

Oh What a Slaughter
Massacres in the American West: 1846--1890
Author: Larry McMurtry
Narrator: Michael Prichard
Unabridged: 4 hr 22 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 11/01/2005
Categories: Nonfiction, History, Modern History
Synopsis
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.