John Freeman

"If we know anything about man," writes Larry McMurtry in this grim but stirring little book, "it's that he's not pacific." As evidence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author points to six famous massacres that took place in the West after 1830, beginning with the Sacramento River Massacre of 1846 and ending with the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Drawing on his prodigious reading and the memory of growing up in

Texas, McMurtry brings these terrible times back to life, gory deathbed scenes and all.

McMurtry's insistence on gritty detail can make for grisly reading, but he clearly believes that to leave them out would obscure the true nature of events. "What massacres usually do," he writes straight off, setting the tone, "is reduce human beings to the condition of meat, though the bits of meat will be less tidily arranged than the cuts would normally be in a decent butcher shop."

"Oh What a Slaughter" bears this description out and then some. The Mountain Meadows Massacre occurred when a wagon train passed through

Utah and was ambushed, killing 140 people, some of them children. The event recently reentered the news, thanks in part to a flurry of new books on the subject, from Sally Denton's "American Massacre," as well as Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven."

Kick the dirt aside with your boot, McMurtry shows, and the stain of murder is everywhere (and on everyone) in the West. Much of this has to do with the American government's policy of forcibly removing Indians from their land. The Wounded Knee Massacre reveals how the collective guilt and fear of a backlash to this action could lead to wholesale killing.

At the time of the event, there were over 100 warriors camped with the Sioux chief, Big Foot, and that was about ninety-nine too many. Once shooting started it didn't stop. "Once the soldiers began to fire into the crowd, a frenzy developed that was not much different from the killing frenzies at the other massacres," McMurtry writes. "Fear, nervousness, blind rage all contributed to a force that was soon unstoppable... in situations of high tension it takes only one vague, perhaps accidental, action to start a violent spasm of killing."

In moments like these, one feels why it is important for novelists to try their hand at history. As fans of his tremendous fiction know, McMurtry always has his eye on the moral tipping point of human behavior. Though this book isn't a comprehensive study--the Marias River Massacre gets a scant four pages--it puts us on this battlefield enough to understand why these events still haunt the earth so, and why, sadly, they will probably not be the last of their kind.

Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American

West: 1846-1890

By Larry McMurtry

Simon & Schuster, 178 pages, $25

(2006-01-10)

Also by John Freeman

Nonfiction Review
The thirteen men and women featured in this oral history were sent to prison for crimes they did not commit. Some languished for years on death row. Others were sentenced to life in prison. And yet they consider themselves fortunate
(2005-11-21)

Fiction Review
By 1957, the year he published "On the Road," Jack Kerouac was at the end of his rope
(2005-11-15)

Poetry Review
Great art feels inevitable--so that in the moment of experiencing it, the painting or the dance becomes eternal. We cannot imagine the world before it, or without it
(2005-10-25)

Nonfiction Review
When the Big One occurs, San Franciscans won't be able to say they didn't expect it
(2005-10-18)

Fiction Review
(2005-10-11)

Nonfiction Review
(2005-10-04)

Rush Hour
(2005-09-27)

Nonfiction Review
(2005-08-23)

About Face
(2005-08-02)

Fiction Review
(2005-07-05)

Superhero
(2005-06-28)

What I'm reading this summer
(2005-06-09)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment