Oh What A Slaughter and Sacagawea’s Nickname

Getting pretty close to having read all of Larry McMurtry’s nonfiction.  LMcM has a rambling, conversational way in these books, I enjoy it.  Here is some previous coverage about his book Hollywood, and his road trip book Roads, and the best one of all imo, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen.

Oh What A Slaughter is definitely worth a read.  A good quality of McMurtry and my all time favorite Evan S. Connell is that they really capture the weirdness of history.

How about this, as McMurtry describes the buildup to the Wounded Knee massacre?:

Wovoka / Jack Wilson

How can you not like a book that has this in it?

Sacagawea’s Nickname wasn’t as compelling to me.

It collects essays McMurtry wrote for the New York Review Of Books: a couple about Lewis & Clark, one about the great one-armed explorer/surveyor/ethnographer/proto-environmentalist John Wesley Powell:

But for title alone I was def gonna read it.  Like every American kid I was taught about Sacagawea in school, whose name we were told was pronounced “Sack-a Jew-ee-uh.”

Imagine my shock years later when my friend Leila, who was schooled in Oregon and thus had some cred on the issue, told me her name was pronounced “Sack Ahj Way.”  Well, sure.  How could we know?  Both Lewis and Clark, Clark especially, were crazy spellers, so their clues are confusing.  From Wiki:

Clark used Sahkahgarwea, Sahcahgagwea, Sarcargahwea, and Sahcahgahweah, while Lewis used Sahcahgahwea, Sahcahgarweah, Sahcargarweah, and Sahcahgar Wea.

From McMurtry:

Anyway let me go ahead and give you a spoiler that Sar car Ja we a’s nickname was Janey.