The Interpreter Foundation and Redbrick Filmworks continues to release a new episode of their not-for-profit series of mini-documentaries titled Becoming Brigham each Monday. This week, they released the following episode:

Episode 32: “Religious Kindred But Savage Enemies?”

• How did Brigham Young’s determination to never again be driven out of his home collide with Native peoples who were being pushed off the rivers and valleys of Utah?
• Why did a church that sent missionaries to Native Americans so early still end up building forts and fighting battles?

The hosts visit an historic Utah fort and use it as a doorway into the complicated relationship between early Latter-day Saints and Native peoples. They talk about why the Saints built forts, how those sites also served as way-stations on the north–south corridor, and how the arrival of Mormon settlers disrupted Native hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds.

Historian John Peterson explains that the first contacts began the week the Saints entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and Brigham Young saw living in “Indian country” as a chance to fulfill a Book of Mormon mission to the Lamanites. But daily survival—settlements, canals, cattle, and colonization—often pushed that ideal aside. The hosts emphasize that the history is gray rather than one-sided. Saints arrived as refugees fleeing persecution and quickly expanded to secure a lasting Zion, while Native groups took the pioneer cattle on their lands as a kind of tax after their food system was broken.

Why this docuseries? Many people are aware of Brigham Young as a pivotal figure in American religious and frontier history, but Brigham is also often misunderstood, seen as a larger-than-life caricature rather than as a man. Who actually was Brigham as a man, a father, a husband, and a prophet? The video web series Becoming Brigham debunks fictions and provides surprising new insights into the real Brigham Young. Learn more in the article “Becoming Brigham: The Video Series Premieres.”