It started with a cow. A lame, limping animal that wandered from a Mormon wagon train near Fort Laramie in August 1854 and was killed by a visiting Miniconjou man named High Forehead. The cow's owner, Christian Larsen, barely noted the incident in his journal, content to let the Sioux have the meat. But Lieutenant John Grattan, a 24-year-old West Point graduate eager for glory and openly contemptuous of Native warriors, saw opportunity. What followed would become the opening shot of the First Sioux War, a conflict that would rage for decades across the Great Plains.
By the summer of 1854, some 4,800 Sichangu and Oglala Lakota were camped east of Fort Laramie, peacefully waiting for their treaty annuities. The region was already tense. A severe drought from 1845 to 1856 had decimated the bison herds, leaving many Plains tribes starving. When the cow incident occurred on August 17, treaty protocols called for the Indian agent to handle compensation. Agent John Whitfield was due to arrive within days with funds for restitution. But Lieutenant Hugh Fleming, the garrison's senior officer, ignored the protocol. And Grattan, a supernumerary with no official duties, pressed for action. A commander later recalled that Grattan left the post with a desire to have a fight with the Indians, determined to take the man at all hazards.
On August 19, Grattan led 29 men and two artillery pieces into the encampment of 1,200 warriors. His interpreter, Lucien Auguste, was drunk by the time they arrived, having fortified himself against fear with whiskey. Auguste spoke only broken Dakota and harbored ill will toward the Sioux. As negotiations began between Grattan and Chief Conquering Bear, Auguste taunted the warriors, calling them women, telling them the soldiers came not to talk but to kill. Trader James Bordeaux, watching from nearby, saw the situation unraveling. Conquering Bear offered a horse to compensate for the cow. Auguste mangled the translation. Confusion mounted. Sioux warriors moved into flanking positions around the soldiers.
A nervous soldier fired first, hitting a Sioux warrior. Arrows flew in response. Conquering Bear fell, shot in the back, mortally wounded. The Sichangu warriors, led by a rising war chief named Spotted Tail, killed Grattan and eleven of his men within minutes. Eighteen soldiers retreated on foot toward some rocks, but they were cut off by Oglala warriors led by another rising chief: Red Cloud. Every soldier died. Conquering Bear was the only Lakota casualty, lingering nine days before dying near the Niobrara River. That night, enraged warriors rampaged, swearing to attack other whites. The Great Plains would never be the same.
Eastern newspapers called it the Grattan Massacre, ignoring the soldiers' role in provoking the fight. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederacy, called it a deliberately formed plan by the Sioux. Colonel William Harney was recalled from Paris and given 600 troops for retribution. At the Battle of Ash Hollow in September 1855, his forces killed 86 Sichangu Sioux, half of them women and children, in what newspapers of the day called a massacre. Spotted Tail, caught unarmed during a parley, took two bullets through the chest yet still killed or wounded thirteen soldiers before being captured. Many historians trace the next quarter-century of Plains warfare to that August day in 1854 when a young lieutenant chose pride over protocol.
Located at 42.13N, 104.41W in present-day Goshen County, Wyoming, approximately 8 miles east of Fort Laramie National Historic Site. The battlefield site lies along the North Platte River valley, visible as open grassland from altitude. Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 feet AGL. Nearby airports include Torrington Municipal (KTOR) 15nm southeast. The landscape remains largely unchanged, with the gentle bluffs and river corridor still recognizable from the air.