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    Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846--1890
    Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846--1890
    Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846--1890
    Audiobook4 hours

    Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846--1890

    Written by Larry McMurtry

    Narrated by Michael Prichard

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Here are the true stories of the West's most terrible massacres-Sacramento River, Mountain Meadows, Sand Creek, Marias River, Camp Grant, and Wounded Knee, among others. These massacres involved Americans killing Indians, but also Indians killing Americans and, in the case of the currently hugely controversial Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857, Mormons slaughtering a party of American settlers, including women and children.

    McMurtry's evocative descriptions of these events recall their full horror, and the deep, constant apprehension and dread endured by both pioneers and Indians. By modern standards the death tolls were often small-Custer's defeat in 1876 was the only encounter to involve more than two hundred dead-yet in the thinly populated West of that time, the violent extinction of a hundred people had a colossal impact on all sides. Though the perpetrators often went unpunished, many guilty and traumatized men felt compelled to tell and retell the horror they had committed. Nephi Johnson, one of the participants in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, died crying "Blood, blood, blood!"

    McMurtry's powerful prose captures the gritty essence of this tumultuous and pivotal era, and the fascinating and remarkable men and women-American and Indian, celebrated and forgotten-who shaped the West, and would kill to keep it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 1, 2005
    ISBN9781400171958
    Author

    Larry McMurtry

    Larry McMurtry (1936–2021) was the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, three memoirs, two collections of essays, and more than thirty screenplays. He lived in Archer City, Texas.

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    Reviews for Oh What a Slaughter

    4/5

    20 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Interesting, although it's so short that it's hardly a book and McMurtry's writing is a little drifty at times, as if he'd work on a section and then take a long break before writing the next. Not his best work but a nice introduction to the material.
    • 5/5
      Excellent. An amazing historical account of the 1800 massacres in america
    • 4/5
      McMurtry examines six western massacres, paying particular attention to Mountain Meadows, Sand Creek, and Wounded Knee. This book worked well right after reading Dee Brown, McMurtry puts the incidents in a little more context. I found the section about Mountain Meadows the most interesting since somehow I had never heard of it. Current attempts by the Mormans to deny their role in the massacre only increased my interest.
    • 3/5
      Ho-hum history here. One wonders why McMurtry even bothered to publish this. There's nothing new in it, including the thesis: The human creature seems prone to slaughter. Massacres have been happening for thousands of years. There's no end in sight, and blood will out. Cheers!
    • 4/5
      Adopting a conversational tone McMurtry briefly (161 pages) explores six 'big massacres' of the Old West: Sacramento River, Mountain Meadows, Sand Creek, Marias River, Camp Grant, and Wounded Knee. He also briefly considers the Fetterman and Custer defeats. McMurtry's treatment is even-handed. That even-handedness allows his observation of the essential fairness of General Crook, which the Indian leaders acknowledged, as demonstrated by his observation that the Sioux should take the money for the Black Hills because the whites were surely going to take them. Evenhandedness also required inclusion of the observation by Red Cloud that the whites had made many promises but only kept one: "They said they would take our land and they took it." He develops the idea that the ever present 'apprehension' of violence was felt both by whites and Indians and that the apprehension all too often led to the actuality. Moreover, in general white frontiersmen wanted the Indians' land and were going to have it. Whites had the numbers and the technology. In all of the massacres with the exception of Wounded Knee the whites set out with the purpose of killing all the Indians they could lay hands on. As McMurtry relates civilized society often quickly disowned these deeds as 'simple murder'. Mountain Meadows stands out an as exception in that Mormons led some Paiutes to attack and virtually wipe out a white wagon train. The stories of these massacres are told in more detail elsewhere, but McMurtry's book is an interesting addition to the Western library that considers all of them within the confines of one short work.
    • 3/5
      Being a huge fan of McMurtry I expected a little more. McMurtry writes about several of the somewhat lesser known Indian massacres with the exception of Wounded Knee. Since the book is fairly thin there is not as much detail as I would have liked but there are still some interesting facts to be learned. At times the book reads like a glorified term paper. However, on the positive side the brief synopsis of each massacre may spurn the reader's interest to further study. While brief in pages McMurty's passion, knowledge and love for the West still shines through.