American Primeval ’s director and executive producer Peter Berg ( Friday Night Lights) knows that depicting real events isn’t without its challenges, and while much of what’s depicted on screen is dramatized,

The series, now streaming on Netflix, depicts the brutality with which the Mormons sought to create a new world for their beliefs, the pride with which the native people held onto their ancestral lands, and the tragedy of the people just seeking to make a new home in the chaos. But is any of it true?

What follows is a grotesque massacre in which the Nauvoo Legion, masked and disguised as local Paiute natives, murders the nonviolent settlers as they camp for the night. Men are scalped, women and children slaughtered,

As you watch Netflix's "American Primeval" airs, learn more about key moment in the first episode: the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

American Primeval has just arrived on Netflix and the Western series features Taylor Kitsch, Betty Gilpin and Kim Coates to name a few stars. The limited series, which is made up of six episodes, is set in 1857.