to build the Fort Bridger set in New Mexico where American Primeval was filmed. “There are hundreds of massive 80-foot trees that were used to build the walls around Fort Bridger,” Berg divulged. “Back in the 1850s, there were no power tools, so it had to be cut by hand with axes, and those builders were out there every day building it with hand tools.”

The set was built larger in scale than the real Fort Bridger, Smith said, because “we wanted so much life there. It became like a little village. We had stores, and we had a dentist and a doctor, and baths and things, that were accurate to that period, Fort Bridger took on a life of its own.”

Kim Coates as Brigham Young and Shea Whigham as Jim Bridger

Matt Kennedy/Netflix

Why did Jim Bridger sell Fort Bridger?

In Episode 6, Jim Bridger sells his fort to Brigham Young and disappears into the wilderness as it burns to the ground. It was also based on real events.

“Fort Bridger was perceived as this incredible asset by the U.S. military and the Mormon Church in terms of their ability to defend each other,” Berg tells Tudum. “Bridger knew that and he hung on as long as he could. (He) took the best deal he could and drove off to maybe one last chapter of his life.”

Smith explained that Brigham Young bought the fort to “take control of it himself. Not for profit, necessarily, but to get rid of it so (the U.S. Army) wouldn’t be able to use it. At the time it was to Brigham Young a defense from the outside world.”

So did the filmmakers really burn down the Fort Bridger set? “We burned about half of it,” says Berg. “It was based on a true event.”

The production of American Primeval

What research went into the making of American Primeval?

To lean into the authenticity of the show, American Primeval‘s creative staff hired experts across all aspects of production. “We had military consultants, we had Mormon consultants, we had trapping consultants, and they were all on set,” Berg explained. “I went with Dudley Gardner, curator of the Bridger Museum, to Fort Bridger in Wyoming for five days to get a deeper education in what life was like at that fort.” The EP then toured the site of the massacre with Richard E. Turley Jr., the co-writer of Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermathto learn more.

Berg also approached consultants from the Shoshone Tribe and the Paiute Tribe, led by Indigenous cultural consultant and project advisor Julie O’Keefe.

“My job on the show was to manage organized teams of cultural experts from the tribes involved,” O’Keefe told Netflix. “Artisans, traditional language speakers from each tribe, and cultural experts were engaged to create and advise each department. I also researched and used my network to create authentic Shoshone, Southern Paiute, and Ute camps with (production designer) Renée Read for set design, and I worked with (costume designer) Virginia Johnson to help produce period-specific traditional clothing for main and background characters.”

In addition, she “provided materials such as buffalo skins, moose hides, buck skins, beads, broadcloth, and blankets, based on photos and research done by Virginia and the other department teams.”

Added Newman, “Everything was all about authenticity. Every department did a tremendous amount of research. We had to make all these things you see on screen. All these elements had to be built. It’s incredibly time-consuming, but essential, because if someone shows up with some garment or weapon that didn’t exist in 1857, you’ve already lost.”

Saura Lightfoot Leon as Abish

Matt Kennedy/Netflix

Is there any truth to Abish’s story?

Abish’s (Lightfoot-Leon) story arc was inspired by historical accounts of women who were abducted by Native Americans in present-day Utah. “We wanted to explore the idea of ​​this young Mormon woman who is kind of pushed into a life and a marriage that she didn’t ask for and who, through fate, ends up in a very different world and never quite assimilates,” says Berg .

What should viewers take away from this story?

“I think that human triumph, the amplification of the good that people are capable of, is very important to me, as it is to Pete,” Newman says. “The other part of what matters to me is the importance of an anti-nostalgic, truthful look at our history. I was a big Howard Zinn’s ONE People’s History of the United States hell, because it was the first time I was confronted with what I thought was the truth. That these rose-colored glasses through which we see the past, from the first Thanksgiving onward, is a lie. It’s a lie meant to make us feel good about this really rough, brutal path we’ve taken.”

He adds: “I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice by looking at it that way because it prevents us from seeing it (happen) again.”

All six episodes of American Primeval now streaming on Netflix.

Additional reporting by Keely Flaherty and Tara Bitran.

Keep an eye out American Primeval Season 1 trailer