American Primeval Recap: Snapped Bones and Broken Toes

It’s unlikely that American Primeval is trying to make each episode more uncomfortable than the last, but sometimes it feels that way, doesn’t it? On the one hand, the series’ fourth episode features no sexual assault or throat slitting, so in that sense it is milder than the episodes preceding it. On the other hand, it’s bookended by scenes of horrific injuries. So maybe American Primeval isn’t trying to top itself with each episode but attempting to offer the broadest possible array of horrible things that could happen to someone in the American West.

If you didn’t already have “getting your toes sliced with a dirty shovel” on such a list, this episode should put it there. It opens with a sermon that doubles as a war cry as Brigham Young tells his people that, after being persecuted wherever they tried to settle before, they’d found their Zion. This last phrase tellingly plays over the image of Fort Bridger, where an unhappy Jim Bridger is determined to maintain possession of the pigs he picked out for purchase in the previous episode. But Bridger has not paid in full and he can’t match the price offered by Wild Bill Hickman, so it seems like his hands are tied. Wild Bill is confident enough in this to threaten to take everything Bridger owns. Bridger’s counterpoint: the aforementioned shovel to the foot. This solves his pig problem but leaves the threat of a Mormon takeover looming.

The overlapping edits between Young and Fort Bridger aren’t the only significant bits of juxtaposition in the episode’s early moments. While Dellinger writes in his journal about the intense, sometimes conflicting feelings his time in the West has inspired, we see images of Abish witnessing a Shoshone ceremony and looking unsure what to feel. Her conversation with Winter Bird the next day confirms this. Told by Winter Bird that she’ll be taken to “her people,” she replies that she doesn’t know who her people are anymore. This leads to a conversation about why Abish’s people — and here Winter Bird clearly means the settlers — hate the Native Americans. “Fear,” Abish replies, which seems like a charitable, or at least incomplete, assessment given the history being discussed. Winter Bird’s own reply suggests as much without calling Abish out for it, recalling all the suffering and loss her people have experienced before suggesting that the stains on Abish’s dress represent her life, even those that aren’t so good. Winter Bird has a way of making herself understood, whoever she’s talking to.

Will she ever get a chance to talk to Jacob? That remains a bit unclear. It’s an eventful episode for Jacob, who remains fixated on Cook’s stolen watch even as he watches Virgil slaughter the remaining adults in the French Canadian camp where Sara, Isaac, and Devin were held captive. (Tilly, the meanest of Virgil’s companions, even takes the doll away from the girl who lured them to the camp who’s now left with no one to care for her. He’s not a nice man.) Lucas (Andrew P. Logan), one of Virgil’s men, is not onboard with this.

Lucas is also the member of the gang most sympathetic to Jacob and his singing. But will he tolerate an angry, violent Jacob? Pushed too far by Tilly’s taunts, he attacks him. He’s taken away to cool off by Cook, a decision Cook lives just long enough to regret. Enraged by the pocket watch he knows to have been lifted from the scene of the massacre, Jacob drowns Cook in the river and takes the watch as evidence. Jacob explains himself to Virgil but Virgil makes the (kind of understandable) decision to part ways with Jacob and let him find his own way.

In an even less hospitable part of Utah Territory, an injured horse prompts Isaac to stop for the night, the rest of which is spent getting to know his companions a bit better. With Devin he has a discussion about the morality of killing bad men, a matter relevant to both Isaac and Sara, both of whom Devin has seen killing bad men. Later that night, Sara awakens from a nightmare in which she’s being captured and begins talking to Isaac, who tells her a bit about his past. The Shoshone called him Spotted Hawk because they knew him first as a freckled young boy after he was traded to them. Sara finds it hard to imagine how he could bring himself to leave such a kind and safe environment. “Why would you leave that?” she asks. Isaac has no answer, but he does agree to stay by her side during the night.

At the Shoshone camp, Red Feather returns with Dellinger’s spy, Grey Fox (Jeremiah Bitsui). This leads to a string of more moral debates, this one between Red Feather and his mother, Winter Bird. Red Feather defines himself as a warrior for his people, even showing he’s willing to bleed for them by cutting himself. Later, Abish more or less picks up where Winter Bird left off, conversing with Red Feather by way of Grey Fox’s translation, asking where the killing in the name of God ends and does he really want his son, Young Elk (Mosiah Crowfoot), to be a part of this cycle of violence. By her estimation, all the Shoshone deserve to live a long life — even Red Feather, she replies when he asks.

This leads Red Feather to rethink his position and concoct a strategy: He’ll take a war party to the soldier’s camp, but with Abish, who can explain what happened and who’s really behind the massacre, thus, ideally, preventing the need for a battle. With Abish serving as his spokesperson and Grey Fox as translator, this ends up working out pretty well (all things considered, and perhaps just for now). After Abish reveals her identity, she confirms what Dellinger already suspects. He also tells Abish that Jacob is still alive and they can bring her to him. But as Red Feather rides off, Abish doesn’t look any less conflicted about where she belongs than before, especially after Dellinger tells her that the peace will not hold due to Red Feather’s past attacks, even if he’s innocent of the massacre. Both Dellinger and Abish agree the Shoshone deserve better. Neither seems capable of doing anything about it.

When Dellinger brings Abish to the Mormon camp, he’s greeted, none too warmly, by Wild Bill and Wolsey, who are visibly shaken by a living witness to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, despite their expressions of relief. Abish has no intention of staying with them and confirms Wolsey’s identity to Dellinger as they ride away, prompting Dellinger to write a letter making the accusation to his superior. This seems like the right course of action except for two things: (1) Abish feels like she’s been used, put in harm’s way so she can identify a killer who now knows she’s alive and has reason to want her dead. And (2) he gives the message to one of his trusted officers, Pepper (Kip Weeks), but Pepper is a traitor who takes the letter to Wild Bill instead, and Abish flees for parts unknown (but presumably the Shoshone camp.)

Meanwhile, Isaac leads his party through the snow the best he can, but that injured horse isn’t making it easy. Their goal is to make it as far as a hunting lodge Isaac knows. They do, but only after Devin is thrown from the injured horse and suffers a badly injured leg. This forces Isaac to engage in some truly grisly acts of field medicine, and the episode ends much as it began, on the sickening sound of crunching bones.

Bullets and Arrowheads

• The other lingering question with American Primeval, beyond whether every episode is designed to be even more uncomfortable than its predecessor, is whether it has a vision of the American West—and America as a whole—beyond depicting the violence and awfulness at the root of its history. The depth of the historic detail and richness of the characters and performances have suggested it does from the start, and one starts to emerge with this episode. Abish’s ability to see beyond what she’s been taught about Native Americans, Red Feather’s reconsideration of warfare as a way of life (which may prove short-lived), Dellinger’s reflectiveness, and the friendship between Devin and Two Moons (which is less evident in this episode) all point toward ways of living beyond factionalism, constant struggle, and violence. What’s also clear is that the path to that is as difficult as the journey from Fort Bridger to Crooks Springs.

• This series is really good at depicting harsh conditions, particularly the journey through the snow in this episode. By all reports, that’s in no small part because it was shot under some pretty trying circumstances. When the cast looks cold, it’s apparently often because they were cold.