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?

This unsparingly grim Netflix western draws from a tradition of works eager to push beyond sanitized frontier myths. Here’s a supplementary guide.